One of the most productive conversations in my recent trip to Bolivia was a discussion with Oxfam Bolivia staff on the shortcomings of my/our current thinking about how to move from analysing power to designing strategies to bring about change. The current advice is to start with a power analysis, then move to mapping the relevant stakeholders, and on the

As Jed Bartlett would say, what’s next? Now the SDGs are official, there will be big discussions on financing and a geekfest on metrics and indicators. Both are important. But to my mind the big task is to collectively think through what the SDGs are meant to change and how they can best do so – in other words a

Whether in the back of a 4×4 in Tanzania, or in seminar rooms in Oxfam house, I seem to spend an increasing amount of my time discussing theories of change. Oxfamers seem both intrigued and puzzled – what are they? What are they for? The answers aren’t simple and, as social scientists like to say, they are contested. But here’s