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The Aid Explorer: Mapping the Hyperspace of International Aid

Posted in Accountability, Evaluation, Facilitation, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Research, Self organisation on May 2, 2013 | 1 Comment »

The team behind the Atlas of Economic Complexity (see my post on this here) have come up with a fascinating network-based approach for analysing the global aid system.

As they put it:

International development is a complex global goal that faces massive coordination barriers. The difference in income between rich and poor has expanded over the years from a four to one factor to a hundred to one. Where there once were only a handful of development agencies, thousands have now emerged. The system that connects donor agencies, recipient countries and development challenges is extremely complex and should not be managed with a top-down approach… The Aid Explorer was developed as a tool to facilitate better aid coordination. The Aid Explorer enables users to understand what issues face which countries and which aid organizations are aligned to address these issues.

Some specific pointers:

  • The Aid Explorer’s Profile pages enables us to see which issues face which countries and which organisations are best aligned to address them
  • The Network maps can be used to explore how issues, countries, and organizations relate to each other
  • The Rankings presents the findings and the best alignments of countries, issues and organizations

The process of developing the dataset, and how to use it, is described in more detail in the accompanying paper “The Structure and Dynamics of International Development Assistance“, published earlier this year in the Journal of Globalization and Development.

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Is this the ‘Next Big One’?

Posted in Agriculture, Biology, Communications, Evolution, Healthcare, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Research, Resilience, Strategy, Technology on April 23, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

As concern grows about H7N9 in China, this post explores the importance of managing such pandemic risks through collaboration, innovation and systemic thinking

In the month of World Health Day (April 8th), the latest outbreak of bird flu in Asia provided a sobering sense of the challenges the international community still faces. To date, H7N9 has killed 21 people, infected 104, shut down poultry markets across Asia, and has led to Chinese shares tumbling.

The WHO originally announced that the likelihood of this latest pathogen is transmittable between people is low, and that the world should not ‘get into a flap’ – as one observer memorably put it. The potential of bird flu to be the source of the “Next Big One” means however that we cannot be complacent. In terms of global catastrophic risks, it is hard to think of one more serious than the 1918 avian influenza epidemic which killed 50-100 million people worldwide – 3-5% of the global population. This was so devastating in part because the virus had acquired mutations that allowed it to cross from birds to humans, and then to ‘go pandemic’. Based on analysis of the mutations in H7N9, scientists fear that this latest variant may have the same potential.

But there is still a lot we don’t know about H7N9. Where has it come from, why, and how? What is its relationship to earlier variants? How might it mutate? What impact might it have in the future? What does it mean for our ongoing, historically loaded, battle with avian flu?

To answer such questions, we need to draw on a variety of disciplines: epidemiology, molecular biology, virology, all of which fit nicely with the current models of public health. The problem is that many of these models set us, humans, apart from nature. Diseases, the standard narrative goes, encroach on our territory and we need to fend them off. The reality is in fact the exact opposite.

It is now widely acknowledged that many – the majority, in fact – diseases are born in the intersection between society, environment and economy. More than 2/3 of all human infectious diseases are zoonotic in origin, meaning that they somehow crossed species boundaries. The terminology likely to be adopted in future Hollywood blockbusters on the topic is simple but evocative: ‘spillover’. Primates, birds, bats, pigs, rats, mice, dogs, insects – any creature we co-exist with can act as sources or carriers of pathogenic lifeforms.

Spillover is driven by a pattern of activity which is becoming all too familiar. Deforestation: 4% increase can lead to 50% increase in malaria rates. Hunting has led to HIV-AIDS, Ebola, all crossing the species boundary. And, to bring it back to bird flu, livestock. Around 70% of the rural poor and 10% of the urban poor are dependent on livestock. Livestock conditions are increasingly creating tremendous opportunities for pathogens to cross from wild birds to caged birds, and onto humans. And the demand for animal-based protein is expected to grow 50% by 2020, much of it in the developing world. This problem is not going to go away any time soon.

Leapfrogging on the success of the human race, trade and transport linkages provide a morbid global transmission network. The rate at which new diseases are emerging and spreading is nothing short of shocking.  Zoonotic diseases have increased in the past 40 years, with at least 43 identified outbreaks since 2004. ILRI estimates that 1.7 million people die each year thanks to spillover diseases. By way of comparison, the highly respected CRED crunch on disaster epidemiology found that the 2001-2010 average annual deaths from natural disasters was 107k  per year.

Ecological and evolutionary principles are vital in understanding these complex system effects on a more solid scientific basis. Experts at the University of Florida made the point in pithy fashion a couple of weeks ago, “If we don’t understand the reservoir and the ecology of the virus, it’s hard to design interventions to protect humans.” But such understanding is – with a few exceptions – still under-utilised in public health.

Of course, every disease is different, every context is unique. But the process by which spillover happens is similar. We can point to ecologies under stress. Life forms under duress. As an excellent briefing by colleagues in the Consortium on Disease Dynamics (CDD) puts it, “The health of people and animals are… interconnected and inextricably linked to the environments both inhabit. Given the complex pathways that lead to spillovers, it is important that prevention and control measures are undertaken with a strategic approach and an understanding of the many interdependencies.”

What does this challenge add up to for the global risk management community? The work by the CDD gives some very useful pointers.

First, multi-disciplinary approaches are vital. The WEF Global Risks report has for some years now been calling for better disciplinary collaboration in order to think about emerging risks. With avian influenza there is a clear need for better collaboration between public health specialists, disease ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Some important work is already happening, under the auspices of entities such as the global One Health initiative, organisations like the EcoHealth Alliance, and initiatives like the USAID-funded Predict, and this work needs to move firmly to the centre of the debate.

Second, anticipation and warning systems – new investments in surveillance are urgently needed to establish and maintain necessary systems at multiple levels – community, national, regional and global. We need multi-stakeholder information platforms, bringing together government, civil society and the private sector in new kinds of networks, in order to establish ‘systemic  surveillance approaches’. This needs to move beyond a focus on specific disease to looking at the whole system, looking at the intersection between disease drivers, disease incidence, and socio-economic factors.

Third, new approaches – especially in the realm of complex adaptive systems – have a lot of relevance for how we think about such outbreaks in the future. Methods such as systems thinking, network analysis, agent-based simulations, and dynamical systems theories can help develop a more precise and accurate understanding of the complex dynamics of disease. Together with the rise in ‘big data’ approaches, there is scope to develop new models and theories of how pandemics unfold which are more appropriate to our ‘hyperconnected world’. We need to be careful however to ground this science in local, community understanding – to support affected communities to become the frontline of defence: adaptive managers of emerging risks.

Fourth, we need changed funding models – funding prevention, not just response, and linking pandemic risks to high-risk development activities, and ensuring that we don’t forget history too quickly. There needs to be attention even when the threats may not be imminent. The private sector, with interests in business continuity, can be key actors here. Done right, such investments can engender what might be seen as positive spillovers. As the CDD work suggests, investments in prevention of avian influenza can provide the basis for such work on other potential pandemics.

In closing, if we want to take a wide-angle lens on the problem of disease outbreaks like HN79, to understand why these diseases are occurring at an increasing rate, we could do worse than taking a lead from Nathan Wolfe. A globally renowned virologist, a couple of weeks ago Wolfe wrote a tub-thumping piece on the WEF blog about the continued risks of unregulated hunting, especially bushmeat, which gave birth to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). His basic argument was by ignoring the implications of our food production systems, we are running an unacceptably high risk of terrifying global scourges in the future.

Clearly, we all need to start pay much more attention to the intersection of economy, society and the environment if we are serious about proofing ourselves against the Next Big One.

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Questioning innovation

Posted in Accountability, Economics, Evaluation, Evolution, Influence, Innovation, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Research, Technology on January 30, 2013 | 5 Comments »

Innovation is popular in aid at the moment, so much so that there is a steady spate of articles which range from trashing its potential contribution to development through to challenging Western, donor, countries’ assumed roles as the ‘providers’ of innovation.

In this post I want to argue that there is a middle  ground between the unthinking mantras that are increasingly peddled by agencies and the growing number of entirely justifiable critiques.

An Economist article made the point succinctly over a decade ago, ‘what precisely constitutes innovation is hard to say, let alone measure.’  Some concluded, as a result, that innovation was a ‘new theology’.

innovation-prayer

However, with a growing chunk of economic growth being driven by industries and products that in fact didn’t exist ten years previously, such dismissals seem increasingly Luddite.

While clarity and precision in thinking about innovation is all-important, it is far from easy. We are not helped by the fact that many innovation stories are in fact apocryphal – retrospectively woven to lend the star protagonists much more agency and awareness than in fact they possessed. This is true of even the best known innovation stories. Take Alexander Fleming’s infamous and much-lauded discovery of penicillin – Fleming himself used to describe the conventional account of his contribution as the ‘Fleming Myth’.

Typically in business the market is the ultimate arbiter of innovation, and as we know, most products fail. In aid, however, the market does not provide an adequate indication of what is successful and what is not. This is largely done by the aid system itself. Bill Easterly made much of the fact that the market could get Harry Potter books anywhere there was a demand, which he compared unfavourably to the inability of the aid system to get simple treatments like vaccines to where they were most needed:

There was no Marshall Plan for Harry Potter, no International financing Facility for books about underage wizards. It is heartbreaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children.”

But as Amartya Sen subsequently argued:

the disparity in the results is indeed heartbreaking… [but] there is a radical difference… between the enterprise of supplying “what is in demand” — which is integrally linked to the buyers’ ability to pay — and that of supplying needed goods and services to people whose income and wealth do not allow a need to be converted into a market demand.

While Sen’s point applies more broadly to aid delivery, it is also relevant to new ideas and innovations within aid.

In any case, whether because of market failure or the wilful self-interest of aid agencies, innovation – which is an ambiguous enough concept in the business realm – becomes very murky territory indeed in development. It is hard to say  what innovation actually is, what it generates, and for whom. Like the famous ruling about pornography, many are of the view that ‘I know it when I see it.’

Such vagueness is the ideal seeding ground for development fads, and indeed, innovation is fast becoming the latest ‘fuzz-word’. Everything is being labelled ‘innovation’: as one blogger memorably put it, we seem to be suffering from Innovation Tourette’s.

Problem

Little wonder that growing numbers of thinkers and writers see the need to beat innovation with a big snarky stick. These criticisms play a vital role in highlighting the risks and downsides of  all shiny new aid agendas – and innovation is no exception.

Having observed such trends in the past, I think there is a danger that between the rise of the fad and the indignant reaction to it, we lose sight and sense of why the issue is question is actually important. Specifically, we risk learning the wrong lessons about what innovation actually is, and the potential it has to add to our work.

What we need is a more precise and accurate way by which to separate the innovation wheat from the faddish chaff. This was in fact one of the key motivations of a study I co-authored with Kim Scriven and Conor Foley while at ALNAP back in 2008-9.

So what did our study suggest in terms of getting more precision in innovation? We found it useful to ask some key questions to identify whether a particular idea or approach was in fact innovative.

  • Q1. Is the idea being proposed a new Product, a new Process or service, a new way of Positioning aid, or a new Paradigm or mental model? Or is it some combination of the four? (see more here)
  • Q2. What are the origins of the idea, and what does it aim to do differently to what is already out there? Where, exactly, is the novelty – is it a whole new thing, or is it new combinations of existing things? What, in partciular, are the implications for relationships with aid recpients? Did the idea involve re-thinking that age-old and much-critiqued relationship?
  • Q3. How disruptive is the innovation? Is it transactional, in that it enables existing efforts to work; incremental in that improves these efforts, or transformational in that it radically changes these efforts?
  • Q4. What precisely are the expected benefits the idea should confer? Can these benefits be framed in terms of existing evaluation criteria of enhanced relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact or sustainability of aid? Or are there other, newer, criteria that matter? How can the benefits be measured – qualitatively, quantitatively, or some blend thereof?
  • Q5. What are the potential risks and downsides of the idea for all parties – especially aid recipients – and how will these be mitigated against?
  • Q6. Where can the idea be located in an overarching innovation process? Is it at the early stages of recognition and invention, is it in need of development and implementation, or has it been tested and is now ready for wider diffusion?  (see more here)
  • Q7. What are the networks and relationships that will support and facilitate the innovation process? What capacities and competencies are necessary? Are these in place? How can they be built?
  • Q8. What is the potential scope of the innovation in terms of wider diffusion? Who might benefit, and in what ways? What is the route to scale, and who needs to be engaged to get there?

There are no doubt many more questions that could be asked, but the above provide a good starting point for what might be termed ‘innovation due diligence’. The key, in my opinion, is to use these and others questions to develop more honest, rigorous stories about ongoing and historical  innovations: about how they came about, why, and with what benefits. Such questions are useful because they help us look at innovation from a more systemic perspective: looking not just a idea, but the overall social, technological and institutional context from which it has emerged.

These questions should be relevant whether you are a donor bombarded with new proposals and ideas, an operational aid worker seeking to get funding for your exciting new idea, a blogger wanting to shine a light on the depressing excesses of innovation-speak, or a researcher wanting to investigate an supposed innovation in a systematic fashion (in fact I think we need far more of the last category, but that’s another story).

We will need to keep wielding the big stick as necessary, to curb against such excesses of aid ‘innovation-speak’. But we may also at times need a magnifying glass and ruler – metaphorically speaking – and asking these kinds of questions could help with this. My $0.02 is that if a would-be innovator can’t take a reasonable stab at these questions, they aren’t working hard enough, or they are over-selling something. A lot is spoken about creativity in innovation, but recent work suggests – in echo of the old 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration line – that the larger part of innovation lies in the proper execution of the idea.

I think there is a special role for the aid blogging community in asking such questions and demanding answers. We have seen in the past few years how bloggers have mobilised in a largely self-organised fashion to push back against various poorly considered ideas.

I know there are many bloggers who want to engage with innovation in a serious fashion, and who are dismayed by the current hype surrounding it. We should be able to highlight the good and bad of what we see emerging from the aid innovation agenda. And aid agencies should be willing to open their ideas up to the views and scrutiny of this emerging, globally networked, community of thinkers and analysts. This kind of effort has, in other distributed sectors, developed into new crowd-sourced marketplaces for innovation such as Innocentive. There’s no reason why the same couldn’t happen in our sector.

Our ultimate goal, I’d argue, should be to work to bringing the perspectives of aid recipients into the mix as part of our standard operating procedures. Now that in itself could be seen as a real innovation.

The need for such engagement goes beyond mere niceties. The most effective ideas we uncovered in our 2009 study were precisely those that re-thought and re-formulated this core aid relationship: cash, community approaches to malnutrition, transitional shelter. Put simply, these were the innovations that we found to be most worthy of the term.

Gamechanger

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Conversations on Complexity: A Tribute to Elinor Ostrom

Posted in Biology, Evolution, Influence, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Organisations, Public Policy, Resilience, Strategy on August 16, 2012 | 12 Comments »

Many people around the world were deeply saddened to hear of the death of Elinor Ostrom in June this year. By way of a tribute, this extended piece brings together some of her ideas on the implications of complexity science for development aid. It draws on material from a series of interviews I conducted with Professor Ostrom between 2009-2012 for use in my forthcoming book, and has been approved for publication by her colleagues at The Workshop, Indiana University.     

When Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in 2009, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences made the following statement:

[she] has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concluded that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories.”

Challenging standard theories was a running theme Professor Ostrom’s work. Ideas of the commons and how they really worked were central to this, as was the analysis of institutions and the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Complexity was a particular interest: ideas of systems, self-organisation, the evolution of rules, institutions as emergent phenomena and resilience are all repeated motifs in her papers, books and speeches. Indeed, her 2009 Nobel Prize Lecture – she was the first and, to date, only woman to win the Economics Prize – builds on the distinction between simple and complex human systems, and closes with the following words:

We should continue to use simple models where they capture enough of the core underlying structure and incentives that they usefully predict outcomes. When the world we are trying to explain and improve, however, is not well described by a simple model, we must continue to improve our frameworks and theories so as to be able to understand complexity and not simply reject it.

She was on the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) Science Board for five years. Corresponding in 2011 while I was visiting the Institute, she wrote to tell me that it was one of her favourite places in the world. It is easy to imagine how the SFI approach naturally appealed to someone who had spent her life’s work breaking down disciplinary boundaries.

My small-scale engagement with Professor Ostrom started in 2009 following the publication of a report on complexity science and aid I led on while at ODI. She used it as reading material for her students in Autumn 2010 and kindly wrote back to tell me how useful she had found it. We subsequently had telephone and face-to-face interviews on the topic of complex systems, development and aid. These discussions, and of course her rich body of work,  helped to shape the ideas in my forthcoming book, which she warmly encouraged from the outset. I have used material from these interviews to write this post.

*

What is your view on complexity and the complexity sciences? What is the value of this approach?

I get so upset when people use complexity as a reason not to do things – complexity and context are essential for operating in many different situations. In order to make sure decisions are relevant, we have to understand the context of decisions, and the complexity of the situation. My take on complexity is that it is a key set of concepts which are essential for understanding how the world works. There are many situations where simple models don’t work – when there are 10, 15, 20 variables. For example, think about situations where problems are nested within each other or situations where there are many actors capable of actions, conflicting information about transmissions and payoffs and diverse outcomes. Here, the ideas of complexity can lend a hand by providing a means of analysis and understanding the reality of these action situations.

How would you apply these ideas to international aid agencies?

The last thing aid agencies want to do is analyse things as a complex system! (laughs) But how do you unpack systems without such analyses? In biology and ecology, there is a necessity of using complexity science and related ideas as a model – although it is not always acknowledged, they do have to use it. For example, in a situation with 10, 15, 20 species, how do you understand the potential impact of the elimination of one species, when one unit being eradicated would cause disaster rather than simply being important. We can’t address these questions without drawing on complexity theory in some way.

The lack of long timeframes and a lack of supporting cultures means that aid agencies don’t help people learn how to think about and change the structure of the situations they are facing. In many situations, this is because of colonial roots of aid, which did not respect local institutions – they didn’t understand them so they were treated as non-existent.

The difference between this approach and that of Darwin is stark – the care and diligence that was given to studying animal species in the 19th century is so evident, and it from this that we have evolutionary theory. But these countries also had people, but there was no attempt to understand their knowledge systems, the rules they had developed to manage various kinds of socio-ecological systems… Colonial powers assumed we have the answers, and destroyed social capital. Aid agencies, unfortunately, do much the same thing.

What are the biases of development aid that you see inhibiting the take-up of a more complex, realistic way of doing things?

Development aid asks the question: where can we pour money in to make the most difference in the most visible way (laughs). This is not especially amenable to complex ways of understanding the world. Most projects are 2-3 years, some are 7, but these are big engineering projects, and then they disappear.

‘Fitting’ is all important in this context. Many agencies today have blue prints for situation A, but they are so ingrained they can’t deal with B, C, D and E. Some employ very inspiring young people, but they are not keen to stay long in their organisation – 4-6 years max, they tend not to be sanguine about the future. This is understandable, but it also goes against what we know about bringing about social change.

Take the Sida work. We said, we want to understand the role you play in sustainable development – tell us what your best projects are. And we found that their best projects were relative failures because of exactly these issues.

The most fundamental change is to change the social science curriculum to change the way that development is taught. We need to get away from treating governance as top-down. The presumption of almost all work is that a hierarchy will work effectively, gather information from variety of sources and develop tactics of behaviour. In complex systems, there are many different areas, all moving in different directions and at different speeds, doing localised things which are relevant. The idea that a central processing unit that can gather up all of this information and make decisions about the whole system… the theories fall down.

I developed a framework to understand complex social-ecological systems, which builds on my work on governing the commons. This sets out the key design principles for complex systems which sit on the interface of society and ecology: watersheds, fisheries, increasingly the whole planet. Some of the reaction has been very enthusiastic – some people, the biologists, the ecologists, the complexity scientists, love it. Others hate it, they say it’s not science, it’s too complex.

What examples do you see of good development practice, which do take account of complexity?

I was at a conference recently in the north of Sweden, for the Childbirth Foundation, 1000 young people from 100 countries. They were trying to answer the question – how do you change the way the world works to develop more opportunities in developing countries. There were lots of ideas, using the market, ideas like cooking stoves and many others, all aimed at the broader goal of dealing with climate change, bringing about development. Some of these ideas have already been applied; some are still being tried out. But the key is that they are doing development in a way that has a chance of working.

And there were no international development agencies present. They should have been there, just to see what was being discussed. The key difference was that while international development agency way of thinking has seen a lot of failure, they haven’t picked up yet on the answer, which is that we must have multiple approaches, small and experimental and larger and more concrete. But apparently the taxpayer doesn’t like to see experimentation with their money!

Aid agencies tend to not involve staff in anything other than a project, and sometimes only for part of a project. And when the project ends, they leave. Mr Shivakumar, a colleague who worked on the Samaritan’s Dilemma, has done work with Action Aid in their Ethiopia programme. They will go to a site where they are trying to help farmers build up their capacity, say for public services. They are there for some time, but they try to do something 5 years before they are going to leave. They will call a meeting and say ‘we will fund 1 year for 100%, after that, we will drop to 80%, and you need to support 20%, then down to 60%, and so on… If we are doing something good, then you should want to carry it on. If not, that’s fine, the project closes. That is an example of an aid  philosophy that takes account of complexity.

Look at Grameen Bank, that started off slowly, and if it was cut down after 2 years it would never have turned into the institution it is today. But it worked because it was a system within a system within a system. It didn’t have public official waiting for a report on a Friday afternoon before they could go home. It had lots of people in localised situations who presented and developed rules for how things would work, providing some basic structure for example, you have to meet every week, we have to put money on the table, we have to be forgiving at times… These small-scale units proved to be very innovative and creative. Small-scale units can be very adaptive in changing – look at family units when a child arrives, or a job changes. They can deal with the complex, but they are guided by a different philosophy to development agencies. They don’t have to come up with winning solutions, they can learn from their own successes and diversity of other approaches, they can change things if they are not working.

There is a growing interest in resilience in development circles. Do you see this a promising line of enquiry?

Resilience and sustainability are very similar – these systems have similar properties. It is another attempt to get this kind of thinking into institutions, and just the latest one. The work of the Stockholm Resilience Centre is very important here, and they have been successful in influencing a number of research agendas. But I think a lot of the time policy people are just using the language without knowing what they are talking about (waves hand in mock exasperation). When I did my work on social-ecological systems I was very careful to build on the work of ecologists and social scientists, so it was a truly integrated framework. The trouble with much of the development policy work around resilience I see is that so much of it doesn’t really try to engage with the science of resilience, but instead uses as a catch-all to further particular institutional interests. We need some real serious thinking on this issue if it is going to make a meaningful contribution.

What do you think are the implications of the science of complexity for big conferences like Planet Under Pressure and Rio+20?

We are lucky that there is growing interest in this area, from academics and researchers across the world. The work you have been leading on your book – I think this is work of immense value and importance for the development sector. The crucial question is whether international agencies are ready to hear the message and willing to act on the lessons. I know there are others leading similar work in other closely related sectors like environmental sustainability, community development and social entrepreneurship – about the complexity inherent in different resource systems and under different rules.

We need a broader approach to these systems. What we are lacking at the moment is a shared framework. Without this, how are we to ensure our knowledge accumulates? A shared framework of complex systems can help us ensure knowledge in these different fields is not isolated. There are more people working on this, and they are working together more, but not enough is being done yet.

What do you see as the key to the success of Rio+20?

There needs to be more connection around this challenge through a shared lens of complex social-ecological systems, and these large-scale events provide an opportunity to do this. The key principle informing all of this has to be taking a more evolutionary, polycentric approach to policy making.

This is the key challenge we face, and it is only going to grow with time. I am hopeful though. If there is one thing I think I have learned it is that just because we have a certain emphasis in our institutions today, it doesn’t mean we are stuck with it forever.

 What three things would you change among aid agencies to get them to take more account of complex realities?

The number one thing is the ‘spend it or lose it’ mentality – it is common to most bureaucracies, but getting it changes is essential if aid is going to be tailored to the complex realities of development. This institutional change will allow many others to come about, and so it is a very important one.

Number two is getting aid agencies to be more of a learning enterprise and less of a doing enterprise. This means feedback, training, reflection. This means not assuming we have the answer. We need to create an environment where discussion and debate are openly welcomed, and where redundancy is not always seen as bad, just excessive redundancy.

Third, we need to reward people for developing imaginative ideas that draw on the complexity of the real world, that leave people in developing countries more autonomous, less dependent, and more capable of crafting their own future.

*

There are of course many tributes to Professor Ostrom, by people far more qualified than me to write them. For my own small part, I feel grateful to simply to have known her: for her time and support; for how generous she was with the benefits of her towering intellect; and for her gentle, playful sense of humour. The fact that someone of her stature could take the time and care to engage with and mentor me and so many others like me around the world speaks volumes about the extraordinary person she was.

She will be deeply missed – as the Indiana University president said in his statement, we have “lost an irreplaceable and magnificent treasure”.

“We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life
where we’re helping one another in ways that really help the Earth.”

Elinor Ostrom, 1933-2012

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JP Morgan and the Price of Complexity

Posted in Accountability, Biology, Chaos, Economics, Evolution, Financial crisis, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Self organisation, Strategy, Technology, Trade on May 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »

This is the text of an article in the Washington Post by Dominic Basulto about last week’s events in the financial markets. Great stuff.

When news first broke Thursday that JPMorgan’s credit derivatives portfolio had sustained a loss of $2 billion, and potentially as much as $5 billion, on trades gone awry, there was an immediate call for greater regulatory oversight over banks’ high-risk trading activities. The message was clear: “If you’re going to be a bank, then you can’t play at the casino,” as the Post’s Ezra Klein writes. At the same time that the market was lopping off billions of dollars in shareholder value, JPMorgan was purging top executives responsible for the bungled trades and facing awkward questions about its public stance in favor self-regulation. If banks can’t regulate themselves, though, who can?

Inevitably, the answer to that question depends on whether you view the financial markets as complicated or complex. If the financial markets are merely complicated, traditional approaches to regulation can be effective: regulators can turn their attention to individual actors within the market and systematically make the requisite changes to restore the market to equilibrium. In a complex system, however, traditional approaches to regulation can be woefully inadequate — small changes may end up having outsized effects, while big changes may end up having little or no effect. In a complex system, you need to focus on the interactions between each of the participants as much as the condition of individual actors.

The trading screens of Wall Street are, if nothing else, the perfect example of how computers are able to mask the complexity of an underlying system by being able to reduce the real world into 1’s and 0’s. There is no shortage of algorithms, formulas, sophisticated risk management models and quantitative trading models promising to reduce complex financial market interactions to something that can be studied, adjusted and tweaked. In theory, regulators should be able to look at a few numbers, compare them to a few benchmarks, and suggest the necessary adjustments.

But it is rarely that easy.

There is a big difference between complicated and complex. In a classic example, an automobile is complicated, but a transportation system with human drivers is complex. Ultimately, you can fix an automobile by lifting up the hood and checking that everything is working properly, no matter how sophisticated the parts. You can only fix a transportation system, though, by understanding how each of the drivers interacts with each other and understanding the distributions of dynamic traffic patterns.

One of the most innovative areas of public policy, in fact, involves the intersection of complexity theory with regulatory policy. Complexity theory, which has been used to model complex systems ranging from ant colonies to climate change, has also been applied to financial regulation. Practitioners within the financial markets are well-versed with complexity theory and its cousin: chaos theory. One of the entities consistently singled out in the academic literature is the CDC (Center for Disease Control), which is held up as a role model for how to deal with complex systems. For example, using complexity theory, the CDC was able to suggest that — contrary to what you might see in movies like “Contagion” — restricting air travel would have little or no impact on stopping the SARS outbreak. As the CDC recognizes, you simply can’t regulate away diseases. You need to deal with them with in real-time as they appear and find the right levers to stop them. Most importantly, you need to be able to spot potential flare-ups before they occur and understand the emergent behaviors that lead to outbreaks.

Certainly, the types of events that we observe in the financial markets, such as “flash crashes” and billion-dollar Black Swan events in derivative markets, are reminiscent of complex systems behaviors where small changes lead to unimaginable consequences. While the Volcker Rule, which would keep banks from engaging in risky trading behavior, could be effective in the short-term in avoiding certain types of adverse market effects, it may not be as effective in dealing with the full range of market fluctuations in the long-term. Implicitly, we recognize the complexity of financial markets by ceding power to computers and algorithms to price financial instruments properly. Now, we need to recognize that this complexity also has important consequences for the way that we think about regulating these markets.

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State fragility as a wicked problem?

Posted in Conflict and peace building, Evaluation, Evolution, Leadership, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on February 15, 2012 | 7 Comments »

Fragile states are growing in importance on the development and humanitarian  agenda. One of the most concrete outcomes of last years aid summit in Busan was the New Deal for fragile states. Most major donors are looking to increase their presence and effort in fragile states, and implementing agencies are having to work out what this means for their work. The stakes are high: current data suggests that no fragile state has or will achieve any of the MDGs. This post explores whether we are thinking about fragility in ways that actually helps us work well in such contexts.

First, some basics. There are a lot of debates about fragility and what it means. Some academics argue that fragility is part and parcel of a new Western hegemony, with echoes of 19th century imperialist justifications. It is certainly hard to deny that state fragility has risen up the agenda since 9/11, the ‘global war on terror’ and increasing international concerns about security.

There are now wide range of indices to measure and track state fragility. The Fund for Peace has a failed states index which looks like this:


Separately, the Centre for Systemic Peace publishes an index of state fragility which looks like this:


Of course, there are methodological differences, and any number of research projects could be undertaken to explore these in detail. But what is interesting is that both frameworks indicate that fragility is not the norm but the exception. As one analyst puts it: “state weakness has been a problem for as long as the state itself has been evolving into a universal form of political organization….Indeed, a compelling case can be made that it is the modern Weberian state that is the exception.”

This observation was made by Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College, who for the past 20 years has led work on how international agencies work in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. He argues in a recent article that fragile states are best seen as ‘wicked problems’. Take a look at the characteristics of wicked problems below, and think about situations like Afghanistan, Somalia or DRC:

  1. Wicked problems are difficult to clearly define The nature and extent of the problem depends on who has been asked and different stakeholders have different versions of what the problem is.
  2. Wicked problems have many interdependencies and are often multi-causal. Successfully addressing wicked policy problems usually involves a range of coordinated and interrelated responses, given their multi-causal nature; it also often involves trade-offs between conflicting goals.
  3. Attempts to address wicked problems often lead to unforeseen consequences. Because wicked policy problems are multi-causal with many interconnections to other issues, measures introduced to address the problem frequently lead to unforeseen consequences elsewhere.
  4. Wicked problems are often not stable Often a wicked problem and the constraints or evidence involved in understanding the problem are evolving at the same time that policy makers are trying to address the policy problem. Policy makers have to focus on a moving target.
  5. Wicked problems usually have no clear solution Since there is no definitive, stable problem there is often no definitive solution to wicked problems. Problem-solving often ends when deadlines are met, or as dictated by other resource constraints rather than when the ‘correct’ solution is identified.  To pursue approaches based on ‘solving’ or ‘fixing’ may cause policy makers to act on unwarranted and unsafe assumptions and create unrealistic expectations.
  6. Wicked problems are socially complex. The social complexity of wicked problems, rather than their technical complexity, overwhelms most current problem-solving and project management approaches. Solutions to wicked problems usually involve coordinated action by a range of stakeholders working at every level from the international to the local.
  7. Wicked problems involve changing behaviour. The solutions to many wicked problems involve changing the behaviour and/or gaining the commitment of individual citizens.
  8. Some wicked problems are characterised by chronic policy failure. Some longstanding wicked problems seem intractable. Development has many examples where the persistence of a problem has not been because of a lack of sustained effort.

Menkhaus is clear that the ‘wickedness’ of such fragile contexts needs to be understood and integrated into our strategies and practices:

How we conceive of the condition of state fragility is critical to our ability to fashion effective strategies in response. To date, our efforts to define, categorize, measure, interpret, and predict state fragility have been at best partial successes. As with many important political concepts, state fragility is maddeningly difficult to pin down, all the more so because on the surface it appears to be so self-evident (and solvable) a syndrome. In reality, the notion of state fragility constitutes a complex cocktail of causes and effects, a syndrome that has proven largely impervious to quick, template-driven external solutions.

The key message from Menkhaus is that the way in which aid agencies work needs to undergo a major rethink if we want to see improved results from our efforts. This is consistent with recent mainstream thinking – as the Busan New Deal document states: “the current ways of working in fragile states need serious improvement.”

Myself and others with an interest in complex systems have been doing some initial work on what this new approach might look like. Last year I attended a roundtable at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), organised by Bill Frej, a USAID Minister and former Mission Chief in Afghanistan. The focus of the event was how complex systems thinking could be used to improve foreign policy efforts, especially in fragile states.

Bill and I followed this up with a co-authored SFI Working Paper, published in June 2011, which synthesised our overall findings. In it we set out a number of principles, distilled from the combined insights of the complexity scientists and foreign policy experts at the roundtable:

Principle 1) To work to understand the systemic nature of the problems faced in foreign policy and how these problems evolve over time.

Principle 2) To involve those people who matter the most in the decisions that matter the most.

Principle 3) To avoid ‘silver bullet’ strategies and instead attempt multiple parallel experiments.

Principle 4) To establish real-time strategic analysis & learning as a key form of operational feedback.

Principle 5) To be open to the fundamental adaptation of efforts, along with changes in local contexts and conditions.

Principle 6) To reframe the overall foreign policy efforts as dynamic networks of multiple systems and actors.

Subsequently, Bill and I have been involved as part of a team assessing a major donor’s ongoing efforts in fragile states. It has proved a fascinating process, which we are just in the stages of wrapping up. What was especially interesting, from the perspective of the current post, was the extent to which the principles above seemed to ring true for the organisation in question.

Once the final report is published next month, I will post a piece illustrating these principles in more detail. For now, I would be interested to know if others working on issues of fragility and conflict also find this to be an interesting area for exploration.

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USAID’s Complexity Journey

Posted in Conflict and peace building, Evaluation, Innovation, Leadership, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on October 17, 2011 | 5 Comments »

Last week saw a remarkable meeting in Washington, bringing together USAID staff with scientists and practitioners working on complex systems. This post reflects on the event and outlines some of the emerging lessons.

Background

There have been a number of meetings on the topic of complexity and development in different locations around the world in the last few years (see here for a list of the ones that I know about). The one I have just attended in Washington was the first such event put on by a major donor, for its own staff, with a focus on what it should be doing differently as a result of the insights of complex systems research (see more about the agenda and participants here)

Organised by Tjip Walker and colleagues at the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning, the day started with an exploration of ideas from complex systems research. It then moved onto case studies of specific applications followed by a series of facilitated discussions on what USAID should be doing to take account of the principles of complex systems research in their work.

Contexts

In his opening remarks, David Kilkullen of Caerus Associates shared some pertinent reflections on the importance of complex systems thinking for modern foreign policy problems. David is a political anthropologist by training and a world-leading counter-terrorism expert by trade, and his talk illustrated his wide-ranging knowledge. He argued that the key to addressing complex systems was a combination of rigorous, data driven approaches to track patterns and dynamics of change with ‘deep dives’ – namely, on-the-ground research to test hypotheses and sense the emerging issues. He gave the example of Somali piracy being seen as a closed and static problem – “send the Navy in, dammit!” – to an open dynamic problem that was the manifestation of intricate interactions between multiple actors following their own interests. These actors included transnational criminal networks, shipping companies, insurance firms, security agencies and – last but not least – aid agencies.

The first chaired session saw Chris Wood, deputy chief of the Santa Fe Institute present on how his organisation – widely acknowledged as the leading institute in complex systems research – was dealing these issues. His presentation was eclectic and communicated some challenging ideas with a light touch. Chris highlighted that complexity wasn’t a science – yet – but a slowly coalescing set of ideas, methods and tools. Michael Quinn Patton gave a characteristically thought-provoking presentation, with evaluation as a starting point, but with references to strategy formation, the nature of systems, and the nature of social change. I gave a presentation on my $0.02 worth as to why development agencies need to engage with complexity research and the potential benefits. (you can download my presentation in pdf form here).

The next ‘case study’ session focused on concrete applications of complex systems thinking, ranging from terrorism and civil wars, systems mapping of conflicts and the importance of ‘design thinking’. Highlights for me included:

· the analysis of civil war dynamics presented by Aaron Clauset, which powerfully illustrated the kinds of insights that can be derived from existing data sets. Aaron’s detailed analysis of PRIO data yielded some fascinating hypotheses about the structure of different kinds of violent insurgencies and conflicts. As Aaron suggested, some of the most valuable lessons are about things that won’t work.

· Rob Ricigliano’s presentation of a system dynamics map, a tool popularised by Peter Senge in his work on learning organisations, but which is being applied in many other settings. Rob showed how his work in South Sudan helped develop a map of the complex feedback loops that can spin off from, and fundamentally challenge, pretty much any external intervention.

· Alexa Courtney talked about the need to understand and embrace ‘design thinking’ of the kind that Apple and others have made their core competency. Takeaway: the key is to build innovative platforms that unlock existing capacities, rather than deliver over-specified, top-down solutions.

Discussions

Later sessions proved equally fascinating, and were built around a technique called ‘journey mapping’ and run by Richard Tyson, an inspiring facilitator who specialises in innovation strategies. The participants worked together in small groups to think through what should be done differently in the face of a world characterised by interlocking complex adaptive systems. This session was especially liberating because Richard called for all of the presenters to take off their ‘expert hats’ and engage with the issues on an equal footing with the conference participants.

The final session had USAID staff reflecting in plenary on lessons from the event and key next steps. Highlights for me included:

· The need to admit where things aren’t working and look for alternative ways of thinking and working. This includes areas such as fragile states and conflict, resilience, urbanisation, growth dynamics, global nature of food security, health systems strengthening – the list goes on…

· The need to pilot complex systems ideas with a clear analysis of where they might add value. This means digging deep into assumptions we currently hold which may be inappropriate and testing the alternative assumptions of complexity research which could prove more relevant to the problems we face.

· Applying a portfolio approach across the full range development investments – which means focusing on the simple stuff where that is what matters most, but not denying or ignoring complexity where it is present. Notions of risk and reward matter a great deal, and needs to be thought about in a more strategic fashion.

· The need to make adaptive management a watchword for all aid programmes, enabling programmes to evolve along with the context they face. As a starting point, this means engaging with critical problems in the spirit of scientific inquiry and experimentation, grounded in a clear understanding of what we want to achieve, but with more flexibility as to how we achieve those goals

· The need for better quality dialogue within the organisation across disciplines, and across organisational boundaries - silos are a reality of working life, but the some of the most important issues we face seem to fall through the cracks in our organisational matrices. The best way we have so far of addressing this is to ensure better, more participatory dialogue on shared challenges.

Reflections

Reflecting on the event afterwards over a couple of beers with a couple of  fellow speakers, we were struck by five things.

First, USAID-ers are sharp operators. I must have spoken to 80% of the 75-plus participants and everyone was critically engaged with the key issues facing their area of work, displayed fluency in their specific fields, were self-aware and good communicators. There was also a lot of self-deprecating humour apparent on the day, which made for a relaxed and collegiate atmosphere. USAID is not without its problems, of course – just as in all organisations, aid-related or otherwise. And there was no doubt a degree of self-selection going on – those staffers interested in a meeting in complexity science may well be those with higher-than-average GPAs. But I came away feeling that this was an agency with a lot going for it intellectually. If a smart, well-trained, scientifically literate & dedicated cadre of staff is a prerequisite for dealing with issues of complexity and uncertainty, then USAID seems to be ahead of the curve.

Second, the politics of aid – both global and local – matter a great deal, and they do not always make for a fertile ground for engaging with complexity. The recent cuts proposed to US foreign aid are one manifestation, but there are numerous others. In the face of this, there is a need for strong aid leadership, which can play the short-term political game while keeping a clear eye on the need for new ways of thinking about & doing things. Not easy, but essential.

Third, on the bureaucracy of aid. There are some – some say too few – examples of the weight of the aid system being navigated deftly, while of course ensuring the necessary accountabilities. If we are going to take on the so-called ‘aid counterbureaucracy‘, it may be vital to understand these instances of where the system didn’t inhibit innovation and learning, and use them to justify and inspire more such efforts.

Fourth, on the ideas of complexity, it was great to have experts from across the complexity spectrum, from ‘hard scientists’ like Chris Wood and Aaron Clauset to evaluators like Michael Quinn Patton, to conflict specialists like David Kilkullen, Rob Ricigliano and Alexa Courtney. I have been to a few such ‘cross-disciplinary’ events this year and this was one was unique in that everyone seemed to strive for, and perhaps even reach some common ground. Personally, I think it was because everyone was open to learn and put their own preconceptions aside.  For a while, anyway :)

Finally, given how wedded the aid system is to assumptions that are in direct contrast to the implications of complex systems research, putting on this event was a courageous move by USAID and PPL. The gamble paid off – the event was met with appreciation and positive feedback across the broad from the participants. By the end of the day many of the participants were even more convinced of the need to move away from the methodological and philosophical monoculture that increasingly limits aid efforts. A small but clear manifestation of the old adage: courage begets courage.

USAID’s PPL is working on various forms of follow-up, both in terms of documenting the event and on how to take some of the suggestions forward. I will share more details on this important initiative soon.

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Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach

Posted in Accountability, Evaluation, Healthcare, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Malaria, Meetings, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on June 30, 2011 | 9 Comments »

The international development sector has been in a tug of war around the ‘results agenda’ for the past few months. This post explores the tensions and suggests a way to bring the sides together by focusing on the relevance and appropriateness of different approaches.*

I: The Results Tug of War

Development results is one of many areas where discussion and debate seem increasingly polarised. On one side of the results tug of war are those calling for more and better results, more rigour in analysis and more discipline in reporting. The failure of development, they argue, is basically about the failure to focus on results. ‘Modern management techniques’, especially those that are embodied by ‘results-based management’ are seen as the answer.

On the other side are those who argue for a ‘push back’ against this approach. Such reductionist approaches are seen as only suitable for certain kinds of development interventions, and that at their worst, these approaches inhibit the creativity and innovation needed to achieve results in the first place. The danger here is that we throw out the results baby with the reductionist bathwater (see here for a previous Aid on the Edge post on this).

What is increasingly evident is that, in the diverse and dynamic aid landscape we face today, all agencies attempting to genuinely strengthen accountability and learning face a number of common challenges. This is a preliminary list, I am sure readers will be able to think of more.

  • Data availability, coverage and quality are perennial problems
  • Participation and ownership - as Robert Chambers might ask: ’whose results count?’
  • Incentives and disincentives to use information and results, especially when they run counter to individual and institutional interests
  • Bureaucratic inertia: all too often results-related work is placed on top of and increases the already considerable bureaucratic and administrative burden on aid agencies, rather than simplifying and reducing it
  • Risks and fear of failure: How can we manage and be transparent about the different kinds of risk failures inherent to development projects & programmes?
  • Many conflicting imperatives: learning vs accountability, policy vs operations, domestic vs international

The key point is that these apply equally to both sides of the results tug of war. As a result, a lot of effort is being wasted, with problems being dealt with in entrenched intellectual silos rather than in a collective manner.

So what to do to move beyond the ‘tug of war’? I would argue that a first step would to think about how to bring the different results approaches together to establish a more constructive dialogue. What is needed is a more flexible and differentiated approach to results, one which takes account of the diversity of the development and humanitarian portfolio.

II: A Draft ‘Portfolio of Results’ Framework

What might such a portfolio-based approach look like? There are a number of useful approaches from academia, civil society and business strategy that can help here. These include Brenda Zimmerman’s simple-complicated-complex distinction, the Cynefin framework of Cognitive Edge, work done by Alnoor Ebrahim at Harvard University, work done by Eliot Stern on relevance of different approaches to impact assessment and finally a recent model put forward by Patrick Moriarty of IRC.

All of these suggest in their different ways that appropriate strategic approaches (and by extension, results approaches) need to be based on:

(a) the nature of the intervention we are looking at, and

(b) the context in which it is being delivered.

Reading across these approaches we can suggest a preliminary framework which may prove useful in bringing together different results approaches in a productive and mutually beneficial way.

First, imagine an agencies projects and programmes being distributed across a spectrum of the ‘nature of interventions’, placing relatively simple interventions on one end, and more complex issues, at the other.

Then let’s add in a vertical axes on context. Again, think of a spectrum, this time from stable / identical to dynamic / diverse.

This gives us a 2 by 2 framework for analysing and mapping different development interventions - in effect, this is a draft ‘portfolio of results’ framework. Where an intervention is positioned on this framework has implications for the kinds of results orientation we can take, as shown below.

In the top left corner of simple interventions in identical stable settings, is the Plan and Control zone – here ‘traditional’ results-based management approach, conventional value for money analyses and randomised control trials work well.

The bottom right corner of complex interventions in diverse, dynamic settings is what I have termed Managing Turbulence – here the philosophy is less ‘Ready, Aim, Fire’ (as in the Plan and Contol zone) and more ‘Fire, Ready, Aim’. Here we need to learn from the work of professional crisis managers, the military and others working in dynamic and fluid contexts.

In between is what I have called Adaptive Management, where either because of the nature of the intervention or the nature of the context, multiple parallel experiments need to be undertaken, with real-time learning to check their relative effectiveness, scaling up those that work and scaling down those that don’t.

III: Applying a Portfolio of Results Approach: A health-focused illustration

By way of illustration, let’s look at three health interventions – vaccines, HIV-AIDs, and rebuilding national health systems. I would argue that they could be distributed on the matrix something like this.

So if we are looking at simple interventions in a stable / identical environment, or what might be called the plan and control domain, randomised control trials, traditional cost-based ’value for money and results-based management approaches work great. Vaccines are perhaps the best example here. And as the ongoing MSF campaign on reforming GAVI suggests, a focus numbers and bean-counting can be of vital importance to ensuring effectiveness.

But we may find ourselves managing interventions that are more complex, in stable contexts. We can also think about situations where the intervention is simple but the context is dynamic. In both of these instances we may need to move away from blueprints towards a more adaptive management approach, trying out multiple parallel experiments and monitoring progress and rates of success and adapting to context. In HIV-AIDS responses, the optimal mix of responses is key and almost always locally determined (see previous Aid on the Edge post here). Also increasingly relevant are global malaria responses which need to adapt to the changing patterns of incidence and the evolution of resistance (ditto here).

Finally, in environments where our interventions are complex and the context is dynamic and diverse, we have to take a leaf out of the book of those who work in high risk environments – professional crisis managers, military and so on. Programmes to rebuild health systems, especially in fragile states, are a good example here. Here we need to be doing action research, real-time assessments and learning by doing.

This is not a rigid framework and there is overlap between the different areas. But different approaches to results can be shown to be more or less effective in different domains. In general terms, you can do a detailed RCT in the bottom right quadrant, but it may be a thankless task and not the best use of resources. You can do an RCT in the top right quadrant, but it could well prove to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. And so on.

(This also helps think about the concerns of one side of the tug of war – that there is a pressure to push development to the top left domain, and a widespread misapplication of the top-left tools for the other domains.)

Obviously this is a preliminary framework based on reflection and discussion, and is open to critique and debate. The key principle is that a more nuanced approach to results will have to be based on a systematic assessment of, at a minimum, our interventions and the context we are working within.

IV: Taking the Results 2.0 agenda forward

This kind of framework can also be used to think strategically about our overall portfolio of projects and programmes. How is our overall spend allocated between these ‘domains’? What are the implications for risk? I think there is a useful analogy with investment portfolio managers are used to diversifying their portfolios in order to reduce their exposure (see diagram below).

We urgently need to develop new ways of analysing the different elements of our portfolio. Through this we can start to unpack and understand the diversity of our efforts, and ensure we don’t take a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to results and all that entails.

There are a number of follow-on issues about how we might take this area of work forward.

  • We will need to refine or adjust the draft ‘portfolio of results’ framework, based on more in-depth analysis, discussion and debate. Of course, we may need something completely different to what is proposed here (all feedback, however critical is warmly welcomed!), but the key is that we need something to bring diverse constituencies and approaches together.
  • We need to think about which sectors are amenable to a portfolio type  approach to results, where we can pilot a ‘Results 2.0 process’ and we need to think about what new kinds of tools and methods might be required. I think health would be a great sector to start on.
  • Different kinds of interventions will need different kinds of information, which will call for different tools for managing this information. New kinds of tools and techniques will be necessary. Importantly, these should help to consolidate and simplify, rather than just increase, the reporting and administrative burden on the sector.
  • We urgently need to think about how this affects development communications, and how we can start to develop more sophisticated framing and messaging of positive and negative results, based on the different elements of our portfolio. This will be perhaps the hardest part of this new results agenda, as it means that we will have to tell our key stakeholders things like ‘we don’t know’, or even worse, ‘we failed’. This may mean riding with punches in the short-term. But this will also mean we will need to think hard about what different stakeholders expectations are, and how they can be best met. The overall legitimacy and sustainability of such efforts demands greater involvement of national governments, civil society and poor communities.

I want to close with this thought from a cross-country study of results-based  management looking at Western countries – that results are not an end in themselves, but are a means by which to establish trust in the system. I would add: and within the system.

Because we do so many different things in development, we have to do different things to earn trust of our diverse constituencies. (We may also have to accept that in some quarters, trust will never be established, but that is another story.) What we cannot do is move forward without finding ways of trusting each other, whatever our methodological or conceptual background and prejudices.

Bringing our diverse opinions and ideas together to test their relevance and appropriateness seems like an essential first step.

* This is the summary of a talk I gave at the June 2011 IDS-ODI roundtable on results with the UK Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell, revised following useful comments from participants. Special thanks go to Robert Chambers and Simon Maxwell for thoughtful and constructive feedback.

Fellow participants have also blogged on the meeting:

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Gender bias as an emergent property in international agencies

Posted in Gender, Institutions, Leadership, Organisations on June 1, 2011 | 12 Comments »

UPDATE 03/05/2011 – Shotgunshack has posted a great piece on this issue as it plays out in INGOs – check out ‘Gender and NGOs – Pretty on Paper’
Most international agencies backed International Women’s Day in March, and – some valid concerns about the political  appropriation of the gender movement aside – this is right and proper. But sadly too few agencies can point to changed internal behaviours and attitudes as a result of the ‘gender mainstreaming’ efforts of the last 20-plus years. Recent events highlight the importance of international agencies walking their talk in this area.
First, some statistics from the business world:
  • Since the 1980s women have been earning about one-third of the MBAs awarded in the U.S., yet they comprise only two percent of Fortune 500 CEOs and eight percent of top leadership positions
  • For the same period, women have made up more than 40 percent of new entrants to the legal profession, but they are still less than one-fifth of law firm partners, judges, and general counsels
  • In most democracies, women constitute a majority of voters, but hold proportionally less ‘seats’ of power
  • Across Europe, women constitute about a third of managerial positions but only three percent of CEOs
How about their international counterparts that apparently do so much to promote gender balance and equality in the wider world? Sadly, it seems that  few aid agencies can claim to be free of the gender glass ceilings evident in their corporate counterparts.
  • In the UN, as of 2009 women made up 40% of all of all staff  in the professional and higher categories with appointments of one year or more; but only 26% of all staff at director level and above, equivalent to the legal profession.
  • 17% of UN-equivalents of CEOs are women, which is a marked improvement on other sectors. But actual gender balance has only been achieved at the P1 and P2 levels – the lowest professional grades.
  • Of the most powerful roles in the sector - UN Secretary General, World Bank and IMF chief - none has been held by a woman – but watch this space…
  • Little comparative statistics appear to be publicly available from NGOs, Red Cross or bilateral agencies (if anyone has access to such data, please do share)

Importantly, gender bias is not just about equal representation – this is just the most visible tip of the iceberg. The overall status of female staff can be described as an emergent phenomena of organisational culture that may have little to do with stated rules and regulation. In leadership and management contexts in particular (as a post from a fellow blogger will illustrate shortly), there are a variety of micro-level and informal attitudes and dynamics that while acceptable in themselves add up to an overall institutional bias against women. And this particular version of the ‘invisible hand’ sinks many hopes.

The recent dramas involving the head of the IMF is a point in case, revealing a disturbing degree of tolerance towards sexist attitudes. In 2008 a female colleague – whose relationship with Mr Strauss-Kahn was the subject of a public investigation by outside lawyers – described the former IMF chief as “a man with a problem that may make him ill-equipped to lead an institution where women work under his command”.

And yet his position was not compromised by this. In fact, he is still widely described as an outstanding leader for the organisation. One wonders how these two statements could possibly be true at the same time.

While this clearly needs to be explored further in the context of international agencies, it is clear that women navigate a different societal and organisational terrain from their male counterparts. Could any reader imagine a world where someone was described as ‘ill-equipped to lead an organisation with men under her command’, but was still seen as an outstanding leader?

As long as treatment of women remains an side-issue at the most senior levels of an organisation - and as long as this kind of moral and ethical gymnastics between the public statement and private attitudes continues - it seems inevitable ‘gender  mainstreaming’ in the wider world will continue to be empty jargon within international agencies.

Overall, we are unlikely to see a shift from the damning assessment made by a major bilateral agency: “the benefits of gender mainstreaming and impacts on gender equality are at best embryonic and at worst still to become visible“

Thanks to Shotgun Shack for comments and to Nandini Oomman for pointing out my error regarding the date of International Women’s Day.

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The Humanitarian Groundhog Day

Posted in Chaos, Evolution, Innovation, Institutions, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Meetings, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation on March 24, 2011 | 14 Comments »

Humanitarian coordination has been described in a new ODI paper as a ‘wicked problem’ which demands new and radical solutions. This post explores the  longstanding incentive issues underlying the lack of effective coordination and suggests possible ways forward.

In a paper published last year,  Michael Barnett and I argued that the humanitarian system was stuck in much the same kind of bizarre loop as Bill Murray’s character in the film Groundhog Day: that it was ’condemned to repeat’. Each major disaster highlights pretty much the same problems and flaws, from Rwanda to the Tsunami to Haiti. This is despite a lot of work to try and improve the quality and accountability of aid between these events. Although some remarkable innovations have improved specific aspects of humanitarian aid, system-wide performance remains a major issue.

Drawing on the game theoretical work of Professor Elinor Ostrom and other leading political scientists, we argued that at the heart of this repetition was the issue of incentives.

The humanitarian system has few incentives for collective action, which are seen by many as key to effective coordination. Few of the humanitarian reform initiatives which have been launched over the past 15 years have attempted to understand or address the incentives that underlie and reinforce existing behaviours. This is because few if any agencies have been willing to sacrifice delivering quickly against their individual mandates for the benefit of the wider response.

This  ‘me first’ mentality is apparent throughout the interactions that make up the system - not just between international actors, but also in interactions with national and local actors, with ‘non-traditional’ actors such as the private sector and the military. It is also painfully evident in interactions with disaster-affected populations themselves.

Michael and I argued that without serious effort to examine and strengthen the incentives to cooperate versus those to ‘go it alone’, the coordination of humanitarian aid is likely to continue see a Groundhog Day-style repetition of below-par performance characterised by this ‘me-first’ mentality.

Haiti is the tragic exemplar for our times. Despite the complexity and scale of the post-earthquake response, the mechanisms set up to coordinate international efforts – sector-specific clusters in health, shelter, and so on – had no formal decision-making mechanisms or mandates. Remarkably, given their nominally central role in ensuring the coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of the response, the success of the cluster operations by and large came down to the personality or leadership skills of a single individual.

An ODI roundtable last month on the workings of the humanitarian system concluded that:

The recent humanitarian experience in Haiti is a tale of exclusion. The humanitarian system, with all its resources and coordination and information-sharing mechanisms, succeeded in by-passing many of the spontaneous, ad hoc or informal indigenous humanitarian responses. [agencies] actively excluded others, often without good reason.

None of this is new, of course. A UNOCHA-commissioned study published ten years ago revealed

…a ‘system’ that shows determined resistance to cede authority to anyone or any structure… Despite the urgency of the task, and the potential impact on human lives of poorly coordinated humanitarian responses, [key leaders] at the field level are all denied the ability to direct or manage humanitarian responses. Instead, all have to work on the basis of coordination by consensus. In the face of the obstacles, this is an uphill struggle…”

The Rwanda evaluation, published five years earlier in 1996, noted that the international system had ‘a hollow core’. It would seem that the latest solutions to this problem are also somewhat hollow.

And this is increasingly being recognised by disaster-affected states. Those that can afford to are turning down or strictly limiting international assistance. When Australia’s foreign minister Kevin Rudd was interviewed after the recent floods affecting his country, he argued that that one of the worst things they could have done was to have “a whole lot of uncoordinated delivery of stuff from around the globe plonked on [our] doorstep”. There are numerous ongoing debates in the context of the Japanese earthquake response which are also pertinent to this issue.

How can we deal with the Groundhog Day problem in system-wide humanitarian performance? There are numerous ideas bubbling around at the moment, from strict regulation to nationalisation to partial privatisation. But unless these new efforts tackle the incentives that arise at the point of disaster, they are unlikely to lead to significant and lasting change.

An important focus for anyone reflecting on how to improve system-wide performance is to explore ways to change the pay-offs, so that the longer-term incentives for mutual cooperation in the interests of disaster-affected people outweigh the short-term incentives for going it alone.

Without this issue being put front and centre so as to address the ‘hollow core’, any new reform to improve system-wide performance will sit on top of these issues instead of resolving them. Agencies will continue to deliver against their narrow, short-term organisationally-defined objectives, to the detriment of their own longer-term benefits, overall system-wide performance, and most importantly of all, the communities they purportedly seek to help.

Of course, such self-examination is not an easy thing to do, nor is it easy act upon. As the write-up of the ODI event notes, humanitarian coordination is a good example of a “wicked problem“: “difficult and fluid problems with no clear solutions, to which any response typically creates additional problems… the more closely they are examined or the better they are understood, the more complex and insoluble they may seem.” It continues:

Collective strategic action in the face of these problems may be continually frustrated; more effective responses may depend on developing and strengthening decentralised, diverse, non-linear and non-hierarchical approaches to problem-solving across the humanitarian sector.”

One radical suggestion for changing the pay-offs by along these line scomes from Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He suggests that the shortcomings of the humanitarian-response system in Haiti have a lot to do with a principle of systems thinking known as requisite variety. This states that an effective system has to have as many different states of response as conditions that are presented by its environment – or more simply, that internal diversity has to match external diversity.

This implies that we need to be seeing a lot more creativity and innovation in coordination efforts, in ways that are appropriate and tailored to different emergency contexts. The ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of the clusters, together with their lack of coordination ‘teeth’, may well be hindering more than helping performance.

There are also serious questions to address about who gets to judge the performance of agencies. According to a Slade interview with Bar-Yam, one example of such an improved model would be:

…one that understands that duplication and competition among NGOs is not a bad thing, so long as organizations are rewarded with donor money for delivering effective solutions.  And those solutions can only be determined by Haitians themselves…”  (emphasis added)

This idea seems to have some resonance with “cash on delivery” – an innovation from the development side of the system. Of course any attempt to apply this principle to humanitarian aid needs a lot more thought – and it is just one suggestion – but it is certainly an intriguing one. There are no doubt more such ideas to consider. What does seem clear is that this kind of incentives-focused thinking needs to play a central role in the current round of efforts on humanitarian performance and reform, if we are serious about change.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character was only able to end his continuous loop of the same day when he started putting his own interests to one side. He ended the cycle when he stopped being arrogant and duplicitous, stopped trying to ‘win’, and started acting in the interests of the greater good in a simple and honest way.

Groundhog Day is a fable, of course, and to many it may appear a rather sentimental one. But it also contains a lesson that international humanitarian actors would do well to heed.

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