The Latest

Principles-Focused Evaluation: Newest Approach for Evaluating Complex Change Efforts

One of the toughest challenges for social innovators and evaluators is to describe the “it” they are trying to evaluate. While they typically have a general idea of the outcome they would like to see (e.g., an end to homelessness, addressing mental health issues, a feeling of inclusion), they often struggle to lay out the pathway(s) to get there. This makes it difficult for both parties to land on questions, indicators and/or methods around which to build an evaluation design. 

5 Shared Measurement Challenges for Collective Impact Initiatives

My just-released paper, Shared Measurement: The Why is Clear, the How Continues to Develop acknowledges the importance of shared measurement as one of the five conditions of Collective Impact.  As noted by Kania and Kramer, “Collecting data and measuring results consistently on a short list of indicators at the community level and across all participating organisations not only ensures that all efforts remain aligned, it also enables the participants to hold each other accountable and learn from each other’s successes and failures.” 

Collaborating with the Enemy

In his book, Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell, argues that the successful adoption of new ideas – and the beginning of social movements – depends on three things: the quality of the message, the credibility of the messenger, and the timing of the message. 

In Collaborating with the Enemy: Working with People You Don’t Agree With, Like or Trust, author Adam Kahane may have fulfilled all three conditions for the countless people, organizations and networks working together to solve tough and complex challenges.

Getting Beyond Better

What can we learn from nearly a hundred inspiring stories – saving rain forests in the Amazon, transforming education in Latin America, reforming public health in middle Africa, and reducing poverty in Bangladesh – about how to create transformative change?

This is the question that Roger Martin, one of Canada’s best known business school leaders and management consultants, and Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, which champions social change efforts around the globe, answer in their book, Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works. They also uncover a lot about the frequently referred to, but poorly understood, craft of social entrepreneurship. Here are three of their biggest insights.

Developmental Evaluation Exemplars: Principles in Practice

If you are serious about tackling complex issues and changing systems in an ever-changing world, then you should be serious about Developmental Evaluation (DE). Michael Quinn Patton popularized the approach in his groundbreaking 2010 book, Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use. In it, he provided a comprehensive account of how evaluative thinking and practices could assist - rather than short circuit - the efforts of social innovators.

Connecting to Change the World

I became aware of the power of networks in the 1990s while working in the field of community economic development (CED) overseas and in Canada. While the majority of the micro­enterprise programs were supporting individual entrepreneurs to establish their own businesses to generate additional income for their households, the pioneers at the Appalachia Center for Economic Networks were weaving together small and medium enterprises into mutually supporting economic networks. The difference in revenue, profits and economic activity was dramatic: networks really exemplified the old adage that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.