Synthesis of the discussion so far...

Experiential knowledge and staff observations (1)

• Monitoring a rural seed fair: # of attendees; Value of goods sold; Participant feedback; Observation of field co. of huddle of farmers talking about skit; farmers crowding around reps of seed supplier; text from suppliers about future events.

• Monitoring local dairy cooperative: Quality & volume of milk; membership rates of cooperative; observation of relationships of cooperative leader with community; attitudes of cooperative members

Value of experiential knowledge and staff observations (2)

• The informal knowledge from observation is only a snapshot but carries information about attitudes, trust, relationships of market actors (S.K. Gurunathan – CARE)

• Nuggets capture leading outcomes suggesting what is going well and should be built on, what is not going well and should be improved; (C. Duncan – EWB)

• This knowledge is collected, communicated and used to user action quickly.

• Telling us about sustainability of systemic changes that are founded on behaviour changes. Contributing to evidence about sustainability of intervention; (E. Islam – CARE)

• Helping us to untangle the attribution of behaviour changes. (E. Islam - CARE; C. Duncan – EWB)

Information for different users and different uses

• Monitoring and evaluation should be multi-purpose:– Serving different users with– Different types of information (content and characteristics)

for– Different purposes

• This is the case for informal information, e.g. (S. Taylor – IDE):– Useful to complement quantitative data to untangle

causality in analysis for longer-term learning– Useful to feed managers quickly to inform adaptive

decision-making

What managers want – content

Typical content:• Attitudes, confidence, prejudices, trust,

relationships• Proxying for incentives and anticipating

behaviour change, within a framework of the goal and pathway towards it

What managers want – characteristics

• Ease of Access• Timeliness• Documented in some form(S. Taylor – IDE)

• Quick: daily, weekly or monthly• Very specific to field activities• With information user in mind• Ideally in person, next best by phone(C. Duncan – EWB)

A tension: open spaces and direction

• A culture of sharing and learning (G. N – CARE)– Open mind;– Curiosity;– Attitude of questioning assumptions– Flexibility

• Some direction needed to organise information flow and build that culture (S. Taylor – IDE; A. Morcrette – PA)– More on this later

Incentives to make EK&SO work better (1)

• Tension between ‘getting the job done’ and learning is passed down from donor to manager to staff: work with donors to be more learning oriented (RC – ACDI/VOCA)

• Changing program office culture away from directed management with incentives for learning:– Learning deliverables in job description and part of

performance review– Rewarding learning with exposure internally and

externally (RC – ACDI/VOCA)

Incentives to make EK&SO work better (2)

• Shaking up the established culture– Hiring staff from less traditional backgrounds (RC

– ACDI/VOCA)• Nurturing a learning culture– Strong, flattened feedbacks between managers

and field staff (CD – EWB))– Integrated into day-to-day work (facilitation) (CD

– EWB))

Capacity building to make EK&SO work better

• ‘Bright spots’ and ‘ninjas’ (S. Taylor – IDE)– Getting staff to shadow experienced or successful

colleagues and through mentoring make their implicit methods explicit

• Embed observational practices into facilitation capacity building– False distinction between informal monitoring,

observational knowledge management and facilitation (C. Pennotti – CARE, A. Morcrette – PA)

Focusing on the important – using results chains