Behavior Change for Adoption of Adaptive Management Practices

Let's take a closer look at what it takes to do AM!

Hello and welcome to the 30th Edition of #LearnAdaptManage. Thank you to our 5,270 subscribers for joining us on our journey to use #evidence to inform decisions and actions in #internationaldevelopment. ?? Click the subscribe button on the upper right corner to join us!

We have covered adaptive management in depth in the last four LAM newsletter editions. If you have missed them, I suggest you review them before diving into this Edition.

Edition #25: What Really is Adaptive Management (AM)?

Edition #26: Different Definitions but the Same Principles

Edition #28: Adaptive Management Approaches/Initiatives in International Development

Edition #29: Part 2: Adaptive Management Approaches in International Development (PDIA)

Today, we are shifting the focus and looking at the factors that hinder or support our ability to take up adaptive management practices.

This is because, despite the knowledge and acknowledgment that most of us need to apply adaptive management approaches to solve the problems we are working on sustainably, we still do not adopt AM practices.

Today's article is based on an excellent working paper by Patricia Rogers and Alice Macfarlan from BetterEvaluation.

The authors look at what is needed for adaptive management to work. 1) More effective collaboration and 2) More effective learning. These might not be surprising if you have reviewed the previous editions where we looked at the different AM approaches.

They all call for working with other stakeholders to identify and solve development problems (effective collaboration) and putting systems in place that enable us to continuously generate, synthesize, and use evidence to better how we are doing our work (effective learning).

Rogers and Macfarlan rely on Michie et al.'s meta-model of behavior change (COM-B model) to investigate the factors that support or hinder behavior changes related to the adoption of effective collaboration and learning.

What is the COM-B Model of behavior?

The COM-B model of behavior is widely used to identify what needs to change in order for a behavior change intervention to be effective. It identifies three factors that need to be present for any behavior to occur: capability, opportunity, and motivation. (West, R; Michie, S; (2020)).

Capacity (human capital such as skills and knowledge, social capital, organizational capital)

Adaptive management requires staff to have specific knowledge and skills. The authors mention some skills, including strong technical skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, and political analysis skills, an ‘adaptive mindset'—which involves a tolerance for measured risk-taking and adaption—being inquisitive, the ability to ask the right questions, think on their feet, and spot opportunities, and the ability to empathize with colleagues.

This document from USAID, 'Guide to Hiring Adaptive Employees,' is a good starting point if you want to learn more about capacities.

Rogers and Macfarlan also highlight what leaders need for adaptive management, and those are worth calling out here;

• Leaders need a strong interest and enthusiasm for the task of adaptive programming, including a willingness to accept failure and uncertainty,
• A strong sense of direction, perseverance, and determination,
• Need to be willing to step back and let others take the lead in decision-making, such as local actors and frontline staff,
• Leaders are also important in building a culture that celebrates learning, embraces failure, and encourages a positive risk culture of informed risk-taking.

Other topics explored under capacity include networks and relationships, trust, time and workload, contextual knowledge, knowledge of rules, systems and processes, knowledge management, and learning culture. (Review the working paper included in the reference for more details on each of these subtopics.)

Motivation (including incentives and disincentives)

Motivation is positive or negative incentives that make us behave in a particular way.

In the case of adopting adaptive management practices, positive incentives like leadership buy-in and rewards and milestones for doing AM can encourage staff to adopt AM practices. Rogers and Macfarlan note that incentives are needed at different levels, and teams must introduce formal and informal mechanisms to promote AM.

Notably, they also mention some of the positive incentives that donors can put in place to promote AM;

• focusing performance incentives at the outcome level;
• focusing performance milestones in the first 12-18 months of the program on operational system quality;
• rewarding number of changes to result from R&R exercises, rather than simply rewarding the number of R&R exercises;
• encouraging and rewarding reporting on failure;
• adopting results frameworks that better recognize ‘success’ in complex, 'adaptive programs.

On the other hand, negative incentives that work against staff displaying adaptive behaviors need to be removed. These include hostile or high-profile political environments, inflexible M&E systems and reporting requirements, inflexible or inadequate finance and procurement systems, isomorphic solutions, evidence preferences, and unaligned priorities.

Opportunity (including identifying and removing barriers)

"Having skills, knowledge, and motivation to manage adaptively is not enough. The systems that manage interventions and investments must provide opportunities for responsive, flexible decision making."

The authors highlight the following systems as necessary in providing the opportunities for AM: flexible funding, Flexibility in planning, Innovative contract mechanisms, and Inception periods. (Review the working paper in the reference for more details on these subtopics.)

Interestingly, most of the provisions above have been offered and tried in multiple programs I have worked in or supported, but we still need help taking up AM practices. Does this mean we must focus more or equally on capacity and motivation?

Dear reader, if you have made it this far, thank you ??.

This topic is close to my heart, so I had a great time researching it and putting together a summary. If you enjoyed this Edition, please look at the working paper provided in the reference below.

What are your key takeaways from this Edition? Please let me know in the comments section below ??

New here? Find everything we have previously covered in the LAM Newsletter here.

Reference: Rogers, P. and Macfarlan, A. (2020). What is adaptive management, and how does it work? Monitoring and Evaluation for Adaptive Management Working Paper Series, Number 2, September.

Florence Randari Is an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) professional who has built effective monitoring and learning systems and processes for programs across East Africa for almost a decade. Her expertise lies in helping teams develop and maintain a learning and adaptive management culture that ultimately leads to tangible improvements in program impact. She is the founder of Learn Adapt Manage (LAM).