Balancing Learning and Accountability in Complex Systems
While many organisations aim to use Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) for learning, they tend to prioritise accountability goals based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to meet donor requirements. However, in complex development projects, traditional KPIs fall short to capture the fluid and unpredictable nature of system transformations. In this blog, we argue that adaptive management—an approach focused on continuous learning and adjustment—can potentially bridge this gap. By documenting how M&E data inform decisions and adaptations, organisations can meet both learning and accountability goals.
By Greetje Schouten and Rob Kuijpers
Systems thinking in development
Our partners in the development sector are increasingly adopting a systems lens to guide their intervention strategies. Transforming food and health systems is seen as vital to achieve meaningful and sustainable impact at scale. In recent years, systems thinking has therefore become a mainstream concept in the development sector.
The systems in need of transformation are often marked by uncertainty, non-linearity, and disagreement on values, facts, and interests.[1] In such complex environments, cause and effect are only clear in hindsight, and outcomes are unpredictable.[2] As a result, organisations that aim to transform these systems, need to adopt a “learning-by-doing” approach, revising their strategies based on the outcomes of their earlier interventions. Experimentation is thus essential in these settings.
The limitations of KPIs in Complex Settings
Although development work is increasingly placed in complex settings that call for a more adaptive approach, KPI-based M&E, which involves tracking predefined metrics linked to clear objectives, is still prevalent in development practice. However, such KPIs are not able to capture the fluidity, uncertainty, and unpredictability required in this context. Relying solely on KPIs risks narrowing the view of success, potentially overlooking critical learning opportunities and innovative, adaptive responses. Also, they tend to emphasize short-term achievements, possibly conflicting with the long-term, systemic goals of complex change efforts.
KPIs may work well in linear systems, where cause and effect are clear, and results can be attributed directly to specific interventions. An example of such a relationship is a cash transfer to food insecure households. Here, the provision of cash can be assumed to have a linear and causal relationship to the household’s purchasing power, their expenditures, and their food security status.
Why Adaptive Management can be a viable solution
Yet, more often than not, our partners have to deal with complex issues in which relationships are non-linear and interconnected. As an illustrative example, you can think of making efforts to change a country’s food system, encompassing numerous interrelated factors.
A more effective approach for such complex systems is embedding M&E into an adaptive management framework. [3] Adaptive management is a continuous and systematic cycle of planning, acting, learning, and adjusting. It’s like steering a ship through unpredictable waters, constantly reassessing your course based on changing conditions. Monitoring data needs to play a key role by providing real-time lessons on what works and what does not. Also, what is monitored is adjusted every cycle to reflect the adjustments in approach. Unlike traditional, linear models to planning and implementation, adaptive management allows organisations to continuously learn and adjust both the intervention and the M&E system.
Could Better Documentation of Adaptive Management Be the Answer?
But: if development organisations spend their finite M&E budgets to inform adaptive management, how can they be kept accountable regarding their performance by donors and taxpayers?
We think that a practical way to address this challenge is through better documentation of adaptive management processes. By carefully documenting how M&E data informs decisions and strategy adjustments, organisations can meet accountability requirements while demonstrating their commitment to learning.
This approach offers donors a richer understanding of what is happening in complex projects. Instead of KPIs, they see how data are used to drive decision-making and respond to emerging challenges. It shows that the organisation is actively engaged in achieving meaningful impact, rather than merely ticking boxes.
What Would be Required to Make this Happen?
To improve the documentation of adaptive management, several changes in mindsets and practices are required. First, it is crucial to recognise that systemic change is not easy to achieve, and the process of learning how to bring about change is valuable in itself. Shifting the mindset to see learning as both a process and an outcome can potentially help foster the deep, systemic changes that many organisations seek.
Second, while the development sector shows adaptive capacity, there is significant room to make learning and adaptation more frequent, evidence-based, systematic, participatory, and better integrated into decision-making.
Third, improved reporting systems are needed to help development organisations effectively communicate their lessons and adaptations. These systems should be grounded in better periodic documentation of initial plans and assumptions, M&E data to track progress and validate assumptions, participatory analysis of M&E data, documented adjusted strategies, and corresponding adjustments in the M&E plan.
Finally, donors can play a pivotal role in enabling adaptive management. By embracing flexibility and prioritizing transparency over rigid success metrics, they can encourage organisations to learn from failure and adjust their strategies more effectively. In this way donors can become a development partner that thinks along, critically, and takes a pro-active role in the broader systems change process.
What lies ahead?
As more organisations and donors recognise the value of using M&E for adaptive management, we have a real opportunity to bridge the gap between learning and accountability.[4] By investing in better documentation of adaptive management, we can not only satisfy accountability needs but also showcase learning as a key component of success—helping shift the focus from hitting targets to understanding and responding to the complexities of the environments we work in.
If you want to learn more about this topic or would like to discuss how your organisation could make this shift from M&E for accountability towards M&E for adaptive management, please contact the authors Greetje Schouten or Rob Kuijpers
Notes
[1] OECD (2021), Making Better Policies for Food Systems, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/ddfba4de-en.
[2] Puik, E., & Ceglarek, D. (2015). The quality of a design will not exceed the knowledge of its designer; an analysis based on Axiomatic Information and the Cynefin Framework. Procedia Cirp, 34, 19-24.
