It’s 18 months into the launch of an African development program and we’re rethinking our client’s logic model.  “Uh oh,” you say, “why wasn’t this fully baked from the get-go?”  As it turns out, the opportunity to revisit and revise theories, logic and ideas is truly terrific.  It’s terrific because the organization has invested in measurement and now has the data to inform and improve its strategy and produce greater if not significantly greater impact later.

Many of today’s biggest social challenges have shown through years of failed investment that traditional solutions simply aren’t working.  As a result, the buzz word of the day is innovation: innovative and, by definition, unproven ideas are being used to tackle domestic issues like education, healthcare, and the environment as well as issues that plague the developing world including clean water, food security, economic development, and so on.  Some funders including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the US Government, and progressive corporations are willing to support innovative ideas so long as organizations can quickly test, validate and show results from a previously unproven approach to social change.

 
In my client’s case, the organization had a theory of change that loosely linked its programs and activities to the ultimate goal of poverty reduction in Africa.  By defining the specific near-term outcomes it aimed to achieve, measuring progress against them early, and leveraging its measurement data as a strategic learning tool, the client tested and revised its ideas just over a year into its launch.  It didn’t have to wait for results of a longitudinal study to see what works and it didn’t waste time and money launching an array of shotgun strategies.   What’s more, it has already begun to revise its programs to better produce the most critical near-term results and long-term impact.  At our client’s annual report to its primary funder next month, it will share a data-driven story of success and critical learnings that will shape its future.   Such insights are rare for all organizations and almost unheard of for a program that is both new and innovative.

Innovation is critical:  if today’s social change agents expect to produce different results, they must apply different techniques!  However, to efficiently harness innovation, organizations must rapidly measure what works, abandon ideas that don’t and disproportionately invest in those that do.  Through measurement, innovative becomes effective and through effectiveness, change happens.