Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Greetings! We, Sabrina Nwonye and Daniel Ticehurst, are old friends who worked together on a Policy Development Facility in Nigeria from 2015 to 2020. Our mission was clear: to create a space where those at the frontline of the facility’s work could share their stories, learn from one another, and ignite actionable change through a unique internal evaluation method. This endeavor led us to work closely with a dedicated team of Nigerian Embedded Advisors (EAs) who operated within the challenging landscape of federal-level government institutions, one subject to many political jinks and sways.
The Motivation Behind Our Journey
What motivated us to do this? In the past decade, we’ve witnessed a resurgence of interest in listening to the voices of those who are assumed will benefit from development aid and impact investing, and for good reason. However, we couldn’t help but notice a silence surrounding the voices of those who actively deliver this support and their experiences in working with the ultimate client beneficiaries. Despite being essential to the development process, these individuals are seldom considered in what are termed “participatory approaches.”
Our inspiration for involving these EAs in the learning process came from the private sector. A Harvard Business Review article on insights engines highlighted the importance of storytelling, while D.M. Boje’s insights on group storytelling resonated deeply. We also gleaned valuable lessons from E.W. Morrison and F.J. Milliken about how such silence stifles much-needed adaptation, particularly in complex environments where client behaviours, relationships, and decisions defy prediction. With lessons of such uncertainty in mind, we turned to W.E. Deming’s approach to management, including the importance of the unknown and critique of results-based management: “like driving a car through a rearview mirror”. Most importantly, we learned to challenge the dangerous myth that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
The Anecdote Circles (AC) Approach
Inspired by a method known as Anecdote Circles (AC), which we learned about from Pfizer, we embarked on a journey of designing and moderating bi-annual storytelling events with our team of 40 EAs. Many had never met before, and ACs proved to be the perfect catalyst for bringing them together. Unlike traditional progress reports, our adaptation of ACs focused on the learning value of the content rather than merely assessing performance. This shift in focus revealed invaluable insights that fueled change, creativity, learning, and innovation.
Lessons Learned
- The EAs participated more than we thought they would: EAs, despite their demanding schedules, eagerly participated in the ACs over four years, surpassing our expectations.
- The importance of bringing EAs together: ACs brought EAs together, allowing them to realize the commonality of their challenges. Through shared learning, they identified solutions and opportunities.
- Staying Connected: Beyond the AC sessions, EAs benefited from staying in touch, supporting each other in addressing emerging challenges, and accessing relevant government departments.
- Understanding how things work: Implementing policy at national and sub-national levels is complex. ACs helped EAs navigate these complexities by sharing insights on how to work within their clients’ institutional environments. This allowed them to get through the implementation arrangement, identifying who is responsible for what at what stage and where they sit.
Conclusion
While ACs provide a powerful learning and team-building process for EAs, their usefulness is not limited to our context. They can also be used with a wide variety of other people who deliver support to client beneficiaries, for example with groups of agricultural extension workers, health care service providers, and facilitators of market system development programmes.
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Proud to see this being shared more widely. It was indeed a very effective learning approach.