“To a historian, the fall of Rome may look like an obvious event in global history. To a peasant in Spain, it may have barely been perceptible.” — Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse
Hi, I’m Scott Chaplowe, an evaluation specialist and co-editor of an IEAc special issue of JMDE on Evaluation and the Transformational Imperative. This post is about why we think evaluation’s competencies need to change in response to ongoing collapse.
Hot Tip #1: Evaluation Wasn’t Built for Collapse
Some call this the century of polycrisis — converging crises in ecological degradation, inequality, political instability, and technological disruption, outpacing our ability to adapt. I’d argue the more honest word is collapse: the threshold that breaks the systems sustaining business-as-usual, and ultimately, life as we know it.
Evaluation was built for stable systems, and we no longer have those. Thomas Schwandt calls this “post-normal evaluation.” Business-as-usual isn’t equipped for the complexity and uncertainty, and instead risks reinforcing the contradiction we’re living in.
Hot Tip #2: Collapse Is Already Underway
Collapse isn’t something to prepare for: it’s happening now, if you believe the science. What unfolds over a human lifetime — a generation, maybe two — barely registers on geological time, and to the planet, it’s a blink. For a sobering, rigorously researched account, I recommend Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, which argues that civilizations built on centralized wealth and power carry the seeds of their own undoing.
This may sound like doom and gloom, and I understand wanting to look away. Joanna Macy’s work on psychological denial names that instinct precisely: a subconscious defense mechanism blocking out overwhelming signals about the state of the world. It leads to what she calls a double life — living as though nothing has changed while knowing everything has.
Evaluation can’t afford that double life. Our job is to look clearly at what’s happening and help others do the same, which means our competencies have to catch.
Lesson Learned #1: Values Come Before Methods
Drafting “Rethinking Evaluation Competencies for the Transformational Imperative” for the forthcoming JMDE issue, we started by examining existing competency frameworks — valuable, but largely values-neutral: technically sound checklists that can serve any purpose, including preserving business-as-usual. We wanted competencies that name a direction, not just a skill set.
That’s why Transformational Values Alignment leads our eleven competencies: recognizing the urgency of the polycrisis and acting at the magnitude, direction, and speed it demands — not the neutral, arms-length posture evaluators are conventionally taught. Michael Quinn Patton’s Skin in the Game and Andy Rowe’s All Hands on Deck point the same direction: evaluators have a stake in the transformation ahead.
Lesson Learned #2: Competencies Extend Beyond Evaluators
We chose evaluation competencies over evaluator competencies deliberately: those who commission, manage, and use evaluation shape real change as much as those who conduct it. Limiting the conversation to evaluators alone leaves out most of the system.
Lesson Learned #3: Positionality
I’ll close by practicing a piece of self-awareness the article itself calls for: positionality — how power, privilege, and lived experience shape what we notice. Naming collapse, and calling for evaluation to change, is easier from positions of relative safety. I write this as a white man from the “developed” North, aware the disruption already landing hardest — jobs, displacement, instability — falls unevenly, and shapes this piece as much as anything I’ve cited. Positionality isn’t a caveat to move past; it’s part of the competency itself. If evaluation is to earn its stake in what comes next, that reckoning has to be ongoing — including here.
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