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Synthesis of the discussion so far. Experiential knowledge and staff observations (1).
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Experiential knowledge and staff observations (1) • Monitoring a rural seed fair: # of attendees; Value of goods sold; Participant feedback; Observation of field co. of huddle of farmers talking about skit;farmers crowding around reps of seed supplier; text from suppliers about future events. • Monitoring local dairy cooperative: Quality & volume of milk; membership rates of cooperative; observation of relationships of cooperative leader with community; attitudes of cooperative members
Value of experiential knowledge and staff observations (2) • The informal knowledge from observation is only a snapshot but carries information about attitudes, trust, relationships of market actors (S.K. Gurunathan – CARE) • Nuggets capture leading outcomes suggesting what is going well and should be built on, what is not going well and should be improved; (C. Duncan – EWB) • This knowledge is collected, communicated and used to user action quickly. • Telling us about sustainability of systemic changes that are founded on behaviour changes. Contributing to evidence about sustainability of intervention; (E. Islam – CARE) • Helping us to untangle the attribution of behaviour changes. (E. Islam - CARE; C. Duncan – EWB)
Information for different users and different uses • Monitoring and evaluation should be multi-purpose: • Serving different users with • Different types of information (content and characteristics) for • Different purposes • This is the case for informal information, e.g. (S. Taylor – IDE): • Useful to complement quantitative data to untangle causality in analysis for longer-term learning • Useful to feed managers quickly to inform adaptive decision-making
What managers want – content Typical content: • Attitudes, confidence, prejudices, trust, relationships • Proxying for incentives and anticipating behaviour change, within a framework of the goal and pathway towards it
What managers want – characteristics • Ease of Access • Timeliness • Documented in some form (S. Taylor – IDE) • Quick: daily, weekly or monthly • Very specific to field activities • With information user in mind • Ideally in person, next best by phone (C. Duncan – EWB)
A tension: open spaces and direction • A culture of sharing and learning (G. N – CARE) • Open mind; • Curiosity; • Attitude of questioning assumptions • Flexibility • Some direction needed to organise information flow and build that culture (S. Taylor – IDE; A. Morcrette – PA) • More on this later
Incentives to make EK&SO work better (1) • Tension between ‘getting the job done’ and learning is passed down from donor to manager to staff: work with donors to be more learning oriented (RC – ACDI/VOCA) • Changing program office culture away from directed management with incentives for learning: • Learning deliverables in job description and part of performance review • Rewarding learning with exposure internally and externally (RC – ACDI/VOCA)
Incentives to make EK&SO work better (2) • Shaking up the established culture • Hiring staff from less traditional backgrounds (RC – ACDI/VOCA) • Nurturing a learning culture • Strong, flattened feedbacks between managers and field staff (CD – EWB)) • Integrated into day-to-day work (facilitation) (CD – EWB))
Capacity building to make EK&SO work better • ‘Bright spots’ and ‘ninjas’ (S. Taylor – IDE) • Getting staff to shadow experienced or successful colleagues and through mentoring make their implicit methods explicit • Embed observational practices into facilitation capacity building • False distinction between informal monitoring, observational knowledge management and facilitation (C. Pennotti – CARE, A. Morcrette – PA)
