Impact & MLE 101: Populating impact pathways
This post is part of a series on impact planning.
We’re getting a rough idea of what a impact pathway can look like, but we’re missing some details. In this section, we’ll cover some important parts to include.
Using our simple farming technology example from earlier in this series, let’s bring in some more details.
First of all, lets refer to each event (the orange boxes) as an activity. This isn’t an official catch-all term but we’ll use it for now for ease. Notice how each activity has some form of actor associated with it.
Actors are the distinct groups involved in the activities. Our example could be aggregated into actors of, smallholders, households (e.g. farming and non-farming families) and possibly children. Here, we’ve included a simple gender/age lens as well.
In a larger plan, we might also have other actors such as extension agents, agro-dealers, organisations or any other groups who are part of our targeted change and seem appropriate to include.
If we want societal change, we should include key actors from the start of our planning. After all, it is these actors that will influence and experience the intended change.
Yet it’s surprising easy to make impact plans that omit the actors involved, or only include one group — keep an eye out for it and you’ll see it all the time.
Our project is unlikely to affect just one actor, or even one group within that actor category. For example, how does our new technology affect extension workers around farmers? Within ‘farmers’ does it affect men and women differently? As well as our main target groups, it’s important to consider these other actors in relation to the project.
Including all key actors from the start can inform more plausible pathways to impact. It helps us in targeting our impact monitoring. All of this depends on how we understand our actors.
Understanding actors
Actors have ways and reasons of how and why they act. A good impact strategy considers not only who is involved, but the factors that influence their actions.
Earlier in this series, we considered farmers being trained in a technology they couldn’t use, or maybe didn’t even want. When we think of actors, we should consider a few factors that influence our planning. These factors shouldn’t be surprising, but they deserve critical thought.
When we’re planning beneficial change, often the first factor we consider is what enables our target group. This might not always be the best place to start, but we’ll go from here since it’s where many people begin.
What enables beneficial change for our actor group? These are the forces that push towards the change we want. How can we deliver it?
Factors that enable change are usually enabling because they aren’t there all the time, or they don’t reach all groups. If they were around and accessible all the time, the project probably wouldn’t need to happen.
Our earlier logframe example suggested that new knowledge or skills would enable change for smallholder farmers — as we’re providing training to drive change. Another enabling factor might be available capital. So too might be access to technology providers. In our current logframe, activities that would support these latter two factors are missing. Does this matter? Possibly, but it depends on the project and its resources.
As much as we like to focus on what enables change, we should also consider what hinders change. The other side of enabling factors is considering what constrains actors. What about if the new technology is great, but most of the population can’t afford it? Alternatively, are there potential risks from our activities that prevent actors achieving outcomes. For example, what if our technology increases workloads on already busy families, taking time away from feeding children?
Along with both enabling and constraining factors, we will have assumptions and biases. What assumptions are we making in our planning? Are they safe ones to base decisions upon or do they require further investigation? Continuing our example, how much are we assuming that farmers want this technology or do we have we some evidence?
Make a note of these assumptions, enabling, constraining factors for each actor. Compare and critically reflect on how these align with the outcomes you envisage. Does the combination make sense? Are there new aspects you should include? Are there some you can drop? What more information do you need to gain to minimise the risk in your assumptions?
Run through this process for each actor. You could do this alone, or as a workshop exercise or with members of the actors themselves. Doing so will make a much clearer picture of the people populating your pathway to impact. You’ll have a more informed strategy as a result.
Enabling on interdisciplinary partnership
Some of these questions in the last section can be challenging to answer. For example, they might not the answers you want to hear — “farmers would prefer a different technology/project to yours”. The hard truths are difficult to hear but they are the most important to find out up front.
Another challenge might come in the required expertise for the task. You might be a leading biotechnology expert, but the project also needs socio-economic understanding. There’s a nice twist here.
An amazing thing with sharing pathways to impact is that it can unlock interdisciplinary communication. Often projects for social change require expertise from across disciplines, but those same disciplines can seem to speak a different language. This can make for some meeting where everyone is keen but the group can’t quite seem to harmonise or gather momentum.
Instead, you present your impact pathway and detail all the actors. You guide everyone through your logic and the risks along the way. If your diagram is a complex theory of change, take your time going through it.
If you’ve got it right, the response will be a mass critical analysis, constructive arguments and discoveries of missing components. This is ideal. It is a sign that you’ve given a diverse group something that they can become involved with and co-produce. Your planning will be richer and more holistic for it.
Drawing your impact map
To address an elephant in the room, we’re not all designers. The things we draw might not look as polished as the Newton example. This is fine. Hopefully as you’ve seen from some of the examples, the content is the most important part.
However, there will need to be some drafting phases. When you come to these steps, try following ideas (in a group or alone). You could do this on paper, with post-its or online:
- Start with the end in mind. Write down the ultimate impact and let that frame the drafting. Think back to what we mentioned in the first section of this guide.
- Write where you are now and fill some ideas of what happens in the middle.
- Make a list of actors. Add to them if you think of new ones. Link those actors to outputs/outcomes.
- Take a step back. Does it all fit together logically? Think how it fits together conceptually.
- Share this with others — but expect to walk them through it carefully.
Next steps
At this point in this intro guide, you should be able to draft some sort of impact map and populate it with fleshed-out actors. Now you know:
- An introduction to building logframes and theories of change.
- How to populate these types of maps with actors.
- How to frame actors through a lens for change.
- How to pull these bits together into a draft.
Next we ask the question in the next section, how do you use this map to plan impact measurement?
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Featured image by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
