Principles for managing in complexity
Written by Toby Lowe and Shaheen Warren (Centre for Public Impact) and Sam Sharp (Overseas Development Institute), with input from Jamie Pett and Emma Proud
A short summary….
Many of FCDO’s outcomes are the products of complex systems — they are not delivered by activities or programmes alone. So how can understanding complexity and working in a way that supports learning and adapting improve our outcomes?
Driven by accountability for learning, some FCDO adaptive programmes have created a virtuous cycle of learning together, building trust and creating autonomy. Within FCDO, the people leading programmes have played a critical role in enabling learning, and using that learning to improve outcomes.
Adaptive management works best when it is not trapped inside a New Public Management framework (where focus is on Markets, Managers, Metrics) which can create perverse incentives and encourage gaming. Other governments, for example in Finland and Plymouth, have successfully moved beyond an NPM approach.
To normalise adaptive approaches in the new department, FCDO leadership and processes need to support, enable and protect space for learning and adapting.
Recommendations include: a devolved organisational structure enabling decisions to be taken closest to where the information is; encouraging staff to recognise and act on complexity; build funding, contractual and results frameworks around learning; and allocate adequate resources for management, relationship building and learning.
Our starting point
Outcomes are the emergent properties of complex systems. Outcomes aren’t “delivered” by programmes or organisations.
As you can see in this systems map showing the factors involved in obesity, healthcare programmes cannot make a dent on the outcome ‘reduce obesity’ alone.
So, if we want to create real-world positive outcomes, we need to understand how they are produced by complex systems. Complexity describes the fundamental processes that lead to the outcomes we care about. As illustrated in the diagram, any social outcome is the product of hundreds of factors working together. We notice how only four of the 108 factors which go to make up the outcome of obesity are directly related to public service delivery.
Four characteristics of how complex systems behave relevant to how outcomes are made:
- Compositional complexity: Hundreds of different factors, all interdependent, produce an outcome — such as obesity. See the diagram above.
- Experiential complexity: An outcome is produced with, and experienced differently by, each person. For example, obesity means a different thing to each person. One person’s ideal weight is different to their neighbours. This means that when managers seek to use standardised measures, such as Body Mass Index, to set targets, it results in individuals receiving treatment that is inappropriate for them.
- Dynamic complexity: The factors that produce outcomes, how they relate to each other, and how outcomes are experienced are changing all the time, in unpredictable ways. For example, factors associated with depression that lead someone to be obese might be different in winter than in summer.
- Governance complexity: No one can control all the elements/actors in the system that produce an outcome. For example, there is no person or organisation that can control all of the factors that contribute to obesity.
Complexity requires us to work in a different way. This way of working demands that:
- We are able to respond to variety — It requires managers to respond to the specific contexts of each programme or initiative.
- We are able to respond to change and adapt effectively — acknowledging that the context in which interventions are undertaken constantly changes.
- We are able to shape and influence systems — whose behaviours can’t be reliably predicted and which no-one controls.
This new framing creates challenges for the way things are currently done. New Public Management (NPM) has traditionally focused on making the job of public service turning objectives into metrics (where focus is on Markets, Managers, Metrics). NPM does not work in complex environments: it can create gaming, perverse incentives and makes the job of public service and social interventions harder.
By embracing the complexity of the real world, we can enable a paradigm shift in how public management is undertaken.
How are some FCDO programmes responding to this complexity in their design and management?
From the research we have undertaken with two FCDO programmes (Global Partnerships Initiative and MUVA), we have seen that the way they are designed and managed creates this virtuous cycle:
Learning Together
The primary job of those leading adaptive programmes and portfolios is to create and sustain learning environments in which different actors in the system collect relevant data, share experiences and collectively make sense of what has been happening.
Learning is framed in respect of high level purpose, understood and interpreted through the ever-changing real-life experiences of those the work exists to serve or influence. Learning is not constrained by predetermined log frames nor by thin abstractions of people into data points.
Learning is necessarily rich and contextual. Within the FCDO programmes we explored there is a clear emphasis on experimentation, testing and learning as an integral part of the public management process. This contributes to a wider meta-strategy for learning.
Learning is valued in its own right as an emergent outcome/property of the system. Individual programmes brought learning to the strategic level through specific practices such as “strategy testing”. Programme teams created more room for manoeuvre and autonomy by demonstrating that they were applying learning to improve what a programme was doing.
Building Trust
The process of learning together, with tools and processes which encourage and enable empathy to be built between all the actors involved, creates trust to work towards the achievement of a shared purpose. Trust becomes a key asset of the system — which is to be nurtured through all management decision-making, through openness and transparency.
In managing with humanity, it becomes critical to understand individuals as fully rounded human beings and invest in relationships at all levels — this moves the focus from reporting to participation. The FCDO programmes in our case studies used participatory learning strategies to purposefully build empathy between different actors. For example, celebration ceremonies created space for acknowledgement. A remarkable effort was put to build and maintain trusted relationships and spaces, it was seen as a key asset to these programmes and enabled adaptation to happen organically.
Creating Autonomy
Relationships built on trust enable autonomy for those working on the ground; they are trusted to respond to the ever-changing strengths and needs of the people they serve and the contexts in which they work. Autonomy is consistently earnt through teams displaying the characteristics that made them trustworthy, and by maintaining the relationships that nurture this trust. This has led to an emphasis on switching the role of management from control to learning — with a wide range of examples from the programmes of how this is achieved.
Enabling Adaptation
Autonomy for teams working on the ground enables them to adapt their work to the constantly changing environment in which they find themselves. This adaptation is guided and governed as a constant learning process — in which each encounter and action is a learning opportunity. Adaptation is more than being responsive to changing contexts but an intentional approach to test, learn and adapt to this learning. This requires a rigorous process of continual action research.
It is this process of continual action research which provides the material for learning together. There is extensive use of methods which enabled actors in a system to see and understand it as a system — exploring systems from the perspective of both actors and factors.
When learning tools are applied at all levels of the system they create empathetic and autonomous learning environments. The role of the person leading a programme becomes one of a “connector” — broker within the wider system of influence of the programme. We saw two types of systems working:
- in the system (e.g. we will create new opportunities for female empowerment);
- on the system (e.g. we will build trust between actors in the system and enable them to learn together).
Governance: Accountability for learning
At the heart of this virtuous cycle is a governance process which creates the conditions for learning across the systems of interest for each programme, and which holds actors accountable for their actions in enabling learning and adaptation to meet the programme’s purpose. Governance therefore acts as a mechanism to drive this virtuous learning cycle.
Within the FCDO programmes, this was demonstrated through Monitoring and Evaluation teams, who had previously been seen as agents of accountability, transforming their engagement into learning experiences. There was a concerted effort to build a Positive Error Culture.
Programmes are exploring what it means to “scale” in a way which acknowledges the complex and diverse environments in which these programmes take place. Early signs suggest an emphasis on scaling learning infrastructure — in other words, scaling the learning processes rather than scaling what they learnt.
Within FCDO, the role of those leading programmes is critical. When those leading programmes understand their role as enabling learning, programmes work.
Within programmes, the FCDO people leading programmes were effectively seeking to create learning systems. They acted as a systems connector, with emphasis on brokering activities and learning of the programmes they’re responsible for and connecting different levels of interest. This in turn created better learning between all actors and indeed, across FCDO programmes.
In this context, the person leading the programme is helping to signal a shift in purpose of adaptive programmes — not as a producer of outcomes, but rather as championing learning so that outcomes are seen as the product of complex systems.
The potential of adaptive programmes is limited by New Public Management
Within FCDO, adaptive management approaches have often been seen as the remit of discrete ‘adaptive’ programmes which sit outside ‘traditional’ programme design and management. They are to be deployed where development encounters ‘wicked problems’.
From research we have undertaken, we have learnt that:
- Virtually all desirable development outcomes are complex.
- Adaptive management practices are hampered by trying to fit them within “New Public Management” (NPM) approaches (which are based on assumptions that the world behaves in simple, linear ways).
- Within adaptive programmes, people have used Trojan Horse strategies (using the familiar tools of NPM — such as KPIs and log frames — but in adaptive ways) to help move managers toward adaptive practices.
- However, these Trojan Horse strategies have limitations.
A key conclusion from our research is that adaptive management succeeds best when not trapped within a New Public Management framework — because the two are essentially incompatible.
So the key question is: How can you help adaptive management to escape from the NPM frame?
Escaping NPM — lessons from other (parts of) Governments
We have seen examples of other Governments escaping the NPM approach.
Finnish Ministry of Education — Innovation Centre
For the past three years, the Finnish Ministry of Education has developed an Innovation Centre whose sole purpose is to support local places to experiment and develop on-going learning practices. They are moving away from the traditional idea that the role of central Government is to control the behaviour and practices of public service, and instead are moving to a position in which the role of central Government is to support decentralised learning.
NHS — Plymouth Alliance
The NHS and Plymouth City Council have developed a systems approach to meeting the complex needs of adults who have experienced complex problems such as homelessness, substance misuse and mental health problems. They moved from commissioning 29 separate services to a single £80m alliance contract for a whole system response. The alliance contract contains no KPIs or other targets. Instead, the partners have developed a shared governance model based on mutual accountability for learning.
Diagram: How can following an adaptive approach lead to better value for money?
Recommendations
To normalise adaptive approaches in the new department, FCDO leadership and processes need to support, enable and protect space for these ways of working. This involves creating a set of job roles, contracting and governance practice and management culture which optimises for learning rather than seeking centralised control.
A review of how public organisations across a range of sectors and contexts have promoted adaptive and learning practice, leads to a number of recommendations for FCDO:
A devolved organisation structure is best for effective adaptation. A devolved structure supports greater understanding of the dynamics in a given setting; more direct interaction with citizens; and more opportunity to adapt policies to context. Central FCDO should set policy priorities and boundaries, while allowing devolved units the space to improvise within this steer, test approaches, and tailor policies to context. Central processes should be set up to capture and share learning from devolved units across the organisation.
Delegating authority to frontline staff to use their judgement is a more effective approach to aid delivery than relying on tight controls and pre-set, measurable targets from the centre. Indicators can be useful in supporting effective learning processes. However, as soon as indicators become targets, they create drivers for gaming, and lose their effectiveness. Indicators need to be used with clear recognition at all levels that a few indicators will not tell the whole story of a complex change process.
FCDO should continue to develop and empower those leading portfolios and programmes, seeing them as the key point of change. FCDO should also highly value people with in-country expertise and experience, who are more likely to have the context-specific soft skills necessary to build trust.
Leadership should signal that learning and adaptation is the normal expected way of working for programmes and initiatives that address complex systems. Encourage staff to grapple with the uncertainty and complexity of development and foreign policy challenges. Furthermore,, within bounds, encourage staff to experiment and learn about how best to address these.
Build programme funding and contractual frameworks around learning. A variety of modalities are suitable for this including grants and core funding that allow important flexibility, as well as negotiated approaches that allow more co-design with partners. Funding modalities should support working with the intrinsic motivation of implementing partners.
Results frameworks should incentivise effective adaptation without constricting the space for programmes to learn and adapt. Frameworks should signal that learning and adaptation are the purpose of programmes, and structure this adaptation, including through the use of metrics that report on learning, as well as utilising more narrative forms of accountability on a programme’s contribution to systemic change.
Working in more adaptive and learning orientated ways requires greater hands-on management, learning and relationship-building time. This needs to be accounted for and treated as a key input into the success of a programme, not something to be minimised for better value for money.
For further information see:
Human Learning Systems resources (https://www.humanlearning.systems/resources/)
LearnAdapt (2018) Learning from adaptive programmes: 10 lessons and 10 case studies. Internal FCDO document — available on request.
Laws, E. (2020) Rethinking value for money for adaptive, politically smart programmes: lessons from Institutions for Inclusive Development in Tanzania. London: ODI (www.odi.org/ publications/16730-lessons-institutions-inclusive-development-tanzania).
Sharp, S. (2020) ‘Working Adaptively in Government: An Options Paper for FCDO’. Internal FCDO document — available on request.
Sharp, S., Valters, C. and Whitty, B. (2019) ‘How DFID can better manage complexity in development programming’. Briefing note. London: ODI (www.odi.org/publications/11315-how-dfid-can- better-manage-complexity-development-programming).
