Monthly Archives: March 2013

Guest Post: Daniel Ticehurst with a critical reply on the DCED Standard

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Daniel TicehurstAfter submitting a long comment as a reply to Aly Miehlbradt’s post, I could win Daniel Ticehurst to instead write another guest post. Daniel’s perspective on the DCED Standard nicely contrasts with the one put forward by Aly and I invite you all to contribute with your own experiences to the discussion. This was not originally planned as a debate with multiple guest posts, but we all adapt to changing circumstances, right?

Dear Marcus and Aly, many thanks for the interesting blog posts on monitoring and results measurement, the DCED standard and what it says relating to the recent Synthesis on Monitoring and Measuring changes in market systems.

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Guest Post: Aly Miehlbradt on the DCED Standard and Systemic M&E

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Aly MiehlbradtThis is a guest post by Aly Miehlbradt. Aly is sharing her thoughts and experiences on monitoring and results measurement in market systems development projects. She highlights the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED) Standard for Results Measurement and its inception as a bottom-up process and draws parallels between the Standard, her own experiences, and the recently published Synthesis Paper of the Systemic M&E Initiative.

In one of Marcus’s recent blog posts, he cites the SEEP Value Initiative paper, “Monitoring and Results Measurement in Value Chain Development: 10 Lessons from Experience” (download the paper here), as a good example of a bottom-up perspective that focuses on making results measurement more meaningful for programme managers and staff. Indeed the SEEP Value Initiative was a great learning experience, and is just one example of significant and on-going work among practitioners and donors aimed at improving monitoring and results measurement (MRM) to make it more useful and meaningful. The DCED Results Measurement Standard draws on and embodies much of this work and, also, promotes it. In fact, the lessons in MRM that emerged from the SEEP Value initiative came from applying the principles in the DCED Results Measurement Standard.

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Paradigm shift and the (non) future of schools

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I want to share some of my Sunday reading and listening with you.

First a blog post by Dave Algoso on his blog “Find What Works”: in the article Kuhn, Chambers and the future of international development he talks about paradigm shifts from science to international development. This is interesting as I myself and many around me are saying that a paradigm shift is needed in international development that appreciates the complexities of the environments we work in. Algoso features two posts by Robert Chambers where he sketches out how such a new paradigm could look like (direct links here and here)

Secondly, a TED talk by Sugata Mitra about the future of schools and learning. His basic thesis: “schools as we know them are obsolete”. One quote that particularly struck me, as the language he uses is very much the one we use when talking about development from a complexity perspective:

… we need to look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize, then learning emerges. It’s not about making learning happen. It’s about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens.

Watch it yourself, it’s about 20 minutes:

Train your gut feeling through continuous learning!

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Complex situations resist our analytical capacities, they are unpredictable. In these situations, we cannot base our decisions on data. Hence, our decisions often based on intuition, gut feeling, and rules of thumb. Through continuous learning, we can train our intuition and become better equipped to manage our projects in complex environments. Continue reading →