This blog post was originally published on the Website of CGAP, an independent policy and research center dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor. The Blog post was part of the Systemic M&E initiative I worked on for the SEEP Network.

There is a controversy brewing among systems and complexity thinkers. Is it useful to define a future goal towards which our initiatives strive? Or is it wiser instead to focus our attention on what we know we can change and trust that this will eventually lead us to a future that is better than any we could have anticipated? While the first feels intuitively right to many development practitioners, proponents of the latter argue that the absence of defined goals and targets may lead to future possibilities that are more sustainable and resilient (and that could not be fully anticipated). So the question is: can we know in advance what the best (or a good) outcome will be? Continue reading →