Tag Archives: innovation

Why outcome-based performance management doesn’t work: podcast with Dr Toby Lowe

Last week we published the 7th episode of the Systemic Insight podcast (get it from Libsyn or Apple Podcast or you can also find it on Spotify). It features Dr Toby Lowe of Northumbria University and his work on why outcome-based performance management doesn’t work – and what to do instead. In this blog post, I’m sharing some quotes from Toby and some insights I took from the conversation.

The discussion in the podcast touches upon why outcome targets distort rather than enhance performance, why they lead to gaming becoming a rational strategy, and what the alternatives are for people who work in complex contexts. As outcome-based performance management is still the prevalent method to manage the performance in many fields, this discussion is highly relevant and pertinent.

This episode is packed with ideas and quite challenging thoughts! In this blog post I am bringing together a number of quotes from Toby and some comments from my side.

Continue reading

How can we link individual actions, organisational change and societal transitions?

Can we as individuals change anything about climate change, given that we are so strongly entangled in a social-economic system that it sometimes feels we don’t have any free will whatsoever? I ask myself this question very often. Can organisations change things? I recently listened to a radio programme where environmental activists demanded that car manufacturers stop building large SUV cars. But why should they if the market (read: individuals) is still demanding these cars and it is legal for the manufacturers to produce them? How is change happening on the level of whole societies? Where are sustainability transitions happening? On the level of the individual, organisations or society? When reading up on sustainability transitions, there are discussions going on on all these different levels. There is the ‘macro’ level discussion that talks about transition dynamics on a societal level – this includes for example the move to non-fossil production of electricity or electric cars. Then, there is the level of discussion about changes on community and organisational level or on the level of social movements – where groups of people come together to change things or demand things, like the Fridays for the Future movement. Thirdly,  there is the level of the individual with discussions on how to live a meaningful life in an era of transition or how to become a ’systems leader’. When I read through these different bodies of literature, I feel that the discussions on these different levels are often disconnected and sometimes seem unaware of each other. Sometimes they even seem inconsistent in their arguments or suggested strategies, even though they supposedly follow the same purpose to foster a transition towards a more sustainable society. What can we do to better link the different levels and to become more coherent in our strategy to change systems?

Continue reading

Advancing my systems change typology: considering scaling out, up and deep

Recently I started a series on the development of a typology of systems change (the two previous articles are here and here). In this post, I want to introduce the concepts of ‘scaling out’, ‘scaling up’ and ‘scaling deep’ developed by scholars of social innovation. I want to link these concepts to my earlier thinking around the systems change typology and update it based on the new insights from this literature. At the end I will also voice a little critique on innovation-focused approaches to systems change.

‘Scaling out’ refers to the most common way of attempting to getting to scale with an innovation: reaching greater numbers by replication and dissemination. ‘Scaling up’ refers to the attempt to change institutions at the level of policy, rules and laws. Finally, ‘scaling deep’ refers to changing relationships, cultural values and beliefs.

Continue reading

Blog-Posts I liked

Here some blog posts I’ve read recently and liked. You’ll find the links to the blogs also in my blogroll on the right.

Back to output-only reporting? Duncan Green is writing on results measurement: Can we demonstrate effectiveness without bankrupting our NGO and/or becoming a randomista?

A post also related to measuring results of development interventions by Ben Ramalingam, which dates back a bit longer: Results 2.0: Towards a portfolio-based approach

And here a controversal post by Owen Barder where he argues that it is not measuring the results that is the real problem, but the overambitious goals that we are setting for our aid initiatives, i.e., that our aid money should lead to long-term economic growth: MEASURING AID EFFECTIVENESS EFFECTIVELY: BEING CLEAR ABOUT OBJECTIVES

On another topic: Shawn Cunningham has posted a whole series on innovation systems that is definitely worth reading for anyone working in private sector and local economic development:

Always good for a laugh: xkcd on file transfers

And last but not least an older post by Duncan Green on using games for learning and improved decision-making in complex systems using evolutionary principles: Playing games with the climate – a great way to explore difficult choices in complex systems