Reimagining IMAGINE

Learning from Humiliation, Shame, and Failure

Inspired by his recent blog post on From Poverty to Power, Duncan Green reflects on why it's important to learn from failure, and some of his own failure stories. "Think before you jump", and "be a reflectivist as well as an activist" are some of his key pieces of advice to people working in the sector. He's got stories about playing chess from the management bunker, evidence-based humility, and How Change Happens, the second edition paperback and Open Access that's coming out starting from August 16.

Want to hear more stories from Duncan and the change makers he works with? Listen to his podcast: GELI Stories podcasts

A Fearless Climate

"I wish I had known that my biggest source of learning would be my field colleagues. ...I believed in textbooks." Dr. Muhammad Musa reflects on 41 years of work in international development. His two biggest lessons are: learn from your frontline staff, and tell stories with impact. Some lessons he learned in the decades are to build a fearless climate--a climate of trust, where staff at all levels can learn from failure, and can take time to reflect. He also notes that moving from a project to a movement--one that changes a system--is the best way to create change. Technical solutions are not the only (or even the best) way to get the job done.

Transforming Lives Amidst Growing Security Challenges in Mali

The Feed the Future Mali Sugu Yiriwa operates in the Delta Zone of Mali, aiming to strengthen the resilience of farming and business communities through market-driven, inclusive, nutrition-sensitive, and agriculture-driven economic growth. However, the complex nature of Mali’s political situation poses significant challenges to program implementation and participant outreach. In this episode of the Failing Forward Podcast, Laurore Antoine, Chief of Party for Sugu Yiriwa, shares valuable insights into how adaptive leadership, collaboration with local grassroots organizations, and strategic use of digital solutions, among other adaptive management approaches, have been instrumental in achieving program goals and positively impacting lives in Mali.

Have I Solved the Problem: why innovation labs fail

Christabell Makokha talks about always anchoring innovation to the success metric: have I solved the problem? Instead of focusing on the process, focus on the problem, and whether or not people's lives are getting better. She reflects on why innovation labs fail (inspired by this article from ICTworks). What's going wrong?

1. We define innovation as "the next new thing" rather than leveraging creative problem solving.
2. We struggle to find the balance between stand-alone innovation work and innovation integrated with existing programming
3. We measure the wrong things--too much process measurement, and not enough problem-solving.
4. Our risk appetite is too low, and our timelines are too short.

Moving from publication to action

You’ve done the desk literature reviews, collected and conducted field studies, crafted and deployed surveys, analyzed the data, written up the results, and released your study findings. Is it having any real influence or impact? How do you know? Laura Kim and Michelle LeMeur of the Canopy Lab wrestled with these questions when they attempted to trace uptake by stakeholders of their studies on COVID-19 and the international development workforce: https://www.marketlinks.org/blogs/beyond-downloads-views-and-likes-how-do-you-know-your-research-having-impact