Setting strategy, and sticking to it, can be an arduous climb. Done successfully, it's remarkably satisfying.

The key is having the right tools and knowing how to get the most out of them. In the same vein as rope, ladders, pitons, and gloves are indispensable climbers' tools, logic models are an important tool for both planning and evaluation in the non-profit and social service sectors.

Over the years we have seen examples of strong models being implemented in the strategy and evaluation efforts of different organizations. When they work, program outcomes are enhanced. But we have also seen our share of situations where logic models were treated as some kind of add-on activity to ‘regular’ program or project management. The logic models in these cases were mainly used to construct a graphical depiction of a team’s wishful thinking. In such cases the models were not been anything more than just a piece of presentation material with no impact on strategy.

Starting here, and in four future posts, we’ll lay out some tips that can augment the success of your logic modeling. Should you choose to use some of the excellent material available on the web that can guide you in using the building blocks of logic models (such as 10 Great Resources for Creating a Theory of Change from the Philanthropy411 Blog), our hope is that these tips will enhance the process.

Tip 1. In designing your logic model, remember that it’s a process and it should involve people.

We’ve seen too many examples of attractively designed models that, in the end, pursue goals that were neither necessary nor achievable. Often was the case that the designers focused on the diagram itself, and the different techniques and formulas to draw and construct logic models, instead of looking at the process around building the logic model.

To leverage the strengths that logic models can provide, it is crucial to predicate the design on the input of stakeholders with field-expertise who you involve in uncovering the root causes to problems you seek to solve. In a pluralistic fashion, the stakeholders should help you depict the landscape for the initiative (more on this in Tip 2) in such a way that a program team can target relevant, valid causes to a problem.

Also, include measurement and evaluation in the people-process right away. Involve key people who are inextricably linked to the success of the project you are modeling. For instance, if you have a project to build the capacity of teachers, invite teachers into the logic modeling process to discuss inputs and indicators.

Because designing a logic model is a process, never treat it as a “one and done.” Don’t be trapped by false pressures to develop the best, perfect model in one fell swoop. Because good logic models are derived from good processes, take the time to draw several, to think through different scenarios with your stakeholders, and assess the potential impacts of the different versions. (More on this in the forthcoming tips.)

Next tip: Depicting the landscape to strengthen your logic model

The other week I sat down to read through a newly released Swedish regional development strategy. It described how, with a couple of inputs here and a few activities there, enhanced regional growth and competitiveness will occur in Sweden. It contained a SWOT analysis and plans for a mid-term and final summative evaluation. Weighing in at 83 pages, appendices and all, it was ambitious, elaborate and contained everything needed to describe the strategy in total.

One of the appendices included a series of logic models depicting how the ultimate goals would be achieved. For sure, logic models are becoming ever more common in plans like these. Nonetheless, Even one can’t help but be somewhat impressed that logic modeling has become a widely adopted graphical concept in a relatively short time.

“You’ve Got Your Shit Together!”

That’s what I overheard a program evaluator say at an annual meeting of the American Evaluation Association, as he set his gaze on an impressive logic model my colleague had on display in a poster session. And that’s probably what he would say if he saw the logic models in the regional strategy I’ve been reading. My colleague’s diagram at the AEA conference, and the diagrams in the regional strategic plan undeniably leave an impression of control, mental activity and ambition.

Would that gentleman have been right? Do you have your “shit together” when you can depict something visually? Not necessarily. There is a big difference between visual productions and visual thinking, or what I would call design thinking.

What We Tend to See

Within society development[1] and philanthropy, when we see logic models and other graphical depictions of program theory, what we’re seeing are examples of what I’d call visual productions. As a field, I believe we are still waiting for a breakthrough to visual thinking. Visual productions are created as add-ons to the regular operations and processes of an organization, and usually done after most planning is complete (planning which, by the way, generally occurs through a traditional linear process).

Many times a project plan is developed even before an optimal design can be created. As such, the beneficial forces of visual and design thinking are not capitalized upon, increasing the risk that weaknesses, problems or inconsistencies from the traditional linear and textual thinking will enter into to project plans. In using visual productions in such a way (as to merely repurpose and illustrate a linearly-derived plan) one merely creates a window dressing that makes the plan more appear explicit and look convincing. This visual makes it look like you have your “shit together.”

I would like to see a new position developed within nonprofit agencies and philanthropy: That of impact designer.

Impact Designers Would Be Visual Thinkers

An impact designer in the nonprofit or philanthropic sector would utilize all the skills and talents of their own disciplinary background and employ the best practices in visual and design thinking to develop better, more robust, more impactful programs. They would grasp onto early works, like Rudolf Arnheim’s “Visual Thinking” (from 1969), which talks about how “the visual medium is so enormously superior because it offers structural equivalents to all characteristics of objects, events, relations.” Arnheim argues that polydimensional space is perfect for theoretical reasoning. I’ve heard someone say that visual production is the tip of the iceberg while the rest is visual thinking. What a great way to put it.

I believe that three things are needed to achieve a breakthrough in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors before visual and design thinking can become prevalent.

1. Role shift

2. Reframing of economic realities

3. Better tools

If I were to write a “help wanted” ad for an impact designer, this is what it would say:

IDEO founder, David Kelly, said in an interview (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/a-designer-takes-on-his-biggest-challenge-ever.html) that by applying the competence of design thinking, his group is able to come up with solutions that nobody has come up with before.

My hope is that we can do the same in our sector.

During the last decade the partnership model has really advanced and become central to activities in all sorts of fields. The interagency and public-private nature of broad partnerships naturally provides benefits for implementation of anything from health initiatives to local and regional growth initiatives.

For many years we have been coaching partnerships dealing with rural development and we believe the partnership model will spread even more in existing and into new fields. Successful partnerships obviously open up opportunities that no single actor can accomplish. Below, we mention a couple of the key factors for success.

When reading these tips we would like you to bear in mind one risk with broad partnerships that rarely is acknowledged; while a partnership gets strong through a broad base of key stakeholders the output from the partnership work may turn out to be the “least common denominator”. In critical situations or situations that require very forward-looking, innovative and/or unconventional solutions, a least common denominator might not be enough. In those cases strategic and dedicated interventions may be needed to advance the cause. But more on that in a later post.

The following tips are general for most kind of partnerships and are based on our coaching and evaluation of partnerships.

1. Pinpoint and make explicit the real needs the partnership potentially could address and harmonize every stakeholder’s expectations against those. A shared perspective on the underlying rationales for potential collaboration items is fundamental for a successful partnership.
2. Make sure to implement a process that makes everyone’s voice heard on equal terms. Very often an informal power structure creates an imbalance already from start in a partnership. The first measure for success is to establish a neutral forum.
3. Pinpoint and aim for outcomes that lie close and are concrete. Unite your efforts first around achievable short term outcomes that help the learning and partnership to grow before aiming at long term outcomes or visions. Aiming for concrete short term results is a god way to get the dogs to learn how to pull the sled in the same direction.
4. Make explicit how every stakeholders’ unique strengths contribute to the achievement of the outcomes agreed upon. Being explicit about the assumption on how a program expects to work increases the chance for success.
5. Involve the partnership immediately in evaluation planning and engage stakeholders continuously in the learning process as well as data collection if possible. Reflect collectively on outcomes relative expectations and aims. The shared learning is the biggest boost for enhanced success.

A challenge for every organization and its leaders is maintaining a heightened sense of situational awareness that’s necessary to leverage different strands of your operations at the right time to create tangible impacts.

For some time OpenEye has been crafting a collaborative working arrangement with Googol, a business development firm whose expertise involves enhancing the innovation capacity and innovation value chains within commercial enterprises. Since “social innovation” is a key term in our approach to creating impact within society, Googol and OpenEye have found many opportunities for mutual learning. Together we hope to leverage best practices on innovation strategies within the commercial sector to enhance governmental and non-profit impact, and vice versa.

For example, Googol has developed a tool called the Innovation Capacity Indicator. This tool provides organizations with an efficient and structured approach to diagnosing a business’ capacity for innovation.  Analyses conducted via this indicator can reveal where opportunities lie to enhance an organization’s innovation capacity and value chain.

Observing Googol’s tool in its business context has inspired us to develop something that could measure a program’s or project’s capacity to create impact within society.  Because we believe that social innovation is a craft, we also believe that something we call Impact Capacity can be systematically enhanced.

To take these ideas further we’d like to get in touch with anyone who would want to help us develop and test an Impact Capacity tool in their program, project or organization. Want to collaborate in a no-cost pilot? Such collaboration will drive many interesting discussions and exchanges of experience.

Stewart I. Donaldson is one of the leading figures in the area of theory-driven evaluation. In this book from 2007 he presents several interesting cases where program theory has been used. The reason for this is that Donaldson believes that there is a need for more literature and cases around this mature theory. We definitely agree and hope that this book will contribute to have society developers, strategists and others to read about how this approach effectively empowers development projects.
We recommend the book and would also like to point out two things that Donaldson mentions in his book

Program theory has evolved and been widely accepted to become a strategic tool, not only as a standalone theory but as an integral part of many modern and popular evaluation and strategy practices. We constantly try to push the approach to become a fundamental component for the strategy work of an initiative. We hope more and more developers understand the strengths of doing so.

Donaldson points out how hard it is to involve necessary stakeholders in the process. we have experience of that too, but our recommendation is to talk about this work as the strategic tool rather than evaluation. Evaluation rarely gets enough attention in the beginning by stakeholders, so try to change the way you talk about the process in order to have them set aside necessary time to participate. We have been very successful with this, managing to get groups together even when stakeholders have been spread out all over the country.

Read, reflect and continue the exchange of experience with us.

This book is a very interesting reflection on why so many well-intended aid efforts to do good still fall short. The author, William Easterly, is a development economist who has been involved in global poverty issues for his whole professional life. He is a professor of economics at New York University and amongst many positions around the world he has been a senior research economist at the World Bank for more than 16 years. The main question he raises (and tries to answer) is why, after more than fifty years and $2.3 trillion in aid to the "have nots", there is so shockingly little to show for it.
There are of course several explanations, but Easterly specifically points to one key reason. It is the simple difference between being a planner and a searcher. In brief, Easterly says that a planner thinks he already knows the answers; a planner thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answers will solve. A searcher admits he doesn’t know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors. A searcher hopes to find answers to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation.
This rhymes completely with our mission to provide mechanisms for reaching tangible outcomes in civil society and development efforts. The need for a new approach to solving poverty goes for most issues we address in development and philanthropic initiatives. To create any institutional or societal change we normally face a set of factors that are interrelated in such a way that is very unlikely to be successful with a one, or even two, effort hit. And even when one starts to finally understand some of the relations between inputs and outcomes, they often fluctuate and change over time. This begs the need for a strategic learning component – or trial and error experimentation as Easterly describes it. We usually say that to become the kind of searcher that Easterly would like to see more of, we need society developers, in both grantee and grant maker roles, to see themselves as innovators. We want to help society developers to become innovators and act accordingly: to set focus on the actual issue and not inputs, and learn more and more about that issue as milestones are gradually reached and tangible outcomes are achieved. This is not rocket science, but it does require a certain mindset and some simple, but powerful, tools.
If you are interested learning more about the quest for achieving tangible outcomes in complex global development initiatives, White Man's Burden is healthy, inspiring (and at times a bit grim) reading. It's helped our thinking on how to better support our partners.