influence

The Influence and Power of Evaluation

I had the opportunity to participate in an exciting panel discussion at the recent Canadian Evaluation Society conference in Montreal, which focused on the influence and power of evaluation to build a better world.

Patience and persistence are necessary virtues for evaluators as evidence based change usually takes time to deliver.

Regular readers of this blog know how passionate I am about influencing change. We do not undertake evaluations solely to establish a track record of what happened - we also want to help people and organizations understand how and why things came about, so they can learn from experience to improve future results and performance.

As with development practitioners, evaluators frequently ask themselves: are we making a difference and if we are, in what way? 

In my more than 25 years of practice I’ve found that these questions can be addressed by embedding influence throughout the process: from choosing what to evaluate, how to design and undertake the evaluation, to outreach and follow-up.

Making strategic choices

Fifteen years ago, the global community came together and, in the form of the Millennium Development Goals, made some big commitments to fight poverty, setting a target date of 2015 for their completion.  Now, 15 years later, we are seeing celebrations of success, recognition of shortfalls, and renewed efforts to galvanize global commitments around the shared goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. It is, in short, the pursuit of a more equitable society.

Do you want your evaluation to have influence? Then you need to know your stakeholders - what motivates them and how best to reach them.

As evaluators, we frequently need to understand inherent biases and what is at stake for different parties, quickly build relationships of mutual respect in order to share views and information, and provide often critical findings in ways that allow stakeholders to feel empowered to do better.

Use stakeholder analysis to understand diverse stakeholders with equally diverse motives

During a recent visit to South Africa I found myself in a surprising situation: on TV. CNBC Africa interviewed me and a three of my peers from the regional development banks during the meeting of the Evaluation Cooperation Group in Johannesburg. 

The discussion on the Beyond Markets program was a welcome opportunity to answer questions from two well-informed journalists on how independent evaluation is helping the African continent and its people.

Why is independence so important? The simple answer is trust. Public institutions, such as the World Bank Group, need to account for the resources entrusted to them and the results they promised to achieve. Self-reporting and Open Data are essential to increasing trust. So is independent evaluation which validates the truthfulness of self-reporting and delivers greater in-depth analyses to understand the reasons for achievements and shortfalls.

When Atul Gawande, the well known surgeon and writer, spoke at the World Bank in October, one of his many excellent examples struck me in particular. He contrasted the use of anesthesia with that of hand-washing.  Both ultimately supporting the goal of the surgeon – to save the life of the patient – but one more immediate and attractive, and thus easily accepted.  No, it wasn’t the hand-washing but rather anesthesia that won the contest. Why?