MWELEKEO Direction in a Delivery Paralysis
eM is working on a NEW IDEA - and would love your input! Read through the EXECUTIVE SUMMARY below and get in touch to share your thoughts!
Development inherently necessitates change, and governments across the developing world still have a major role to play in driving this. Where relatively simple frameworks can be followed (e.g. how to build a school) or where development solutions require low implementation-complexity, progress has been astounding. Unfortunately, however, development is often far more complex, and even when good policies are implemented, the potential impact ceiling is not hit. Universal education is introduced enabling every child to go to school, but children still aren’t learning. Community health workers are hired, but children are still dying because they cannot access treatment. Plans are written, but sit on shelves, unimplemented. An effective system requires more than just effective policymaking.
This policy paralysis is not driven by a lack of system potential or good policies – both exist. And in a very short time, many developing countries, like Uganda, have made astounding progress, delivering results in resource-strapped environments. Instead, the implementation gap is driven by a state capability gap when facing more complex development challenges. Too often, “best practices” or development blueprints from successful initiatives elsewhere are simply mapped onto government systems, based on a flawed theory of change that reinforces the mismatch between actual government capacity to deliver, and the expectations put on them by external agents (often those funding the agenda). Despite a small, but growing, knowledge base emerging on how to improve system delivery, barriers often surface when this science is transferred to a developing-country context. Strong structures are formed, but often in parallel to existing institutions and hierarchies; lack of costing of the initiative at full-scale inhibits governments from absorbing costs; and existing attempts have fallen short of sustained improvement outcomes, leaving entire populations of service-users at risk. The delivery paralysis requires further problem-solving, and quick – the scale of this opportunity is too serious to ignore.
Mwelekeo sees this as an unprecendented opportunity to transform the way we approach delivery. Mwelekeo looks to build on existing progress globally and humbly learn from approaches including the Science of Deliverology; STIR Education’s model of professional mindsets and behaviours; to models of Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation, empowering people to identify (find) and deliver (fit) their own solutions to the problems they face. Yet it goes further still. Mwelekeo will test a distinct new Leadership Fellowship approach that aims to re-frame this learning through a lens of system empowerment, to drive domestic agendas for change.
Mwelekeo is built on a set of principles – what we call Our Foundations – that we believe can enable governments to drive developmental change:
Working in a problem-driven way – the construction of domestically-identified good problems is the entry point to finding relevant solutions that can drive change
Focusing on the process of problem-solving, rather than the solution itself
Promoting a domestic-led approach – those who have the greatest stake in seeing success (from government to its citizens) will be the most effective at leading the change
Being iterative & adaptive – development problems are typically complex, therefore protecting the space for cycles of experiential learning is essential to generate results. Problems aren’t solved in one-off linear trajectories; they need to be defined and refined locally in an ongoing process
Recognising leadership legitimacy in the process – this means that the required domestic ownership is real, not just in theory; and that the ability to risk ‘small bets’, is genuinely protected
Prioritising a change in mindset: you need to build long-term trust and promote the professional mindsets required to see long-term and irreversible
Facilitating, not managing the change. We, as external to the system, should see our role as helping to set the direction at critical inflection points, protecting the space for governments themselves to deliver.
Mwelekeo, inspired by the Swahili word for ‘direction’, will partner with governments at an inflection point – a catalyst or defining moment in a government’s agenda – and create the direction required to deliver outcomes: domestically-driven solutions to domestically-identified needs. Inflection points are critical. Government recognition that something needs to change, to be improved, in parallel with an agenda alignment from external agencies who can provide the financial support to act on this catalytic moment. But to deliver on this requires direction, requires the tangibility to take this out of the realm of theory and into the world of reality. And that is where Mwelekeo steps in. This direction comes through the structure of a Leadership Fellowship model that facilitates a process of problem-solving to achieve the identified inflection goal. The cell – the team or progressive coalition driving this process – becomes a powerful platform for testing new innovations, and diffusing learning regionally (and potentially globally). The Leadership Fellowship will equip leaders in government with the direction and focus; the key mindsets & behaviours; and the recognition required to tackle real development problems.
Once an inflection point has been identified, Mwelekeo will work in the government – and in collaboration with government’s external partners – by launching a Leadership Fellowship model:
Phase 1 Identifying the Cell
Identify a select group of leaders in the government/system who are needed to deliver on results. This could include agents from a diverse range of ministries, or even private and public sector groups working in government, but, crucially, must have key agents responsible for decision-making engaged.
Phase 2 Leadership Fellowship
This cell will go through the Fellowship to align leaders in the government around the inflection point agenda. The content will focus on multi-agent leadership (not individual recognition), and build a networked team who can deliver and be recognised for their results. It will consist of:
Initial capacity building on mindset & motivation and networked leadership
The Direction Phase
this is based around the formation of a search frame – going back to “ground zero” and identifying a good problem, a goal, and the iterated steps needed to successfully meet it
Launchpad with the cell that results in the problem construction:
This focuses on the inflection point agenda, and asks “what does this problem look like solved?” in order to set the goal. This will not be a pre-determined solution or set of outcomes, but an aspirational metric of what the success would look like
The cell will then create a search frame based off the problem deconstruction. This means breaking the goal down into the incremental but precise steps needed to get started on delivery:
Iteration 1 – the first iteration is designed consisting of what steps will be taken, the timeframe, and a clear understanding of what it should achieve;
Sprint 1 – a set period of time spent “doing” Iteration 1, with evidence-based monitoring of the trajectory of progress
Reflection 1 – a Cell reflection on what has been achieved: what assumptions were made going into the iteration & what adjustments are needed;
Adaptations are then made to the search frame to generate iteration 2
This cycle is then repeated until the iterated delivery trajectory meets the identified goal.
During this Leadership Fellowship – it is the cell itself who will be delivering on the Search Frame. Mwelekeo’s role will be to provide the Leadership Coaching to the Cell that supports the continued mindset change needed to produce sustained behaviour change and irreversibility of the achieved results.
Phase 3 Recognition and Sustainability
The Cell will not only gain recognition through the Leadership Fellowship with peers in their own government system, but be connected to counter-parts in a Regional Fellowship Network:
recognition in their own domestic context – a pathway to increase motivation around changing the mindsets and behaviours required to drive development success
recognition in a regionally/globally-relevant context – identification of model cells (teams, not individuals) that can act as “diffusers of learning” for systems in similar contexts. Not to map blueprints of their best practices onto other systems, but to provide relevant comparisons and positive competition.
By embedding this Leadership Fellowship approach into the system, a sustainable end-game can be constructed from the outset, that see’s governments able to tackle ongoing challenges, and drive continuously improving outcomes for their citizens.
To test these assumptions, Mwelekeo aims to pilot the Leadership Fellowship in 2018, partnering with the Ugandan - and other - governments on key inflection points in education and health.
We aim to leverage trusted networks and external agency support, to catalyse an iterative and quick feedback loop that can provide validated learning on our model assumptions. With a team founded within a lean startup approach, it is envisaged Mwelekeo can run on a total annual operating budget of less than £790k, whilst within two years of launching the pilot, Mwelekeo aims to see documented evidence on progress in improvement outcomes on two inflection points; lessons for national and globally-relevant diffusion; and the identification of a progressive coalition of domestic drivers-of-change within the government system itself.
Mwelekeo wants to re-write the narrative that good policies exist but are failing, and instead go back to “ground zero” to support the emergence of processes that enable governments to retain the autonomy and adaptability required to respond to its own needs, to generate local solutions to local problems, and effect change at systemic scale.
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Mwelekeo is currently at ideas stage and we hope you can challenge our thinking, feedback on our model, and help us to shape the way governments in developing countries deliver development outcomes to their citizens that significantly improve their quality of life.
Get in touch with your thoughts!
Emily Akers
+256 (0) 751147821 / +44 (0) 7946365964
mailto: emilyakersconsult@gmail.com
Thank you!
