Institutional Learning and Change Initiative

Most changes in the CGIAR have occurred in a decentralized manner and few lessons have been drawn from these various experiences. To change in a more deliberate way, the CGIAR needs to develop the capacity to use adaptive management approaches (i.e., to learn during implementation and adapt the strategies as problems and opportunities emerge). To learn how to develop this capacity, ILAC has teamed up with the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) to try out a structure for decentralized experimentation with centralized learning.

The CPWF is establishing six research-for-development programs in six basins, aimed at tackling pressing development challenges. Each program consists of four to five projects, providing about 30 simultaneous experiments on the management of water resources for agriculture and development. Each project will prepare its own strategy and interventions (i.e., decentralized experimentation), and the CPWF and ILAC will then draw common lessons on project management and adaptation from each project and share them with all the projects (i.e., centralized learning). This approach will provide the opportunity to systematically compare different experiences and to derive lessons as the projects are implemented. The lessons will form the basis of discussions to identify new actions that could be implemented. The learning cycle will continue over the life of the projects.
Structuring centralized learning requires the development of appropriate routines and incentives. As the structure has to be adapted to the particular requirements and constraints of the implementing networks and, due to the complexity of the processes, no recipes on how to do it can be developed, adaptive management approaches will be used. The CPWF and ILAC will jointly devise new methods and instruments that would complement those already in use. These methods will include visits to the project sites and directed conversations with stakeholders, more frequent interaction among the partners in different projects, documentation of the institutional development of each project, and the identification of indicators for monitoring project implementation.

The 30 projects are also being considered as experiments in development. The CPWF and ILAC will prepare a set of research questions that can be answered by comparing the projects, and a set of indicators that will be used for the empirical analysis.