Learning in Development

Olivier Serrat

• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9789290920489
• eBook ISBN: 9789290922087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

This publication tells the story of independent evaluation in the Asian Development Bank (ADB)---from its early years to the expansion of activities under a broader mandate---points up the application of knowledge management to sense-making, and brings to light the contribution that knowledge audits can make to organizational learning. It identifies the 10 challenges that ADB must overcome to develop as a learning organization and specifies practicable next steps to conquer each. The messages in this publication will echo outside ADB and appeal to the development community and people having interest in knowledge and learning.

Learning for Change in ADB

Prelude

To William Easterly,
[t]he environment that created aid bureaucracies led those organizations to (i) define their output as money disbursed rather than service delivered; (ii) produce many low-return observable outputs like glossy reports and “frameworks” and few high-return less-observable activities like ex post evaluation; (iii) engage in obfuscation, spin control, and amnesia (like always describing aid efforts as “new and improved” so that there is little learning from the past; [and] (iv) put enormous demands on scarce administrative skills in poor countries.¹

Even if there is only a small measure of truth in these charges—and the milieu in which development agencies operate is far from being entirely of their own making—the colossal investments in development work make it important to demonstrate the use of learning to improve organizational performance for aid effectiveness. (Here the emphasis is more on effectiveness than on impact—impact rests on many more factors than development assistance.) Yet study after study of the outcome and impact of operations casts doubt on the ability of development agencies to learn from experience. More often than not, organizational responses to shortcomings or errors are self-deceiving or defeated, and too infrequently are they learning responses. In short, the environment in which development agencies work has changed and is changing considerably but, failing to learn, development agencies rarely transform at the same pace.

At the same time, this rapidly changing²—and, at times, excessively complex—nature of development work demands diverse competencies from staff members.³ In addition to technical knowledge and skills, they include no less than appreciating political economy;⁴ relationship building; reading and responding to complex organizational and social predicaments; and the capacity to contend with uncertainty, task-compromise, and deal with difference and diversity. (The hallmark of aid has always been imbalance between aspirations, competencies, and resources.) The learning challenges that these demands present to staff members require the ability to work more reflectively in a turbulent practice environment. Supportive intra-organizational environments would enable better dynamics and higher quality of learning to take place where individual and collective learning build on each other in a spiral arrangement, much like the double helix of DNA.

System dynamics view an organization and its environment as complex, interrelated, and in constant flux. To remain relevant and effective in a turbulent environment, an organization’s rate of learning must be at least equal to—but preferably greater than—the rate of change in the environment. All things considered, organizations that fail to learn at the minimum pace are destined for insignificance. In recent years, there has been much discussion of learning in organizations, especially in the corporate sector—its tone often academic. Of course, organizations per se are not sentient beings with the capacity to learn. Yet the individuals within them can learn, individually and collectively and, therefore, bear responsibility at both levels for making the whole greater (or lesser) than the sum of its parts. Collective learning is called organizational learning, which is explained as the ability of an organization to gain insight and understanding collectively and consciously from its own (and others’) experience and, subsequently, to change its behavior to improve practice. Organizational learning is achieved through experimentation, observation, analysis, and (most importantly) a willingness to examine both successes and failures.

Learning acquired by increasing technical knowledge and skills, sharing information, and attending traditional training is no longer sufficient to the challenge of poverty reduction. The lack of critical thinking is not intentional. The idea of single-, double-, and triple-loop learning⁵ helps explain this experience. Learning is often narrowly focused on first-order instrumental questions like: How do we do it? (following the rules). Yet learning is stronger when people ask the second-order question: What should we do? (changing the rules). The third-order question is expressly political: Why should we do it? (learning about learning).

These three views compete with each other: a task (instrumental) orientation versus a process (normative) orientation versus a power (political) orientation—or, the technocrat, the philosopher, and the advocate. A bias toward the technical “how” is single-loop learning. People are more likely to reconcile the first two sets of questions of how and what to do—ergo, double-loop learning. Questioning why is usually abandoned as ideological, threatening, or not productive. However, when people “loop” through, considering all three types of questions, they make more responsible and intelligent choices. Yet what are the conditions for double- or triple-loop learning that could partly address Easterly’s indictment?

In aid agencies, what barriers might there be to such learning? Where are the dimensions of a learning organization already discernible? At what levels? How might the ideal of a learning organization be approached practicably? How might leaders leverage creative thinking and innovation in support of learning? What deep commitments to change might be called for? And how might evaluation add more value to learning? Based on its responses to these questions detailing specific actions, ADB will become better placed in the context of knowledge-based aid to (i) develop knowledge strategies for information management and organizational learning; (ii) cultivate partnership mechanisms for the transfer of knowledge and learning to its developing member countries; and (iii) build in developing member countries capacity to absorb, apply, and provide knowledge.⁶ ADB might also become a healthier and more enjoyable place to work.

Some learning in organizations rests not on an accumulation of new knowledge but on an abandonment of things already “known.” This transformational learning is normally triggered when our assumptions no longer explain our experience. Like the astronomers, Ptolemy’s earth-centric view is abandoned to embrace the radical Copernican notion that the earth revolves around the sun. Such revolutions in thinking, while painful, benefit practice greatly. When understood, this cycle of critical reflection and action, fundamental to adult learning, can be harnessed for change. Every person within an organization, regardless of formal status, can be a change leader. While learning is often relegated to technical dimensions of work, transformational learning requires courage, wisdom, and vision and is best supported collectively in an organization or community. This is not an outcome of traditional training.

Learning for Change in ADB is offered as a resource and reference to ADB staff members in general, but to management in particular. Learning leaders are key to learning organizations—this document may stimulate or inform their initiatives to transform the organization for learning excellence. The key attributes of Learning for Change in ADB are that it marks out generic roadblocks to learning; assimilates the manifold dimensions of the learning organization; and specifies how action across organization, people, knowledge, and technology can energize and support individual, team, and cross-functional learning and, in return, be enriched by learning. Readers are invited to refer to the Knowledge Solutions series (www.adb.org/knowledgesolutions/default.asp) that was launched in support of Learning for Change in ADB. The Knowledge Solutions...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preamble
• About the Author
• Independent Evaluation at the Asian Development Bank
• Learning Lessons in ADB
• Auditing the Lessons Architecture
• Learning for Change in ADB
• Index
• Back Cover