The Who, What, Why, and How of Adaptive Learning for Project Managers
Questions for Reflection:
What are the ways the donor for my project does have an enabling environment for adaptive learning? Is there flexibility for me to change/update outputs as the project proceeds? How could I encourage flexibility if there is a greater focus on delivering project activities than learning from them?
Are there colleagues I could ask to assist in helping me to assess if my project is able to iterate and innovate based on the local context?
Terms like “Adaptive learning” and “Adaptive management” are rightly being promoted by thought leaders and practitioners in development, recognizing that project implementation should be informed by the complex political systems at play and incorporate local stakeholders in project leadership. But what exactly does this look like in practice, and how can we make it operational? Check out the infographic to the left and the descriptions below to understand more about the adaptive approach.
Who: Adaptive learning can be taken up by anyone and everyone involved in the project, from the donor providing the funding to the young female farmer learning new intercropping practices as a part of the project activities.
What: Adaptive learning describes a process whereby a system of consistent monitoring and reflection helps to reduce uncertainty while allowing for project delivery changes and priority realignment (Teskey and Tyrrel 2021, 8).
Why: Many common practices fail to capture the changes constantly present in development project contexts and rely on a top-down process of knowledge sharing. For example,
The project implementation plan and how it will achieve the intended impact can be decided sometimes years before implementation and project delivery gets underway. Many times, the staff deciding on project goals and the activities to be undertaken are not familiar with the local context at the time of implementation. If the political regime has changed, a pandemic has occurred, or the community is suffering from a drought, can the project adapt to these unforeseen realities? (Teskey and Tyrrel 2021, 6).
How: The infographic to the left describes how an iterative process of implementation could look, outlining the major stakeholders and their responsibilities to one another. From the governance level, the donor policies and communication systems in place should allow for flexibility and adaptation based on evidence from the implementation.
Additionally, project managers are in the position with the most agency to promote learning throughout the process, given that they see both the driving motivations behind the donors (high-level governance) and the field team ( project delivery).
The implementing staff should additionally prioritize simultaneous monitoring and learning as the project happens, consistently allowing for open dialogue amongst project beneficiaries (Teskey and Tyrrel 2021, 15).