Guest blog written by Anne Dietterich, Amreen Bashir, Awab Elmesbah, Giang Pham, Revanth Voothaluru, Seun Akinfolarin We started MLD103M as six complete strangers scattered across three continents trying to learn better ways to tackle complex problems like those we expect to face in our careers. The class was different, though, from what we were used…Continue Reading Exploring Police and Community Relations in Lancaster, PA
Guest blog written by Allan Franklin, Dana Radojevic, Hesham Gaafar, Lauren Truong Over the past 8 weeks, we had the opportunity to work with the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) on the lack of safe blood in Nigeria. The lack of safe blood during emergencies such as car accidents or postpartum hemorrhages has led to…Continue Reading Tackling Blood Safety in Nigeria
Guest blog written by Bethany Dill, Isabel Mejia Fontanot, Kent Shi, Kerianne DiBattista MLD103, otherwise known as “PDIA in Action”, is a one-of-a-kind experience at HKS. On day one, we were randomly assigned teammates we would spend the next 7 weeks working with and given a problem to focus on. Quickly, we needed to get…Continue Reading Implementing Reparations in Asheville, North Carolina
written by Salimah Samji Implementation is hard. It is often the weakest link in the success of a policy or program. Yet, public policy education remains focused on teaching students to design and analyze policies. As Francis Fukuyama aptly wrote, “most programs train students to become capable policy analysts, but with no understanding of how to…Continue Reading Bringing the Field to the Classroom: Learning to do PDIA in Practice
Guest blog written by Nevena Bosnic, Mehdi El Boukhari, Ama Peiris, Matthew Welchert Over the past seven weeks, our group embarked on the learning journey of problem driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) as it applies to coordination challenges facing the various levels of government as well as civil society in addressing homelessness in Tarrant County, Texas….Continue Reading PDIA and Coordination Challenges within Government
Guest blog written by Rebecca Trupin, Prateek Mittal Our PDIA journey began with our authorizer, a senior bureaucrat in the State Government of Meghalaya, sharing a document with us about his vision to build capability of the state administration to deal with complex problems. We had been working with him on local governance-related projects and…Continue Reading Becoming Comfortable with Complexity: Maternal Mortality in Meghalaya
Guest blog written by Tamsir Cham, Andrea Hayes, Fateme Najafi, Aysha Valery Overall, we learned that the PDIA process is about being patient, digging deep into a problem, continuing to iterate, and engaging both the stakeholders and the authorizers. We also learned how to dig deep into problems. Digging deep requires discovering the underlying or root causes…Continue Reading PDIA and Dementia in the Workplace
Guest blog written by Simone D’Abreu, Smriti Iyer, Sofia Salas, Hafou Toure, Annie White PDIA can simultaneously hold the complexity of being exciting and frustrating; challenging and inspiring; harder and easier than you think. If we could choose one phrase to define PDIA, it would probably be iterative learning. In the next few lines, we…Continue Reading Strengthening Collaboration to Tackle Increasing Homicides in Charlotte, North Carolina
Guest blog written by Akbar Ahmadzai, Emma Davies, Renzo Lavin, Fernando Marquez Six weeks ago, the class counted off numbers: One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. Some of us were fortunate enough to have been assigned to group 2. Others convinced classmates to switch with them. Regardless of how we…Continue Reading A Reflection on PDIA in Action: Homelessness in Tarrant County
