Watch our new PDIA video!

We have been told many times that the acronym PDIA is clunky and that it doesn’t easily roll off the tongue. Matt Andrews’ response to that has been, “it doesn’t matter what you call it, it matters that you do it.” BUT in order to do it, you need to first understand what it is.

We are delighted to share with you our latest video to help explain what PDIA is and is not.

This video was created by the talented Peter Durand at alphachimp.com who was an absolute pleasure to work with. We are thrilled with how it turned out and hope that you find it useful.

Feel free to share the video. You can also tag us on Twitter using @HarvardBSC or #PDIA.

PDIA Course: Taking the classroom to the field and the field to the classroom

written by Salimah Samji

When we launched the first PDIA online course in November 2015, we had a burning question: Is it possible to teach PDIA in an online environment?  To answer this question, we essentially PDIA-ed our way forward by learning, iterating, and adapting our online course – and the answer is a resounding YES!

As of the end of last year, 804 development practitioners in 75 countries have successfully completed a version of our free PDIA online course.

Here’s what we have learned through our journey (the text in quotes is from course participants):

1. Learning is effective when it is related to practice in one’s own environment.

• “The PDIA in practice course was rigorous and it was very useful to be able to apply skills learned in the course to real-life problems in real time.”
• “Linking the course very explicitly to the day-to-day work we’re doing was great, both for learning and for motivation“
• “This course has encouraged me to think more deeply about the process through which challenges can be tackled in a more realistic and, therefore, meaningful way.”
• “I enjoyed the course because everything was so practical, and so real.“

2. Reflection exercises allow practitioners to internalize learning and to apply them to their work.

• “Reflections help reinforce learning.”
• “Reflections were very useful because I saw them as an opportunity to help me put into perspectives how the concepts, strategies and principles learned could be applied to my current work context.”

3. Practitioners are often hardwired to sell solutions and not to solve problems. The process of constructing and deconstructing problems in PDIA, using the 5 whys and fishbone diagram, helps to better understand the problem one is trying to solve. We spend two weeks on this alone because there is a lot of unlearning to do (many define their problem as a lack of a solution).

• “The fishbone diagram taught me a practical way to focus on the problem and not the solution.”
• “It has been an amazingly gratifying journey to unlearn and learn after many years and i have truly enjoyed every moment of this course over the last 3-4 months.“
• “The fishbone sets the tone for tackling a problem. It allows for all parties to get involved in defining the problem and the likely causes of the problem…from that point some level of consensus building around tackling the problem begins.”
• “The fishbone diagram was most important was most useful for me because I learned to approach my work different by conducting a deeper analysis and I found myself even changing the entry point of one of the projects that I’m working on.”
• “The fishbone helped the group to brainstorm and pinpoint all the complex dimensions of our problem. What I particularly liked about this activity was to see how the discussion helped each of us to question our initial assumptions and consider new dimensions that we had not even thought about.”
• “I also realised that solutions should arise from the end users and not the consultant.“

4. Practitioners are often paralyzed in the face of complex problems. The process of sequencing and using the triple A change space analysis in PDIA help to break problems down into smaller more manageable pieces and identify potential entry points for change.

• “for me, the triple A change space analysis was revolutionary in being able to see where to start in problems which at first seem impossible to solve…and how to start even on the aspects which seem resistant to change.“
• “The Triple A change space analysis was an excellent way to conceptualize a problem and work on small, implementable solutions.“
• “What I learned has reinstated my belief that wicked problems can be solved – just take small steps.”
• “I realized that I can be an effective change agent for contributing tremendously to reduce some of these problems.”

5. The only way to learn PDIA is by doing PDIA. The iteration is where one experiences the power of PDIA.

• “Finally someone showed me how easy it can be to encourage team members to take the action on the project with an immediate effect, hence keep it going and what’s more important to keep the team involved and motivated to action throughout! That was crucial, as it showed me how much time can be spared when people must fulfil tasks that are much smaller and doable within shorter period of time, instead giving them a huge tasks and wait months before they will start to work on them.”
• “PDIA course has opened up a new way to see and solve problems and taught us better ways to engage with our problems and find solutions through iterations.”
• “the iteration was the most useful exercise as it allowed to experience firsthand the situation in taking actions based on assumptions and to feedback the reality checks on the ground to further hone our assumptions and the next steps.“

6. Sustainable change requires collective and synchronous learning (i.e. teaching teams who are working together to solve a problem).

• “For our organization, the engagement has just begun and the knowledge we harnessed on this course would indeed be very helpful as we navigate on the epicenter of complex challenges on our daily lives as a people, community and nation at large.“
• “My team is now empowered to contribute more meaningfully to the policy formulation and design process in our region.”
• “This course has helped develop a working strategy for an existing real time problem and taught us how can we continuously improve our proposed solutions. Making the whole process sustainable and self improving.”
• “It has taught us about teamwork and how to work through team dynamics in a very constructive manner.”
• “I learnt that teamwork is the bedrock of achieving and solving complex challenges when applying the PDIA concept.“

The video below is from the Doing Development Differently conference in November 2016, and highlights the journey of the PDIA online course.

To learn more about PDIA download the Building State Capability book.

We recently ran a PDIA course on climate change adaptation. Why?

written by Tim O’Brien

Leader of farming cooperative in central Sri Lanka that diversified into ginger production as drought increasingly hurt rice cultivation.

If you live in a developed country, odds are that you think about climate change as something that will harm future generations — your children or your grandchildren perhaps. But if you live in a poor country, chances are much higher that you think of climate change as a source of problems that are affecting you and your family today. Climate change may not be the most important problem for you if you live in a developing country, but odds are that it is making your problems worse.

The climate is changing globally, but vulnerabilities are faced locally, usually in ways that exacerbate existing development challenges. For most poor farmers, when and how the rain falls matters a great deal. But climate change is tending to affect seasonal patterns on which many farmers rely, paradoxically increasing the frequency and severity of both droughts and floods, often in the same places. In many poor cities, climate change is increasing water scarcity, flooding, landslides and overall risk of extreme weather events. For people without electricity in tropical countries, heat waves are increasingly deadly events. For communities that depend on fishing as a means of both income and food, ocean acidification is both an economic and health issue. For countries with weak infrastructure, limited budgets and undiversified economies, macroeconomic vulnerability to weather shocks continues to grow more severe. (more…)

PDIA for growth in Honduras: A student project with major promise

written by Matt Andrews

We at the Building State Capability program have the good fortune of working with amazing practitioners from all over the world, and on topics of real importance. This semester, for instance, I am working with a team of three mid-career students from Latin America on a project applying the problem analysis in PDIA to the challenge of growth in Honduras. Marco Midence is from Honduras, Jorge Jimenez is from Mexico, and Jose Arocha is from Venezuela.

In keeping with the PDIA approach, their work started with ‘problem construction’—identifying a problem statement to draw attention to the problem. It goes something like this: Honduras has struggled to achieve the economic progress needed to pull many of its people out of poverty or to create jobs for those people moving into middle income categories. (more…)

Why are there so many mass shootings in the USA?

written by Matt Andrews, Mark Moore, Lant Pritchett and Salimah Samji

This is a crowdsourcing effort to understand why … and to help foster a common response.

Many governments lack the capabilities to play the roles needed for their countries to work well and prosper. These capabilities are often missing because policy-makers cannot agree on the ‘solutions’ they need, and thus fail to invest in the capabilities they must develop to make needed solutions work.

This manifests in policy passivity, where policymakers fail to identify or resource the policy vehicles needed to address social needs. This then leads to problems that persist over time.

Mass shootings are just such problem, persisting—and even growing—in the United States, where government seems to lack the answers—or even capabilities—to respond. (more…)

PDIA in Sri Lanka: Learning to Engage New Investors for Economic Diversification – Let’s Go Fishing!

written by Anisha Poobalan

Meet the Investment Promotions team, a group of Sri Lankan government officials from various departments, experts in differing fields, and all novices at the daunting task ahead of them – attracting foreign investors to Sri Lanka. I had the privilege of working alongside the I-team as a coach and colleague for a year. This post is an introduction to the ‘I team’, the challenges faced, victories celebrated, and the learning and experience gained for all involved, coaches and team members alike. (more…)

Using PDIA to tackle off-budget spending in Liberia

Guest blog by Alieu Fuad Nyei

Like many other African countries, budget execution is a huge challenge in Liberia. Last fiscal year (July 2016 to June 2017), off-budget spending was over 15% of the approved budget while in-year budgetary transfers have been on the increase, significantly undermining the credibility of the approved budget. This huge ratio of off-budget spending led to cutbacks in on-budget programs in areas such as health and education, either delaying or reducing the scale of medical and educational supplies to schools and hospitals across the country. Efforts over the years to address this problem have failed mainly because they focused more on improving the quality of the budget document and less on the root causes that have allowed this problem to continue unabated. Using the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach, we started a 7-month journey to better understand and tackle the problem of spending entities (SEs) not executing their budgets as planned. (more…)

Register now for our free PDIA online course!

written by Salimah Samji

<update>: Registration is currently closed for this course.

We are delighted to announce that we will be offering The Practice of PDIA: Building Capability by Delivering Results once again, from February 4 – May 20, 2018.  (more…)

New connections and better performance in Nigeria’s budget process

written by Matt Andrews (with wise words from Nuhu Mahmud Sani)

A team from Nigeria used the PDIA approach to effect change in their budget process. They had coaching from fantastic colleagues in CABRI (an African intergovernmental organization working on budget reform) who collaborated with us at the Building State Capability Program to expand the reach of PDIA programs across Africa.

This interview is with Nuhu Mahmud Sani, who was a member of the Nigeria team.

(more…)

Why do we persist so long with a reform approach that does not solve problems?

written by Kate Bridges and Michael Woolcock

In Malawi, efforts at institutional reform have been numerous, earnest and longstanding. Since 1966, there have been more than three times as many World Bank projects with ‘institutional reform’ content  as there have been in any other thematic or sectoral category.

In a recent paper, we argue that these efforts have largely failed. Public scandals such as “Cashgate” – in which about US$ 32 million in government funds was misappropriated between April and September 2013 – are the tip of the iceberg: high profile cases reflecting a logic of corruption that remains unchallenged by reform efforts. (more…)