What I like about the Outcome-Based planning approach is the emphasis it puts on evaluation and monitoring. I like to think of it as the area that makes you smart. Organizations are always trying to create a future state, a place they want to be. This is often done in isolation away from customers or in some managed way through an interview, focus groups, survey or by the number of clicks. These are good things, but they are not as enriching as what you will learn if you are participating in the action. Review a past post, Marketing Magic of Moses: Content, Stories and Targeting.
In Outcome-based Mapping, you are basically monitoring and reacting to behaviors. In the book, Outcome Mapping: Building Learning and Reflection into Development Programs is one of the best outlines for learning and creating an open exchange of information from your record keeping. It is all done in paper or journal format which I believe enriches the conversation. It can easily be done in Office or in Google Docs.
There are typically three elements of the evaluation program:
- The changes on whom the program is directed at through Behavior, Attitudes, Conditions, Knowledge, and Status (BACKS). This is typically described as the Outcome Journal.
- The strategies that we employ to facilitate the changes. The Strategy Journal is the record of the actions taken and results in terms of the strategy map.
- The Performance Journal determines the progress our organization is making to fulfill its work. The performance journal monitors the internal actions of the organization.
The primary purpose of this phase is not for hard data rather that enhancement of conversation. It is an attempt to have reflection on what has been done and what is needed next. It is important to monitor the change process not only externally that we hope to create but our own internally. If we are changing behaviors outside the company it is likely that we will have to adapt inside the company at a similar rate.
From the book Outcome Mapping:
A program does not operate in isolation of other factors and actors; therefore, it cannot plan and assess as though it does. Systems thinking is not simple, however, as Peter Senge (1990, p. 15) points out:
Seeing interrelationships, not things, and processes, not snapshots. Most of us have been conditioned, throughout our lives, to focus on things and to see the world in static images. This leads us to linear explanations of systemic phenomenon.
International development programs are particularly prone to excluding themselves from the system in which development change occurs. By separating themselves from development processes (i.e., something “we” help “them” accomplish) and explaining change using linear reasoning, programs lose the opportunity to explore their full potential as change agents. Outcome Mapping encourages a program to think of itself as part of the change process and to embrace complex reasoning and multiple logic systems (Earl and Garden 2001).
When we think of the Goods Dominant Logic world, we see how easily it is to separate ourselves from our customers and, as a result, transactional thinking. When we try to co-create or participate in communities (Service Dominant Logic (SD-Logic)), we must view our change processes such as Lean as a partnership and monitor results accordingly.
Another feature of an Outcome-Based Planning System is the Evaluation or Monitoring Plan. It is a short description of the efforts and accomplishment of the project. It lays out the use, who is going to use it, and how often so that there is accountability for the collection of data (Novel thought).
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