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Innovation to Impact

Using Theories for Change

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The concept of Theory of Change is meant to provide program planners and evaluators with guidance on how to make sense of the mechanisms that guide how something transforms. Theory of Change as a technique is usually visual, participatory and consultative in nature, and is something that is developed alongside the program itself. What is given less attention are the change theories that underpin a Theory of Change.

Confused? You’re not alone.

Clarifying this is critical if your Theory of Change is to have any meaning.

Change Theories & Theory of Change

Change theories are based (largely) on psychological and sociological evidence applied to human behaviour at different levels. These levels include:

  • Individuals
  • Groups (e.g., teams, families)
  • Organizations
  • Communities
  • Societies & Systems

Some change theories will apply at all of these levels, while some are designed more specifically for a specific level. For example, Kotter’s 8-step model for leading change is primarily an organizational change theory.

Change theories are meant to describe what is to change and explain how change is to come about. These serve as the bedrock for what a Theory of Change is meant to convey. A Theory of Change links the structures and resources tied to a specific program, unit, or process with various change theories to explain why it should facilitate transformation.

Design Considerations

While we might have a viable change theory, we might not have a strong design. We often see organizations that seek to make changes that their programs or policies were not designed to accomplish. For example, cognitive rational change theories are built upon the basic assumption that knowledge informs attitudes and beliefs which influence behaviour.

If your program or service doesn’t have a design that facilitates information accessibility that allows your end user (those who are the focus of your service) to understand and use that information, it’s unlikely we will see change. Just-in-time knowledge delivery (e.g., doing a Google search) implies that people have the means (e.g., tools and technology), the literacy, the skills, and the opportunity to access and use that knowledge, otherwise it’s not likely to facilitate change.

Being able to locate a family doctor isn’t useful if you can only do it at a time and place when such a professional isn’t needed.

Theories of Change can help us plan our programs and service offerings and plot the points of impact, but without good change theories and design considerations it’s quite possible we won’t achieve what we set out to do.

Want to learn more about how to develop Theories of Change and what an understanding of social and behavioural science and design can do to help you learn and create impactful programs? Contact us. We’d love to connect.

Evaluation’s Hidden Value: Clarifying Your Strategy

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Evaluation is more than just the assessment of merit, worth, and significance of a program, product, or service. Although these are the primary functions of evaluation, it can serve far more than this when designed and implemented in the appropriate manner.

Evaluation focuses attention on the things that your organization builds, has built, and implements and the purpose and role(s) they serve. In doing so, evaluation serves as a primary support tool for strategy. In order for an evaluation to do its job, it must be aligned with the purpose of the thing it is evaluating.

For example, if an evaluation is being asked to assess behaviour change, the focus of the program or stimuli (e.g., app, message, etc..) for that change is a core part of the strategy. By matching the program components with the activities and intended outcomes, evaluators can help determine the degree of alignment and assess (and advise on) the likelihood of success before any data is collected. It is through the data — the evaluation itself — that this alignment and the assumptions behind it are tested.

Theory into practice

The process of aligning the planned activities with the outcomes is part of what a Theory of Change is designed to do. To illustrate, consider a program designed to promote some kind of behaviour change (e.g. engaging in a new activity, doing more or less of something, etc..). For a change to take place, there needs to be a certain logic in how the intervention (i.e., the activity or service) is set up based on some established design principles.

We also know from the wealth of knowledge of behavioural science, that there are many different ways to promote change and that some are more efficacious than others. A skilled evaluator can help determine whether the approach being used is likely to produce the desired change by building out a Theory of Change and then matching that with the appropriate outcomes.

This is what the heart of a strategy is all about: aligning the resources, intentions, and actions together to produce an outcome.

Like the image above, evaluation helps peel back the top coat to reveal what is happening underneath. It helps take the mystery out of why programs work or don’t work and what the reasons are why people do things (or don’t).

It’s one of the reasons why we bring strategy, evaluation, and design work together. By connecting them, you get far more performance out of your program than if you just keep the cover on.

To learn more, contact us and we’ll be happy to show you what’s under your hood.

Image credit: Nathan Van Egmond

Defining Design

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Flying high
Designing for possibility

What is design? Design lays at the heart of any endeavour to create something with intention. One of the best and most concise definitions comes from Greg Van Alstyne at the Strategic Innovation Lab at OCADU:

“Design is creation for reproduction”

 

At essence of this definition is the intent to develop a plan — a blueprint perhaps — to create something that can be reproduced. This may not happen, as many architectural delights will attest, but at least there is an ordered sense of planning to how things could be that is proposed in light of systems, craft, available skills and knowledge, need and vision for what could be.

Here are some other ways to think about what design is:

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist” – Buckminster Fuller

“Design is the conscious effort to impose a meaningful order” – Victor Papanek (1985)

“Utility enhanced by significance” – Nigel Cross (2011)

“Design in its simplest form is the activity of creating solutions” – Frank Nuovo (n.d.)

“The application of forethought to action” – Race & Torma (1998)

“Design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users or customers. Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end” – Sir George Cox

“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose” – Charles Eames

“Design is to design a design to produce a design” – John Heskett John Heskett (2005), in Design: a very short introduction, Oxford University Press: New York, NY

“Good design is a Renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need and beauty to produce something.” – Paola Antonelli (2001), curator of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art, New York, in A Conversation About The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

“Design is an expression of the purpose, and it may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art; design depends largely on constraints and it is a method of action (there are always constraints and these usually include ethic)” – Charles Eames

“To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master” – Milton Glaser

C”reativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep” – Scott Adams

“Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy” – Erik Adegard

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – Steve Jobs (2003), as quoted in Rob Walker, “The Guts of a New Machine”, The New York Times Magazine, 30 November 2003

“Good design is also an act of communication between the designer and the user, except that all the communication has to come about by the appearance of the device itself. The device must explain itself” – Donald Norman (2002), The Design of Everyday Things, Introduction to the 2002 Edition

“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist” – Buckminster Fuller