Shared Content
Pact’s Adaptive Management Guide provides practical guidance to development practitioners globally on the mindsets, behaviors, resources, and processes that underpin an effective adaptive management system. It presents an approach to managing adaptively that is rooted in complexity analysis and program theory. It draws on Pact’s global experiences and work on topics as diverse as health, livelihoods, markets, governance, capacity development, women and youth, and more.
This document begins with an introduction to adaptive management, then walks through successive steps to determine how much adaptation a project requires and how to design an appropriate system. The second half of this guidebook contains a toolkit of examples and templates that projects can tailor to their needs.
This document provides practical guidance to development practitioners globally on the mindsets, behaviors, resources, and processes that underpin an effective adaptive management system. It presents an approach to managing adaptively that is rooted in complexity analysis and program theory. It draws on Pact’s global experiences and work on topics as diverse as health, livelihoods, markets, governance, capacity development, women and youth, and more.
This document begins with an introduction to adaptive management, then walks through successive steps to determine how much adaptation a project requires and how to design an appropriate system. These steps for executing adaptive management are:
1. Determineyourproject’sdegreeofcomplexity
2. Determineyourstrategytorespondtothatdegreeofcomplexity
3. Determine leadership, staffing, and resource needs
4. Establishyouradaptivemanagementprocess
5. Implementandevaluateyourplans
The second half of this guidebook contains a toolkit of examples and templates that projects can tailor to their needs:
1. AdaptiveManagementIntensitySelf-Questionnaire
2. StaffRolesandResponsibilitiesinAdaptiveManagement
3. ScenarioPlanningDecisionMatrixandTemplate
4. GuidetoContextIndicatorsforAdaptiveManagement
5. ReflectionMeetingTemplate
6. LearningandReflectionMeetingAgendaTemplate
7. GuidetoPreparingforLearningReviews
8. DecisionTrackerforAdaptiveManagement
A key driver of operational resilience and sustainability is the capability of civil society organisations (CSOs) to establish and cultivate effective boards. Board governance is an important ingredient to securing the evolution, scale and impact of a CSO. A colleague and I recently had an engaging conversation about the various stages of board development and the potential pathways to diagnose the health of a CSO board. This conversation centred on the patterns of evolution of CSO boards and whether there was a sequential transition from one phase to another. This led to the development of this article, which focuses on the life cycle of CSO boards within the African context based on our engagement and thought leadership in the sector.
