In pursuit of the deep and sustained shifts necessary for adaptive management

As I explored in the previous blogs, M&E needs to change to better support adaptive management. This is already well covered in development literature and debates, but based on my own experiences and opinions, deeper and sustained shifts are necessary to truly embrace adaptive management.

Firstly, adaptive management may require a lowering of barriers between formerly discrete processes. In simple projects and programmes the divisions between planning, monitoring, review, evaluation and research may be relatively clear. But adaptive management requires programmes to approach problems from another angle; first deciding what type of information is needed and then designing a suitable process.