As part of the feedback theme on this blog, I’m sharing the idea of feedback as downward accountability, which I’ve taken from an anecdote shared in the Most Significant Change handbook. This outlook moves feedback from being viewed as an extra, an optional nice-to-have, and instead puts it in the realm of responsibility.

Perhaps one way to address this problem more directly would be to rename this stage in the M[ost] S[ignificant] C[hange] implementation process “Downward Accountability”, to create and assert rights to knowledge about decisions [...] made by others, rather than treating “feedback” almost as an optional item. (p. 35).

This term makes feedback one-directional, though, and I believe in upward and downward and lateral accountability. But the accountability notion is a useful change in mindset. So perhaps rather than using the word “feedback”, I’ll start playing with the notion of feedback as “accountability” instead – information I need to share and receive from a position of my own responsibilities.

Someone interning with the Aga Khan Foundation sent me the handbook for the Most Significant Change technique. The MSC combines storytelling with a focus on impact to conduct monitoring and evaluation and to stimulate organizational learning.

At the heart of the technique, individuals tell how the project/program in question has affected them, answering the question, “Over the last month, what has been the most significant change as a result of program x?” Depending on how you’re evaluating, you can change the time period for the question, can specify who or what is being changed (the most significant change for you? for the community? for the organization?), and/or specify an area of change.

The answers to the questions are then fed forward through different levels (of the organization, or of people being affected by the program), with each level establishing criteria to select the most significant of the significant changes that have been reported, and then passing that most significant change up to the next level.

I’m drawn to the potential of the Most Significant Change technique as a tool for organizational learning, because it uses storytelling (and it’s in our stories, I believe, that we recognize and record the things that are significant in our lives) and because it allows for unexpected change to surface. If evaluating a program but only looking for intended results, you miss the unintended consequences. If you’re open to asking questions that will reveal what you didn’t expect – that’s how organizational learning can happen.

From the handbook, here are some advantages to using the technique (particularly valuable for anyone working in the social change sector):

There are several reasons why a wide range of organisations have found MSC monitoring very useful and these include the following.
1. It is a good means of identifying unexpected changes.
2. It is a good way to clearly identify the values that prevail in an organisation and to have a practical discussion about which of those values are the most important. This happens when people think through and discuss which of the SCs is the most significant. This can happen at all levels of the organisation.
3. It is a participatory form of monitoring that requires no special professional skills. Compared to other monitoring approaches, it is easy to communicate across cultures. There is no need to explain what an indicator is. Everyone can tell stories about events they think were important.
4. It encourages analysis as well as data collection because people have to explain why they believe one change is more important than another.
5. It can build staff capacity in analysing data and conceptualising impact.
6. It can deliver a rich picture of what is happening, rather than an overly simplified picture where organisational, social and economic developments are reduced to a single number.
7. It can be used to monitor and evaluate bottom-up initiatives that do not have predefined outcomes against which to evaluate.

You can read more about the technique in the hundred-page handbook.