One Step Forward: Building an Evaluation Culture

As the old adage goes, “What gets measured gets done”. It’s a management mainstay, focusing heavily on the importance of frequent measurement and reporting to help you tackle all your challenges. It’s the ideological basis of monitoring and evaluation, the first step towards building an evaluation culture. 

Any organization can adapt an M&E system based on project types and goals. Evaluation culture takes it a step forward, by embedding evaluation and learning within organizational culture itself. An organization with an evaluation culture will be committed towards using monitoring and evaluation as a decision making tool in a systematic manner, and consistently using this data to drive their work with the community, stakeholders, and funders. An organization with an evaluation culture has a strong focus on evidence-based learning & experimentation. 

What’s the difference between M&E and evaluation culture?

M&E systems and evaluation culture are synergistic. M&E structure gives you the necessary foundation to establish an evaluation culture. The evaluation culture in turn feeds the M&E structures, making them more robust, intrinsic, and impactful, instead of being yet another burdensome box to tick. This is what differentiates a culture of learning, from a culture of compliance. 

A good example of this synergy is the USAID’s Collaborating, Learning & Adapting Framework. In this framework, the Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting has to do with the practical application of monitoring and evaluation, including the technical details, resources, and practices involved. This is supplemented by Culture, Processes, and Resources in which an evaluative learning culture is built through openness, institutional learning, and messaging. 

How do you build this culture?

To build an evaluation culture, you have to focus on building the right values and attitude. No matter how efficient your M&E strategy is, unless people across different levels of the organization value data as knowledge building, it will only be done as an act of compliance, resulting in lost learning opportunities.  

Collaborating on the logic model and related indicators for your organization can be the first step towards building an evaluation culture. Identify the stakeholders, ensure that it is a diverse group from different levels of the organization, and develop a model that actually reflects the core impact areas of your projects. After all, the main learning occurs in the process of the evaluation, not through the end report.

Ensure that a formal learning component is at the heart of your evaluation systems. By making this a learning agenda that is a part of the employee’s core work and personal development, you are messaging the importance of evaluation as an integral part of an organization's work. 

Acknowledge that motivation & collaboration are the two key factors towards developing learning culture. Having a plan for evaluation, with established connections between different teams will ensure there’s plenty of collaboration and diverse opinions. Having open and formal channels of communication, with set goals, will ensure that motivation remains high. 

Do it consistently. You can’t build a culture of evaluation if the only time you do it is at the end of the project. This can be done by focusing on real-time feedback, through monthly or bi-weekly reviews, through which changes can be made to ongoing projects. 

Identify champions across the board. Diversity of thought is important, so the evaluation process should not be focused only at the leadership level. Instead, a cooperative relationship, where learning champions from across organizational levels work with the commitment of the senior management is crucial. 

Further aspects of evaluation culture can be identified by introspecting on your evaluation goals & nature of work. There’s extraordinary potential here, waiting to be tapped.