Funders and stakeholders want public and nonprofit organizations to be outcomes and results-based.
We help governments and nonprorit organizations set up their outcomes frameworks. We also use a visual strategic planning approach to undertake specific aspects of planning, performance and impact measurement for clients.
Public and nonprofit outcomes work isn’t simple . . . and just copying private sector models won’t do it for you
Anyone can show you what they're delivering in terms of outputs, but how can you meet central agency and funders' demands that you prove you're changing high-level outcomes? How should funders and providers best discuss the things that are strategically important but hard to measure? How can you ‘contract for outcomes’ and do ‘results-based management’ without creating misalinged incentives and gaming? And how can the current funder push for increased collaboration and joined-up solutions be reconciled with their demands for increased individual agency accountability?
We cut through the conceptual confusion with a coherent approach to outcomes framework development. You'll know where you stand in regard to accountability but you'll still have a way of discussing your contribution to the big high-level outcomes your funders are interested in.
Sometimes we play the role of high-end outcomes architects
People, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), national governments, public and nonprofit organizations in every sector, call us with requests such as:
'We want you to help us set up an outcomes framework that'll satisfy our funders and stakeholders’.
'We're struggling with the problem of working out what we should be directly accountable for beyond our outputs’.
'Help us design a better structure for our country's public sector planning and budgeting system'.
We conceptualize, plan, develop, run training on, and prototype outcomes systems for: public sector planning, performance measurement, reporting and impact evaluation.
We are not in the business of supplying you with a data-collection infrastructure, we provide input into your overall outcomes architecture. We help you understand exactly what strategic systems and monitoring data you need to collect. You can then be clear about what you need from any cloud-based performance management and planning platforms you already use or new ones you may choose to deploy.
Often we just role up our sleeves and do visual strategic planning
We've done visual strategic planning with hundreds of clients using the DoView® Strategy Models (outcomes models) System. We build a visual model of an organization's high-level outcomes and all of the steps needed to achieve them. Clients then prioritize what they want to achieve in the next planning period. Sometimes we also use DoView's visual line-of-sight analysis to show funders and others that the organization or program is focusing its project activity directly onto current priorities. The DoView Visual Strategic Plan then takes the place of the bulk of the organization's written strategic plan.
Why do we use DoView® software in this work? First because we were involved in developing it. We've helped optimize it as a group strategy presentation and outcomes discussion tool. Second, if we were doing accounting you'd expect us to use some sort of accounting software or at least a spreadsheet of some sort. When we're doing outcomes and strategy we think that to do it efficiently you need some sort of simple outcomes software. DoView is an agile Swiss Army Knife of a tool for high-level strategy and outcomes work using a visual approach. Once you've identified your projects within DoView, you can then move into some project management software such as Microsoft Project for planning the lower-level details of how you 're going to implement individual projects.
If improved public sector performance can increase efficiency by even a few percent, it can reduce hardship and increase well-being for whole populations
Sometimes our focus with a client is on identifying their performance indicators (Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)). We do this against their DoView Strategy Model. This is far more efficient than the traditional approach of sitting in a room with a blank piece of paper scratching your head trying to think up a list of performance indicators. Sometimes clients are trying to tidy up their indicator sets and already they have hundreds of indicators. In these cases our job is to get them to build the underlying model of what they're trying to do in the form of a DoView Strategy Model. We then map their indicators onto the model, help them work out which indictors they are going to continue collecting and in what documentation they are going to report them (e.g. outcomes documentation, output documentation or just in internal reporting systems). See our Three Minute Outcomes™ video on indicator mapping.
For some clients we will run an Evaluation Planning Clinic™ to quickly quality-check their plans for evaluating a project, program or policy. Other times we ill do an Impact Evaluation Feasibility Check™ - this is a technical analysis with clients of the appropriateness, feasibility, affordability and credibility of the possible impact evaluation designs that they could use to prove to funders and stakeholders that their program is having an impact. This means that funders can be assured that program has left no stone unturned in attempting to prove their impact.
It’s true that ‘good intentions are not enough’, but getting people to use evidence-based practice and policy in the field can be challenging
Everyone is now calling for evidence-based practice and policy and focusing on 'what works'. New evidence repositories are being developed in response. Our role in this movement is to develop practical tools to ensure that evidence is not only being collected, but it's being applied in the field. It's often unrealistic to expect busy practitioners to go directly to the underlying evidence databases themselves. At the same time, outcomes models (intervention logics, theories of change, results chains, strategy models) are becoming a normal part of every practitioners' working life. We want them to be used to encourage evidence-based practice. This can be done by building an outcomes model on the basis of the evidence available in the field. Given that practitioners are already using these models in the field, if we can get evidence 'embodied' in them this means that programs will already be starting off with an evidence-based approach without ever having to go to the evidence-data bases themselves.
Offerings - consulting, training and mentoring
High-level outcomes, performance measurement and impact assessment system design.
Building DoView visual strategy models (outcomes models, theories of change, intervention logics, program logics, program theories, results maps, results chains, strategy maps)
Impact measurement and evaluation.
Performance improvement processes.
Embedding evidence-based practice.
Outcomes-based contracting.
Outcomes-based philanthropy.
Country-wide public sector planning and budgeting systems.
Cross-sector cooperative planning.
Outcomes-based research planning and impact measurement.
Mentoring.
DoView software training.
Clients
Our hundreds of clients have included: the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Population Fund, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, the U.N., the Asian Development Bank, national governments, and individual agencies in almost all sectors: health, welfare, education, defense, transport, arts and culture, injury insurance, sport and recreation, archives, heritage, local government, indigenous development.
Contact us now to talk about now we can add value to your organisation