Summarized highlights from From Systems Thinking to Practice: How USAID Is Embracing Humility and Relationships to Do Aid Differently (part 2) | David Jacobstein, Rachel Leeds, Monalisa Salib

From Drivers to Catalysts: “Donors need to think of their role differently, as catalysts, not drivers of change. So donors need to be thoughtful about how change happens and the supportive role they might play, rather than pushing for a particular change that they might want to happen.”

Embracing Local Leadership: “Focus on the sorts of results that matter locally and can only come about through local leadership, even though that puts donors in a different, more modest, less ‘heroic’, role.”

Catalyzing Connections: “Bringing together different actors, facilitating connections and learning. This is the sort of role that donors and other external actors can helpfully play.”

Questions as Interventions: “The idea that just asking questions about a system – asking questions to other actors in the system – is itself an intervention, a form of engagement.”

Results vs. Inputs Tension: “Donors are only concerned about results. Implementers can only control inputs.”

Bureaucratic Constraints: “It’s not easy for bureaucratic structures to handle that level of emergence and openness.”

Mindsets for Systems Practice: “What qualities do people need to put systems approaches into practice: Mindsets, humility, curiosity, relational skills, rather than just analysis.”

Overestimated Gaps: “Capacity gaps are often over-stated, with types of them also conflated – relational capacities matter, compliance capacities are different.”

Beyond Technical Solutions: “‘Capacity gaps’ has been a cop out for donors. They are often actually about incentives, rather than capacity, and ‘strengthening capacity’ won’t shift incentives.”

Contextual Learning: “Cookie cutter models don’t work. Iterative processes of local learning to craft solutions are key.”

Accompaniment vs. Leadership: “Much better to support and accompany local processes and systems… see capacity as something that is strengthened through the course of a project, with donors accompanying but not leading that process.”

Examining Existing Systems: “Asking why change hasn’t already happened invites in contextual understanding as well as technical knowledge.”

Learning from Outliers: “Worth looking for outliers/positive deviants, and exploring why they are outliers.”

Focus on Process: “Need to be articulating why you think change might happen, rather than focusing on and pushing for which change you want to see.”