Sophoi and The B Team are pioneering an innovative Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system. Rather than relying on metrics that offer a fleeting snapshot of change, we’ve developed a complexity-aware approach, centering stories and sensemaking. Stories, which are contextual and expressive, provide a conduit for individuals to reflect on the “when, where, how, and why” change happens. The B Team, an organisation working to activate business leadership in support of economic systems change, recognised the importance of understanding the work that precedes key moments of change – the “unlocking moments” or collective tipping points that initiate a shift in thinking and behaviour.

Stories and sensemaking build a culture of learning and reflection across organisations and are used in personal development reviews. So, staff members can better understand the impact they are making and reflect on where they should direct their focus and energy next. The new approach also provides a way to measure change that can help The B Team to understand its unique role in the ecosystem of organisations working to mobilise business and better reflects the complexity of our world.

Introduction

In 2021, the Laudes Foundation funded Sophoi to collaborate with The B Team on developing a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) system. The goal was to create a design that accurately reflects The B Team’s distinct approach to working with businesses and civil society to promote more responsible practices that benefit both people and the planet.

The B Team’s strategy focuses on shifting norms and mindsets, challenging established paradigms and raising ambition. The B Team Leaders, including Jesper Brodin, Richard Branson, Sharan Burrow, Paul Polman and Mary Robinson, are working together to champion alternative business practices, and use their collective voice and power to influence governance and business systems, driving broader changes such as shifts in hiring practices, bold investor action policy design and organisational culture.

The B Team creates a safe environment for peer-to-peer discussion, fostering the space for ambitious corporate action. It also works with partners via influencing and advocacy efforts to call for bold action by policymakers and other global leaders. This approach aligns with Donella Meadows’ work on places to intervene in a system. However, the nature of its work makes evaluating its contribution to change challenging. How can the organisation confidently and transparently assess its impact and learn from its successes to guide future strategies?

What we built

Following an Appreciative Inquiry process intended to capture peak experiences and desires for the MEL system, it became clear that capturing impact through conventional metrics, such as counting the number of meetings or individuals engaged or using static metrics that provide a snapshot in time and space, would be insufficient.

The B Team is particularly interested in understanding the work that foregrounds pivotal moments that drive shifts in thinking and behaviour – the“unlocking moments” and collective tipping points. It needed a MEL system that was fit for purpose and could capture the human connectivity and emotional depth of people’s interactions and reflections.

We settled on using stories – a data-collection method that would enable staff to consider The B Team’s unique contribution to change, how it helped build trust between actors, create an environment for open engagement, and enable issues to be addressed more holistically.

The value of stories

Stories of change are contextual and expressive, making them a helpful conduit for people to reflect on when, where, how and why change is happening. Arguably humanity’s oldest social change tool, the stories we tell each other and the stories we tell ourselves help us connect, see things from different viewpoints and reimagine power for future action.

Stories allow us to zoom in but are also dense and obscure a bird’s eye view. The B Team also needed to be able to zoom out if it was to look at the overall direction of travel and be able to make data-driven decisions about strategy and course corrections.

Turning stories into visual data dashboards

We designed a set of questions and rubrics that allowed staff to tag their story according to the following:

• What’s critical about how The B Team uniquely works?

• What’s important to learn about complex change processes (e.g., the period over which change unfolds)?

• What’s important to know when analysing contribution in a complex context where no single action or actor makes change happen alone?

We designed a database to store the stories and tags, which automatically populates a data dashboard to visualise key elements of the story collection in Google Data Studio (now Looker Studio).

The B Team MEL System is cloud-based and involves filling a story form that feeds into an online database and is visualised on a data and story dashboard.

Sensemaking from stories

Sensemaking is the process of, and capacity to, make sense of the world so you can act in it. It’s a skill that can be developed over time by individuals, teams, and organisations. People are constantly engaged in sense-making activities, even if it’s not done through a formal process. Sophoi builds sensemaking into an organisation’s monitoring and evaluation system – enabling stakeholders to apply their experience and insights to make sense of their evidence.

Using the database, The B Team can more easily navigate and analyse the stories, seeing, for example, which business leaders or partners feature most frequently, which of its campaigns are generating the most stories or other emerging patterns important for planning and decision making.

We also collaborated with The B Team staff to design sensemaking sessions that connect to the story collection and dashboard, enabling the team to “make sense” of its stories and learn together. These tools are used to build a culture of learning and reflection across the organisation.

The stories, data dashboards and sensemaking are informed by the B Team’s organisational strategy development. They are being utilized in personal development reviews, enabling staff members to connect more directly with the impact they are making and to self-reflect on where to direct their focus and energy next. The MEL system is also positioned as integral to fostering a learning culture

It’s still early days

As interest in storytelling and data dashboards grows, the B Team’s MEL system is at the forefront of organisational practice.

Building capacity around storytelling and sensemaking is essential for the success of the B Team’s MEL system. Moving away from traditional log frames and metrics can be difficult, and some may worry that datasets may need to be more objective. However, rigour in MEL systems seeking to make sense of complex change processes is anchored differently. Credibility and dependability are derived not from reliability, validity and neutrality but from the strength of its practical insight and the meaning assigned to it collectively.

In The B Team’s new MEL system, rigour is placed in sensemaking and the capacity for critical reflection about different perspectives and experiences within teams and with collaborators.

We’re genuinely excited about what The B Team will learn about shifting complex systems of actors in new directions. This will be important information for funders and their collaborators.

Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more from us or be in touch with some of the MEL system pioneers at The B Team.

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The B Team is a global collective of business, and civil society leaders driving a better way of doing business for people and the planet and advocating for economic systems change and new corporate norms — to protect our natural environment and secure a safe, sustainable and equitable future for all.

Sophoi supports a diverse range of organisations (foundations and non-profits as well as the private sector) through all stages of monitoring, evaluation, research and learning. These are broad and overlapping services, and we frequently provide services and support across and throughout the project lifecycle.

Dr Jody Aked facilitated the design of The B Team’s MEL system and has supported its integration into organisational life. Jody also works with natural resource management networks, indigenous people, charities, foundations and research institutions, helping actors and activists leverage their knowledge and power in transitioning to low-carbon, high-well-being futures.