On the Road to Learning-Led MEL for Systems Change

Catherine Fisher, Zazie Tolmer, Robbie Gregorowski

In this blog we – Catherine, Zazie and Robbie – share reflections from working with Sophoi’s recent partners as we support them on the road to learning-led MEL. 

Learning-led MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning) is increasingly recognised by those working for systems change as a more suitable approach to MEL.  Guided by principles of complexity, systems thinking and collaborative sense-making, these experiences represent a shift away from trying to identify and quantify progress and results, towards an emphasis on using evidence for learning and adaptation. 

Adopting a learning-led MEL approach requires balancing learning and evaluation mindsets. But what does that look like in practice? Here, we explore five key areas where we’ve found ourselves navigating different approaches or demands, highlighting both conceptual challenges and practical responses.  

1. Balancing Expectations: Results vs. Change
2. Navigating Different Understandings of Evidence
3. Balancing Collaborative Sense-Making and Expert Analysis
4. Integrating Bottom-Up Learning with Organizational-Level Insights
5. Balancing Emergence and Iteration with Getting Things Done

We are sharing our experience as a contribution to the rapidly growing body of practical and conceptual knowledge about understanding and evaluating systems change initiatives. Individually and together, we are continuing to work and learn in this area and are keen to join forces with others who share our interest.  

 

Principles Underpinning Sophoi’s RSL Approach

Throughout our work, we applied Sophoi’s Results-Sense-making and Learning (RSL) approach. RSL is an approach to using evidence to inform learning and action on complex challenges, which emphasizes: Evidence: Collecting evidence of results, progress, and contextual change to support collaborative sense-making. Sense-Making & Learning: Enabling stakeholders to collectively apply their experience and insights to make sense of the evidence, allowing for adaptation. Capacity: Demonstrating the value of RSL as structural to how organizations need to work to address complex challenges, and developing this capacity as both a formal process and an ongoing practice. A key feature is our role as a collaborative and iterative thought partner to organizations and their stakeholders. By inviting organizations to collaborate, innovate, and iterate, we’re finding new ways to navigate the complexities of systems change.   Robbie is currently translating Sophoi’s Results Sense-making Learning knowledge into a more complete and practical approach known as ESLA Loops. Evidence Sense-making Learning Action Loops is an approach to using evidence and collaborative sense-making to inform learning and action on complex challenges.

 

1. Balancing Expectations: Results vs. Change

Traditional evaluations often focus on claiming results and impact, measured against targets. Learning-led MEL, by contrast, embraces a broader curiosity about how change happens, including contextual dynamics.

While traditional approaches seek to prove, learning-led MEL seeks to improve, a learning-led approach allows teams to ‘lean into uncertainty’ exploring areas where progress was lacking or assumptions were weakest rather than being focused on demonstrating success and progress.  However, as annual reporting draws closer, accountability expectations – defining results and quantifying overall progress – can become  more pronounced.                               

What we did: To meet the pressure for progress updates, we highlighted “micro-narratives” from across clients’ work that showcased diverse changes, without aggregating them. 

Takeaways: Moving away from the goal of demonstrating impact requires reframing, not abandoning, accountability. Over time we need to build an awareness among leaders that learning approaches are more suitable for understanding systems and invoke a shift  away from intervention-centric DAC style evaluation questions towards questions such as: 

• What evidence is there of change within a system?
• What evidence is there of the difference we (aligned actors trying to enable positive change) are making or not making with that change?
• What do we understand about how change happens within a system, and our role supporting and enabling it?
• What do we need to do to better enable aligned actors to make a difference?

 

2. Navigating Different Understandings of Evidence

The term “evidence” means different things to different people. We  are committed to putting evidence interpreted through stakeholder experience and insight at the heart of learning.   In our processes of rolling out learning-led MEL, we found ourselves exploring questions about evidence and its role.   

What we did: Some of the debates and emerging conclusions include: 

• What is “good enough” evidence to document and reference?  Response:  anything that informs a decision.
• How will evidence be brought into sense-making processes? Response: prompting participants to recall evidence by asking them the question, “How do you know?” 
• Do insights identified by teams during sense-making processes constitute  “evidence”? This led to another question: What is an insight?
• Is the weight of available supporting evidence for an insight the key consideration for identifying insights?   Response: it is a factor but not the most important.

Takeaways: Engaging clients in conversations about evidence helps clarify its role in learning.  Framing evidence in relation to day-to-day decisions is a practical way of prompting reflection on evidence use, including whose perspectives are valued and captured.  The concept of “disconfirming evidence” can also prompt critical thinking and adaptation.

 

3. Balancing Collaborative Sense-Making and Expert Analysis

One challenge we wrestled with was how much of the sense-making comes from the teams themselves, and how much from us as an external team supporting the process. In learning-led MEL, the assumption is that those closest to the change process are best suited to make sense of the evidence.  The external team’s role is to generate, organise and present the evidence and facilitate the process of making sense of it by different stakeholder groups.  While collaborative sense-making is key, time constraints of staff members can pose challenges.  

What we did:  Collaborative sense-making was integrated into the design of team-level learning conversations, where staff members were encouraged to make sense of their experience, drawing on evidence to do so. Graphic representation of activities and assumptions supported discussion. 

Collaborative sense-making became a challenge when seeking to identify patterns and draw insights at an overall organization-level.  We collaborated with clients to identify patterns, which were subsequently refined, verified and challenged by those doing the work, in rapid, iterative, rounds of sensemaking.

Takeaways: It is important to invest in ensuring that collaborative sense-making is a positive and valuable experience, whether face-to-face or online.  Our experience is that as staff become more familiar with the expectations and value of these processes, they buy into them, shifting from “having to” to “wanting to” sense-make.   

 

4. Integrating Bottom-Up Learning with Organizational-Level Insights

A key challenge we experienced was navigating the tension between organizational-level sense-making and the bottom-up, often deeply contextualized nature of team-level learning.  

What we did: We shifted between inductive and deductive approaches to identify patterns across scales and contexts, inviting challenges to avoid false equivalence.   By working collaboratively and iteratively with a range of stakeholders we struck on a set of core insights that resonated and led to an emergent framework (common processes defined as intermediate outcomes), prompting another round of analysis. 

Takeaways: Our experience is that an analytical framework is an important part of a learning-led MEL system, and it is likely to be quite different from an analytical framework in a traditional evaluation-based MEL system.  An analytical framework tailored for learning-led approaches needs to balance flexibility across diverse contexts with organizational utility. In particular, they need to: 

• Enable contextualized and evidence-based dialogue, sense-making and learning at team-level, inter-team, and across portfolios; 
• Facilitate  elevation of evidence from teams to organizational-level to support collaborative sense-making for strategic decision-making and adaptive learning; 
• Provide a means for meaningful organizational dialogue between “bottom-up” and “top-down” priorities for learning – each informing and shaping the other and iterating over time. 

 

5. Balancing Emergence and Iteration with Getting Things Done

In supporting clients to develop a learning-led MEL system, the way forward was not always clear.  \We often explored and iterated on designs, refining tools and processes as we went. Differences in perspectives sometimes led to tension, but we embraced the uncertainty and adapted.

What we did: We applied the probe-sense-respond principle, iterating and adapting our approach.  We explored trade-offs and were often pragmatic in our choices.  We leaned in and became comfortable with uncertainty.  

Takeaways:  Some enabling factors for working iteratively are:   

• Allow time to explore, fail and build,  to try something then try something else if it doesn’t work. This needs time, both in terms of days and months and in the scale of contracts.  
• Curiosity,  creativity and a “yes, and” approach to engage positively and build on each others’ contributions, as well as a willingness to challenge. Comfort with uncertainty is essential!    
• Trust both between client and contractor and within teams of consultants is a crucial enabler.  A crucial factor is initial investment at the start of projects in building relationships and understanding needs and preferences, motivations within the team. This needs reinforcement through reflection, personal connection, ongoing formal and informal communication, regular reflection and play! 

This article has been intentionally anonymised, but we would like to thank all those who have joined us on the road towards learning-led MEL. You know who you are.  We hope to see you on the road again as we continue our journey.  

 

What’s next for us?    

Catherine continues to explore and practice the role of facilitation in systems change, with a focus on supporting learning and sense-making. She is particularly interested in creative approaches and has recently qualified as a Lego Serious Play practitioner.  

Zazie is part of the MEL Sandbox and working with the UNDP Strategic Innovation Unit on their Portfolio MEL approach (UNDP SIU on Medium, UNstuck).

Robbie is translating Sophoi’s Results Sense-making Learning knowledge into a complete and practical approach known as ESLA Loops – Evidence Sense-making Learning Action Loops is an approach to using evidence and collaborative sense-making to inform learning and action on complex challenges.

If you would like to work with us, please get in touch. 

Sketches in this blog were produced by Catherine Fisher

Citation: Fisher,C., Tolmer, Z., Gregorowski, R. (2024)  “Learning-Led MEL for Systems Change:  Insights from Sophoi’s Recent Collaborations” Sophoi Blog, 26 November 2024 https://sophoi.co.uk/2024/11/ion-the-road-to-learning-led-mel-for-systems-change/

Reference: The Innovate for Impact blog series is co-authored by Jamie Gamble (Imprint Consulting), Penny Hagen (Auckland Co-design Lab) and Kate McKegg (The Kinnect Group) in collaboration with Sue West from the Centre for Community Child Health. Theme 4: Evidence for innovation | Centre for Community Child Health (rch.org.au)