An intervention design process can result in a good and impactful intervention or a bad and low-impact intervention. However, bad intervention result to better knowledge growth in economic development intervention designs.
Bad intervention in this note is defined as an intervention that follows five key steps of a systemic intervention design but do not achieve the desired impact. Good intervention on the other hand are those interventions that repeat familiar interventions without the creativity and innovative design of a bad intervention.
This speaks to the assertion that the process of a systemic intervention design is more important than the impact, especially if you consider that development programmes are, or should be, a test of a hypothesis. The theory of change sets out an idea of what an outcome of a series of activities should be, therefore our job as implementers is to test the validity, feasibility, or viability of the theory. ~To make any claim on the theory of change, the process of implementing the theory is most important. The following are the five interventions design steps that will ensure we are able to make an assertion on the theory of change.
5 Steps
A systemic intervention follows five very simple steps.
- Understand how it currently works
- Be clear what the future should look like
- Validate the constraints and root causes
- Deep due diligence of potential partner
- Co-design intervention with partner
Understanding how it currently works
The idea is to identify the areas of weakness or failure in the market or value chain. To do that you must understand the market, the functions in the market and how the actors performing those functions interact with each other. To get clarity on how things work, an idea is to divide the market into three separate systems.
1. the product/service system – this is the understating of the input, processing, output and delivery of the product or service. The understanding of how the product or service is produced, how it moves from the raw material to the product consumed by the final consumer.
2. the transaction system – this is the understanding of demand and supply at each point of the value chain. How does the input producer determine what quantity to produce and how that affects the decision of the processor and the impact on the final consumer of the product.
3. Money flow system – How does money change hands, this can also be termed as transaction settlement system. How does the processor determine the price for each grade of the raw material and settles the producer upon agreeing price. What are the margin at each value points and how does it impact the final consumer.
Understanding these three systems will give you a deep understanding of the market / value chain and will throw out the root causes of the constraints and intervention opportunities.
Being clear what the future should be
Now that you understand the system, identified the current impact on your target participants, you should now think of what these three systems should look like in the future. This is the point you create an utopia of the most ideal outcome for your target participants. You are not designing intervention at this point but creating a version of the future that will most be ideal for your target participants.
Validate the constraints and root causes
You would have come across actors performing various functions in the market during your deep dive into how the system currently works. You then need to validate all your findings. This means ask the participants, the producers, processors, and the consumer about what you found, then triangulate that with studies, research and government statistics, then create an evidence portfolio for the findings in each of the three systems. By now, you should have an idea the potential partner you may want to work with.
Doing a deep due diligence of potential partner
This is a combination of science and art. Willingness of the partner to work with you is mostly as art and the capability of the partner can be determined by simple calculation of resources required to deliver the intervention. This is one of the most important stages in the process, you get this wrong, your investment and time will be wasted.
Co-design the intervention
It is important to recognise that the intervenient is not yours, it is your partners. You are focused on changing the way the partner conducts its business and interacts with the rest of the market – it is therefore important to make sure the partner is at the forefront of all interactions with other market actors and your target participants. You should be invisible in a systemic intervention – you are a facilitator and not part of the system.
The Systemic Change
If after following all these steps the intervention does not achieve the desired impact, it is a success because it would have moved the understanding of the context forward, add to the knowledge on effective intervention design process and this is will lead to better interventions designs. Contrast that with very little, if any, lessons from an intervention that repeats same intervention model, implemented with the same partner, the same participants in the same location - it may achieve immediate impact and the impact may have changed market actor behavior but it has done nothing to move our understanding of the system forward.
The alternative of using the same intervention design, implementing with the ‘donor darlin’ partners teach you, the donor, and the partner nothing at all. It doesn’t move development forward except training the partner on how to posture for more free support from other donor projects. And if you scratch below the surface where development programmes are present – multiple programmes often work with the same partner, doing the same thing in the same location with the same target participants – these interventions teach us nothing on what is possible and what the future may look like. It is therefore best to focus on creating innovative solutions, with our donor’s blessing, so we can move knowledge forward in development.
Question for you
What challenges did you face when designing an innovative intervention and how did you overcome them?
Don’t forget to subscribe to this newsletter if you enjoyed it or find it useful.
