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I’d like to start today’s episode with a quick, informal poll. Ask yourself: as a social sector professional, do you regularly receive calls or emails from the people who you’re trying to help where they ask – with great anticipation – about when the next version of your project or program will be released? While this regularly happens for other sectors, like mobile phones, automobiles, and fashion, for the vast majority of us in the social sector, the answer to this question is, emphatically, no. The disconnect that this question exposes is the foundation that Dennis Whittle, who is my guest for today’s 158th Terms of Reference Podcast, stumbled upon a few years back and which has now grown into a powerful collaborative effort to change how we help those in need. Dennis is the Executive Director of Feedback Labs, an organization that aims to change the norms in development, aid, and philanthropic policy to be more responsive to the people that those policies aim to help. Before Feedback Labs, Dennis was the co-founder of the groundbreaking Global Giving platform. This is an important conversation because after we talk about the origins of Feedback Labs, we get into how they are helping to flip the, generally, top-down approach of the social sector to one that is truly responsive to local needs. The organizations that make up Feedback Labs believe we’re now at a stage where you cannot NOT afford to get feedback from those you seek to help and Dennis beautifully relates common issues faced by organizations and governments in being adaptive. So I invite you to sit back and enjoy this conversation with Dennis that looks to a future where feedback is not only the connected thing to do, but also the expected thing to do. You can connect with Dennis here: http://www.denniswhittle.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/denniswhittle Tweets by DennisWhittle
IN TOR 158 YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
- Why getting feedback is the right, smart, and increasingly, expected thing to do, and why it’s never been easier or cheaper to to so
- The creation of Feedback Labs, and the several supporters across the A&D spectrum who helped in some way or other
- How today is still important to stress the importance of feedback, and the astounding evidence in issues from infant mortality to educational attainment
- How feedback becomes problematic when the loop remains open and the interviewee feels no sense of agency. How to prevent becoming “askholes”
- How to tackle the structural inflexibilities at the core of A&D
OUR CONVERSATION FEATURES THE FOLLOWING
Names:
- Feedback Labs
- Global Giving
- Center for Global Development, Nancy Birdsall
- Lant Pritchett, author, It Pays to Be Ignorant
- Open Gov Hub
- Rita Allen Foundation, Elizabeth Christopherson (chairman)
- Hewlett Foundation
- White House, Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP)
- USAID, Practical Adaptation Network
- Human Foundation
- Gallup
- Angus Deaton
- Chris Blattman (TOR 150)
- Elinor Olstrom
- Global Delivery Initiative
- EconTalk Podcast
- William Easterly at the World Bank
- Jeffrey Hammer at Princeton
- Michael Woolcock at World Bank Development Research Group, Harvard
- Keith Hansen at the World Bank
- Fund For Shared Insight
Topics:
- Feedback, Loops, Iteration
- Crowdfunding
- Listening
- Agency
- Evidence, Research
- Infant mortality
- Educational attainment
- Process change
- Procurement, Flexibility
- Insight
- Interoperability
- Household surveys
Places:
- Washington, DC
- Ghana
- Afghanistan
- Haiti
- Zimbabwe
EPISODE CRIB NOTES
Download an automated transcript. 03:24 Feedback Labs It’s about a deep change of perspective FL gathers some 300 organizations worldwide Policy, research, advocacy, technology and “frontline” organizations “What do regular people want to make their lives better?” “Are we helping them get it?” “If not, what should we do differently?” We seem to have been losing touch if we stopped asking these questions Plenty of evidence of the A&D sector neglect 05:30 ‘Member when we put people first? Stephen: As an intern, 15 years ago, people focus was a sine qua non The traditional ways in large agencies was hiring “high-level experts” to outsource the people’s look They’d do some interviews, but mostly used other methods People sitting in offices in capitals with very little ground interaction “So I don’t know where you interned, Stephen” 07:31 The first iteration of the ongoing feedback loop Unlike Global Giving, “where we started doing what we wanted to do” FL grew more organically ’00s Dennis was with the World Bank, later founded GG (first social crowdfunding) Center for Global Development’s Nancy Birdsall takes him for lunch Wanted to make him a visiting fellow, he refused to keep on writing reports Nancy: “That’s okay. Come do your thing” He takes friends and people for coffee for some months He was stroking his iPhone 4, looking forward to the 5 Thinks “Nobody in Africa is saying, ‘can’t wait for Dennis’ next project'” Hmm “I did not iterate my projects” “I hope I made some impact” Dennis writes a “personal paper” about his experiences of “not listening to people” “Hearing what people want would only have negative consequences for my project benchmarks” Projects could be derailed, delayed, made costlier And what if they didn’t like it? Following on L. Pritchett’s 2002 It Pays to be Ignorant http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1384128032000096832 The baseline of projects is to be successful Anything less deserves punishment Feedback is disincentivized After Dennis’ “feedback loops” paper, people start reaching out Some ideas were floating, Dennis gave them a name FL begins as a series of lunches at DC’s OpenGovHub 12:51 A wild foundation appears Rita Allen Foundation’s Elizabeth Christopherson Hewlett Foundation “We have to solve a problem in philanthropy” White House’s Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) “We’re bad at listening too” 2013: Hewlett, OSTP and Dennis meet Feedback Labs launches formally 13:40 Well in There was reaction from the top-down system “This is ridiculous” “People don’t know what they want” We got pass the initial reaction. Evidence about listening is smart (in addition to the right thing to do) With feedback, impact grows Infant mortality, survival rates post procedures, educational attainment Researchers take a look at the evidence We passed “why” to “how” about listening Feasibility, efficiency FB Catalyzes collaboration, networks The members are the ones who produce research and tools At the meetings, members introduce problems, or solutions if they have them Members can build things together 17:45 Do dream jobs have challenges Common patterns Organizations asking for feedback from people find lack of sense of agency People feel their word makes no difference They get polled constantly for no visible change “We’re askholes” It imposes a cost To overcome suspiciousness or even hostility, we could begin just by placing the feedback back to them A real problem is the process set in place are not adaptable Design once, forever No ways for regular flows of feedback into process change Organizations have no idea how they’d go about doing that They address project issues by reframing the narrative That way they avoid “political of bureaucratic punishment” 21:37 The one big issue is actually closing the feedback loop Is the system fundamentally inflexible? Working with USAID came the Practical Adaptation Network People working in similar fields across organization A Procurement group They gather to consider ways to make procurement more flexible It’s found at the top there’s some initiative about flexibility That does not trickle down the field Human Foundation report: People learn from their peers This explains conservative behavior inside organizations Doing something new is terrifying 26:11 A-has “I wouldn’t say definitive solutions, but yes” Several data insights and efficiency, interoperability gains The cost of asking for feedback has sunk far below expectations A Ghanaian phone call-based feedback startup Center for Global Development and World Bank test them They want to recreate a household survey Household surveys are the data foundation of A&D while costing millions and year But they often don’t get the right data Afghanistan, Haiti, Zimbabwe, maybe Zambia A mini-survey was 100 times cheaper and 10 times faster USD 15k Not quite the same sample power, but on par with say a Gallup poll “You no longer have the excuse not to ask for feedback” 30:06 On digital reluctances “We’re working on it” “We’re at early stages” Some people say “we’ve been doing it for a long while” “I invented low-cost household polling” Other feel it’s not rigorous and is prone to bias Interaction starts to keep fears at bay Things don’t change overnight Infussion of innovaition takes time 32:38 Future Feedback Three trajectory vectors #1 Intellectual, theoretical research. Angus Deaton, Chris Blattman (TOR), Helenor Ordstrom “I’m forgetting many others” Pushing the frontiers in research #2 Sector (A&D) The White House, and large city administrations Internationally too Global Delivery Initiative China Government and all South East Asia countries It’s expanding #3 Thinking about the trajectory Feedback is the right and the smart thing to do Appealing to different groups Feedback will become the new normal… soon 36:57 Who do you pay feedback to? EconTalk Podcast Bill Easterly World Bank Lan Pritchett CGD Papers Jeff Hammer Harvard Law School Randomized Control Trials Michael Woolcock World Bank Development Research Group, Harvard Keith Hanson WB C. Blattman Fund For Shared InsightPlease share and participate
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