The Enabling Change approach

Background

Sometimes change agents can be their own worst enemies. They work so close at the coal face and are so acutely aware of problems, that they lose the ability to see things from lay people’s point of view.

In addition, we absorb from our culture a lot of assumptions about what it takes to achieve change (‘lay theories of change’) some of these have little basis in reality or are counter-productive. Being able to critically ‘expose our assumptions’ and collect evidence to evaluate them is a vital ability that enables change agents to learn and their efforts to become more successful.

The Enabling Change training is really about clear thinking and planning. It includes a complete tools-based template for developing and evaluating change projects (or campaigns as some people prefer to call them). It includes a crash course in social psychology. It also aims to give change agents a common language so learning cultures can develop within groups and organisations.

The course is itself a model of ‘social learning’ since participants work in facilitated teams to develop projects that respond to real life problems or challenges.

The course recognises that most change is social. In other words, it results from ‘invitations’ issues by similar, connected, respected people in our lives. Hence the content provides a sound foundation for socially based change approaches such as the organising model, community development and advocacy. One of the aims is to give participants sound insights (and practice) in developing Persuasive Invitations, something these models depend upon for their success.

1. The model of voluntary change

The '7 Doors model’ integrates a lot of conventional psychological models and social science theories into one usable model that offers immediate practical guidance for change agents.

The model looks like this:

The course introduces other social science models as well, especially the Diffusion of Innovations model, which focuses on what it takes for new ideas and practices to spread through society.

2. The program design process

This systematic step-by-step process was developed over several years to meet the needs of workshop participants operating at many scales in many fields. It consists of 17 questions. Many of these are unsurprising, but some are unexpected, vital and easily forgotten. In the training, each question is backed with a decision-making tool to allow a small project team to collaboratively create a sound solution before moving on to the next question.

The questions that need to be answered in order to create a sound behaviour change program are:

3. The evaluation process

This is seamlessly integrated into the template used to record the 17 question design process. It's based on global best practice, which is that:

• Projects should be evaluated at the level of outcomes, not just outputs

We use the popular heirarchical 'program logic' model, and encourage people to identify simple indicators at each level, so they can track progress towards desired outcomes.

• Projects should be evaluated according to an explicit 'theory of change'

This means change agents should state their hypothesis about why their efforts should cause something to happen, before they begin. The project them becomes a test of an explicit hypothesis.

We give people simple tools to develop their own 'theory of change' for each project. This is good discipline because it forces people to become aware of their assumptions, hence allowing poor assumptions to be discarded, and good assumptions reinforced.

As mentioned, the evaluation model is built into the 17 question process, so participants don't quite realise they are developing their evaluation strategy as they go, until it is pointed out to them.

© 2004 Social Change Media ACN 104 663 498
Last Modified: Saturday, 17-Mar-2007 16:50:31 EST