Promoting "Learning" for better results- The value of Learning in NGO programming work

Those in the NGO sector will agree that "learning" is a common term used in the sector. It is quite common to come across NGO posts around learning and adaptation, key terms used to describe processes taken towards programme improvement and success. In this article I want to briefly engage around the concept of Learning, and what it entails in programming work and the overall success of humanitarian and development interventions. 

Briefly linking learning to monitoring and evaluation, it is arguably one of the key reasons for the practice of monitoring and evaluation because at its core, monitoring and evaluation functions seek to provide evidence of progress towards expected results, whilst at the same time identifying bottlenecks, highlighting intended and unintended results and helping programme teams to get answers to their overall assumptions around what works or what does not work. It is through these processes that lessons are derived and used to inform decision making and influence programme adaptation for improved effectiveness and impact.

Learning processes in programming work are a result of applied monitoring and evaluation activities. This means learning must be a deliberate effort for programme teams to pause at regular intervals and reflect upon what they are doing. When programme teams pause and reflect, they gain better understanding of what they are doing, and are better placed to address emerging issues in time, no longer focusing only on the delivery of outputs and results, but drawing their attention to the process of implementation in order to draw lessons and insights that are helpful in improving their programmes now and in the future. Much of programming success is hinged upon the ability to adapt to changing contexts and paradigm shifts, failure of which can lead to the production of redundant results and irrelevant outcomes. 

More often than not, one can differentiate between organizations that invest in learning and those that do not. Organizations that build upon their learning and lessons tend to design better programmes using documented knowledge and lessons from the past; whilst organizations that have not yet caught up to the importance of learning still find themselves designing half-baked interventions that go on to make the same mistakes experienced before and achieve very minimal results. It is therefore critical that practitioners took learning in programming more seriously for the good of programme outcomes and to help bridge the gap between cost and effectiveness of programmes. 

In most cases within the NGO sector, learning is mentioned but largely inactive and therefore non-productive. This is a result of various factors but mostly lack of understanding in the value that learning brings to overall programme success when its used for adaptation, and a general lack of time and financial investment. When learning is done right, many benefits can be realized and some of these include:

• encouraging continuous programme improvement
• realization of optimum benefits from scarce resources
• creation of project memory which is beneficial to other projects
• providing strategic creation of knowledge and sharing of the same
• enhancement of skills, expertise and abilities of programme staff.

In order to enjoy the full benefits in the long-term, learning must be premised upon sustainable learning strategies. This means learning must not be a once off event, but should be built upon an organizational culture that allows for learning to happen, whereby learning activities and opportunities are created to last. In this light, there are many opportunities to create a learning culture across programming. Learning can take place at various stages from project level, cross-project level, community level, organizational level, and at inter-organizational/ cluster level. The stages at which an organization chooses to create learning opportunities should be informed by the value it places upon learning and what it expects to gain from the learning opportunities.  

There are practical ways for organizations to promote and support their learning agendas:

• Investing in learning through budgeting time and money resources 
• Cultivating a positive mindset towards learning 
• Focusing on the utility of lessons learned  for programmes adaptation and not just on the documentation of the same 
• Referring back to past lessons learned during the course of programme implementation when making key programme decisions
• Referring to past lessons learned during the design of new programmes
• Creating stable learning opportunities during the design of new programmes and following through 
• Simplifying learning processes 
• Willingness to ask the critical but difficult questions: What did we do right? and What did we do wrong?

There is a starting point for organizations new to learning, learned from those who have been implementing learning for a long time and have thus identified some key best practices to successful learning. In order to extract the best benefits from learning activities, organizations should consider applying the following best practices around the creation of a learning culture:

• Reflect, document, disseminate and utilize both good and bad lessons
• Create an easily accessible lessons repository file accessible to all team members and relevant stakeholders
• Keep a central lessons file for better information management and minimization of data leakages around learning
• Disseminate critical lessons that are key for decision making as soon as possible 
• Assign a specific person to facilitate and organize all learning activities within the organization, and 
• Disseminate, disseminate and disseminate lessons. Because learning is only useful when it reaches the right people, at the right time, and is utilized!

By Mangarai Zhou