Are we really learning?

I spent close to two decades in the development sector and about a decade and a half of which was spent as a donor's worker. It feels like a good time to reflect on the learning :)

One of the things that has really intrigued me is the "want" for swift results as a donor. I probably came into the sector at a time when the discourse was shifting from "issues of poverty and disenfranchisement take a long time to address" to "we need to see the change in our period in the organisation that we are working for" or in other words "we are impatient optimists". I also got the dominant thought of that time as follows: "What can make me Mohammad Yunus of health or education or livelihood?" Probably a lot of business leaders were asking this.  Dr. Yunus broke new grounds by showing the banks (a profit making business) that poorer segments of the society can be their customers too and he introduced the non-profit sector to the idea that "for-profit" ventures can bring public good too. Therefore, one can definitely understand why someone would like to be Yunus of whatever sector they were focusing on. However, the rider lied exactly there. Provided they kept focusing on it. And that learning got missed in the hurry of getting quick results and scale. 

Grameen Bank has been focused on micro lending since 1976 and just to jog our collective memory, the bank's repayment suffered greatly in 1998. It is thus good to remember everything is never going to be in control of the organisation, and failure is always just waiting at the next corner. This learning has helped me in being supportive to the organisations that have failed in predicting course of events in a well thought-through "theory of change". And important learning indeed.  

At organisational levels however, I started noticing that people did not remain updated on the failures or the processes/ pros and cons of change of strategy (strategy, not issues of focus) of other foundations or organisations and the learning points that these threw up. In being the impatient optimist, one often focuses on churning out more numbers rather than taking stock of the things one did. They fail to learn thus. 

There is also no specific attempt to learn from others in the sector. I have so far not seen Board Members of one organisation sitting with Board Members of another to understand why they changed and what they learnt in the process. I have also not seen members of senior leadership teams sitting together for the same purpose. They have started sitting together to update each other on the work they are doing. However, these are often to attract investment into the areas that one of the foundation is focusing on. It is indeed an extra push to the effort to increase the chance of making an impact. However, it's limited in scope if one is thinking of  making a big ticket impact. In my opinion, which is developed by keenly observing these processes for the last 5 years, the sector will not see large changes by merely bringing more investment in the same sector, but one will have to focus on sharing learning transparently, at the strategic level.  When the two Boards or two teams of senior leadership sit together, the questions that need to be explored are: 

"What are the issues you focus on and what is your reason to focus on them?" 

"Have you undertaken independent studies to arrive at them? Can we also learn from those studies?"  and not stopping at getting a copy. 

"Did your organisation go through a strategic change, recently? What were the cornerstones that you used, if you used any? If you decided on "no cornerstones", why did you do that?"

"Did you assess the success quotient of your current programs and ranked the programs according to what gave you the best mileage in terms of what you wanted to achieve?"

"What was your learning during the process?"

"What is it that the sector lacks as a whole at this point? Are you planning to do anything about it?" 

"How do you make sure you keep your organisation informed on the new emerging issues?"

"How do you make sure your remain informed on how organisations performed on existing strategies?"

"How do you discuss failures with others?"

"Do you share learning and learn from other's learning or do you prefer learning by doing?" 

Am I being an optimist there? I might be but I am not an impatient one at that :)  I just know if one wants to reduce inequality and to address social injustice, there is no other way. One has to be transparent. And accountable. You will not usher in such values by your work, which you, yourself do not practice today. 
And I am hopeful because I do see organisations coming forward to say that they have failed on certain issues. I have also noticed that there are increased efforts at the level of Program Officers to reach out to their counterparts in other foundations. However, I find organisations insisting on learning by doing :) When one does not want to take into account the learning that other organisations, I often wonder if we are not learning, what are we doing here? How will we really make an impact? Will we keep pretending that we are running while spot-jogging at best?