CLA (and MEL): Chat with Dr. Stacey Young, USAID
Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) is USAID’s approach to adaptive management. While CLA can be understood as an approach, the CLA Team housed within the Agency’s Office of Learning, Evaluation and Research (LER) has spent upwards of a decade first conceiving and elaborating, then refining and streamlining tools and processes to embed CLA as policy. LER contracted Dexis Consulting Group to advance this effort over a five-year period which formally ended in 2020. The aptly-named LEARN contract worked in tandem with the CLA Team and the Agency more broadly, inviting multiple buy-in efforts with HQ offices and bureaus but more significantly with global Missions.
In principle, CLA is considered an approach towards fulfilling (in exemplary fashion) the stipulations of a MEL Plan** — but just the same, a MEL Plan could be considered just one tool towards satisfying a program’s CLA principles. And among some teams, MEL may be the ‘approach’ and their CLA Plan the ‘tool.’ USAID solicitations more often than not ask for both a MEL Plan and CLA Plan deliverable (with one sometimes in hierarchy over the other), while perhaps within the same document elaborating both as an approach. Ultimately: CLA and MEL, together and apart — but most often together — are envisioned to bring a team closer to functional adaptive management of their program.
Two weeks ago, I spoke online with Dr. Stacey Young about the past, present and future of CLA, and specifically how implementing partners can take CLA forward. Dr. Young led LER’s CLA Team through its genesis until 2019 (10 years in all), is a CLA champion, and penned the conclusion to Dexis’ end-of-contract report. Her proximity to the CLA experience brings an important perspective over how the approach evolved over time — even so, our discussion centered around what programs could be doing, today, to move CLA forward both for themselves and USAID.
Below are some excerpts from our conversation, alongside my own reflection. My hope is it inspires teams to move forward appreciatively along their CLA journey.
“CLA is about … tapping into peoples’ passion”
As Dr. Young and I recalled CLA stories, moments stood out, including forums and other events where implementing partners came together and reflected on their programs. This in itself is not supremely revelatory — Pause-and-Reflect is by this point standard material across solicitations and work plans — but it was worth reminiscing just what makes these moments work. When we think of such settings, we recollect appreciative inquiry, constraints sharing, questions, concerns, peer interaction. Why are these images the lasting feature?
Whether one’s topic or sector of interest is market systems thinking, or Do No Harm principles, or coalition building, or Gender/ Social Inclusion — or anything else — we all aspire to collect systematic knowledge and data on the matter, as it is important to our programs’ choices and decisions (let alone our own). A MEL system based around the same will engender the very questions, concerns, appreciative inquiry, etc., that are the engine to effective CLA. If it turns out we truly care about the knowledge and data our program delivers, we will be natural collaborators, learners and adapters.
This reflection is particularly meaningful for implementing partners. The notion of MEL/CLA (CLA/MEL) born out of passion and not stipulation is fine to say aloud, and nobody would disagree — but this is in part because there aren’t too many conditionalities behind the statement. An implementation plan noting ‘we will do effective CLA’ does not necessarily lead to thoughtful consideration of the knowledge and data to be emphasized throughout implementation; subsequent MEL and CLA may not reflect the program’s interests and passion, and the team may not as readily take the extra mile in interpreting and making sense of central matters.
I therefore latched onto the moment when Dr. Young mentioned ‘peoples’ passions’ as perfectly encapsulating what can (and should) drive our program teams’ CLA journey.
“Partners … inspired the ethos of CLA”
To begin our conversation, Dr. Young recounted her early days enmeshed in USAID knowledge management: market systems development forums (alongside implementing partners). Beyond the technical contributions of the forum, those present from the Agency held the impression attending partners ‘loved’ to share. Of course this effect could be attributed to what was presumably a well-prepared team and effectively facilitated forum, but if the Agency nevertheless came away impressed with the eagerness of implementing partners, this reflects a recognition on their behalf.
And USAID’s CLA Team has always expressed its recognition of the implementing partner experience through its operational principles. In fact, one of the earliest CLA methods championed was the peer assist, which as Dr. Young explained, was in part conceived from these very same forums she herself helped convene (as USAID began funding like forums, certain constraints among implementing partners in sharing their experience and know-how prompted Agency guidance on how peer organizations could meaningfully assist each other across such settings). If engagement and sharing among implementing partners is a precursor to meaningful knowledge and data, it has been the Agency’s role to first appreciate such an influence and then replicate as possible.
“New ADS [Automated Directives System] guidance is coming out soon”
What we as implementing partners do with CLA is taken into account by the Agency. Whenever one of our efforts works particularly well in context — peer review, for one — they tend to stick. The CLA Team is continuously tasked with codifying CLA as part of the Agency’s Automated Directives System, and their effort in this regard (e.g., CLA Plan as part of MEL Plan, or vice versa) is one of the team’s more prominent legacies. That CLA is now ubiquitous within ADS, which is itself continuously iterated, demonstrates the Agency has found a workable mechanism for entrenching CLA’s ongoing evolution.
Where does this leave us? CLA can be implementing partners’ point of leverage for meaningful knowledge and data systems that build upon our passions, reflect our common experience…and basically work for us. Now the LEARN contract has closed, USAID is eager for implementing partners to continue to demonstrate (via the ongoing CLA Case Competition and other means) that CLA brings value not only from the stance of Agency policy but as a contributor to an implementing partner’s effective programming. As I myself reflect over the full conversation with Dr. Young, this is the broadest encapsulation to draw.
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**As I’ve stated from the beginnings of this blog series, my vision is to speak to programs’ intentional management of MEL processes and products. I personally understand CLA to be many things, but in engaging with teams I most often frame CLA under the ‘softer’ components of a MEL Plan: team-wide assessment of the delivery model and underlying assumptions, through collective (e.g., Pause-and-Reflect), streamlined (e.g., working groups) or individual (e.g., journal) means. Such elements may be identified within the programmatic work plan and budget, but all too often as placeholders, with the presumption of a loose discussion around ‘what is working’ and ‘what is not.’ CLA encourages us to bring more intention to these moments, to generate systematic knowledge and data around central dynamics — to build, in effect, an incredibly valuable assessment within programmatic MEL.
