“Teambuilding is complex with difficult conversations, and here [we] were managing complex conversations. I got excited but sometimes left without knowing ‘what next.’ What amazed me was the course correction – it happened, it was organized, and everyone’s going home happy… This is motivation, I go home having a clear mind about CLM and how to be more relevant to USAID and MSH as a body.”
–Henry Kilonzo, M&E Principal Advisor
The first Global Center for Leadership & Management (CLM) M&E Retreat was held in Pretoria, South Africa, from June 20th –26th, 2013, and was hosted by the Building Local Capacity (BLC) Project. M&E experts from 10 countries (Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, Peru, South Africa, and the US) grappled with developing a bottom-up causal framework that was informed by our work and started to identify a set of indicators that we could track across our projects. During the Retreat, staff also discussed ways that M&E can bridge the gap between technical strategy, on one hand, and communicating the results of our work and telling our story on the other.
Our committed global M&E team has identified ways to develop a global community of innovation and practice that will refine indicators to better measure results and tell the story of our work. The Global M&E team has done the following:
- Developed and refined conceptual frameworks for institutional strengthening and leadership/management/governance development, respectively. These frameworks will be shared with technical teams at MSH (including global technical leads and portfolio and project directors) to refine and check measurement assumptions that were made at the Retreat.
- Developed and mapped a set of preliminary indicators to the projects represented.
- Formed a virtual working group to further define these indicators across the Center. A team of global M&E advisors have formed a virtual working group to further define these indicators and share them with a wider group of M&E experts at CLM and Results Management, Impact, & Learning unit (RMIL), so these can be reported against by many, if not all, CLM projects. These indicators will contribute to the institutional indicators being developed by RMIL. CLM projects will be able to contribute data to the global database being developed by the LMG Project.
- A shared virtual workspace is being explored on the MSH Intranet to serve as a central repository of all M&E tools with a description for each of the tools. These tools will be part of the orientation for new CLM M&E staff, so in-country M&E advisors are not developing tools from scratch. This will greatly reduce duplication of effort and enhance learning as similar/identical tools are adapted for use across countries.
- Three working groups have already started to engage virtually to:
- Develop a global database of M&E expertise within CLM
- Revise and refine a set of indicators that many, if not all, CLM projects can report against
- Develop a measurement tool for leadership, management and governance competencies
But our work is not done. Indeed, it has just begun. With this community of innovation and practice, MSH can play a leadership role in establishing global best practice in measuring leadership and institutional strengthening.
To hear more about the CLM Global M&E Retreat, you can check out our M&E Retreat video!
So, tell us what you’re doing to measure the results of your work in leadership, management, governance, and institutional strengthening.
“It’s a new experience to get to know how different countries work on very similar situations, but depending on our context, we can be innovative. The gaps in Peru are similar to the ones in Africa and Asia in the rural areas. Here I was able to deepen my focus and improve the things we’ve been doing so far.”
–Miriam Santivanez, Senior M&E Advisor
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