CARE Failing Forward

Making People Suffer: The Perils of Partnership and Budget Delays

Mike Mukirane from Uganda's West Nile team talks about an attempt to recruit and pay midwives for a CARE project through the local government system. Because we didn't know enough to set it up well, the midwives went for 6 months without getting paid, "working tooth and nail" the whole time. Learning more from other partners' experience, thinking more carefully about contract requirements, and understanding implications of our budgeting choices are all recommendations for how to avoid the problem.

It's All About Backup: When Experimental Systems Go Wrong

In our first ever Francophone episode, Fanomezantsoa Randrianarisoa from CARE Madagascar talks about what happens when you launch an experimental monitoring system before partners are ready for it. Besides challenges getting the data you need, there are serious risks to sustainability. Investing in people's skills, creating back-up plans, and aligning with global systems are some of the solutions.

Dans notre premier épisode francophone, Fanomezantsoa Randrianarisoa du CARE Madagascar explique ce qui se passe si vous lancez un nouveau system d’évaluation avant que l’équipe ne soit prêt. Il n’y a pas seulement les difficultés de trouver l’information, mais aussi les risques pour pérenniser le system. Les leçons appris comprennent : un appui au personnel, l’appropriation du system, et l’harmonisation avec les autres systems.

The Art of Humility: Accepting Reality and Learning From Failure

Ian Lathrop from USAID’s LEARN project talks about how to show the art of humility, and learn from failures so we don’t repeat them. After action reviews, pause and reflect, and having leaders model behavior are all practical actions he suggests for getting better at this. Some of the resources he suggests to create space for learning from failure are USAID Learning Lab - CLA Maturity Tool Resources, the video on Community Connector and CLA: Proving the Concept, and Learning Lab’s failure blog.

9 Ways Not To Build a House: Trying to provide dignified shelter in Ugandan Refugee Camps

It's more than a house; we are trying to provide dignity. Sam Okello and Alson Madrar from CARE Uganda talk about all of the ways they tried to build safe and dignified housing for South Sudanese refugees into Uganda. Rainy season, termites, riots, thieves, and hundreds of refugees a day were challenges that the houses couldn't stand up to--literally. Over a year of trials, house after house failed. By working with refugees with special needs to find out what would work, they eventually got to a housing model where 90% of refugees feel safer, and more than 20% cheaper than the original method. See their journey here. Read the project evaluation here.

Notes from the cutting edge: How work with youth highlighted gaps in implementation

Failure without learning is final. Otherwise, it's just part of the process. Walter Mwasaa from CARE's SHOUHARDO III talks about how cutting-edge work with youth highlighted gaps in our success metrics and how we hear feedback. Cultivating the art of listening, building acceptance of failure into our culture, and understanding that failure is everywhere are his key takeaways. It's in the smallest details--embrace when people are late, and see how that translates to new ideas.

Implementation is Not Enough: Applying Lessons from Agriculture Practices that Farmers Won't Use

Octavio de Sousa from CARE Mozambique talks about our recent post-project evaluation of agriculture adoption. Some practices the community never adopted—but didn’t tell us until 5 years later. Some they did adopt, but market forces made it impractical after the project ended. Octavio reflects on how power dynamics, safe spaces, and incentives can prevent us from making the best impact possible, and from applying our learning. Read the Learning Brief published with our partner FANRAPAN here.

Digital Projects and the Danger of Expertise

Mark Malhotra from CARE’s Innovation team talks about the process of designing digital solutions, and the danger of trusting experts when it seems like they aren’t delivering what you need. Human centered design, frequent check ins, and setting clear expectations with consultants all feature as tips to make your next digital experience easier. Tip: just because someone else in an expert, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong.

Processes and Privilege: How to prioritize innovative local partners in market solutions

Bob Rabatsky from Fintrac discusses his experiences as the Chief of Party for Feed the Future’s Partnering For Innovation, and what it teaches us about working with the private sector and market based solutions. Re-setting application processes to prioritize qualified local businesses, focusing on setting good milestones, and overcoming resistance to private sector solutions are some of his key takeaways.

Learning Backwards: How decisions we need to make should drive learning agendas

Emily Janoch from CARE's Impact and Learning team talks about all the wrong ways she has tried to do learning agendas, why she kept repeating the same mistakes, and the counterintuitive solution that works for her.

Weekly Screwups: the role of leaders in learning from failure.

Everett Harper from CARE's board talks about the role of the leader in learning from failure, taking action to correct problems, and creating psychological safety. Some tools he refers to in creating safe spaces to learn from failure are:

The Pre-Mortem: figuring out failures in advance, then building in mitigating actions before starting the project

Retros: short for retrospectives, a repeated process for projects, teams, initiatives or companies, to open up a blameless, psychologically safe environment for team members to learn, improve and mitigate future risks. For leaders, it is an opportunity to access information and knowledge from people closest to the customer / beneficiary.

Customer Development: articles from Steve Blank, Book by Cindy Alvarez , interview by Cindy (I love her work), 10 Things I've Learned about CD, and a basic "What is CD"

What makes dreams impossible: How we can miss the mark on creating programs that last

Hiba Tibi from Palestine talks about her favorite quote: "Fear of failure is the only thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve." Even in crisis and fragile settings, we must programs that create space for women's empowerment and will be economically viable in the long term. We can't let the changing environment prevent us from focusing on equality that will last. Check out the recent paper on how to do that with Women's Economic Empowerment programs, and the thinking on how to approach the Humanitarian and Development nexus for long term change.

Mistake Money, Premortems, and other ways to incentivize talking about failure

Susan Davis of Improve International talks about how we can incentivize talking about failure so we can make new mistakes rather than continuing to make the old ones. She also talks about how we can resolve problems as we find them in the Guidelines for Resolving Problems with Water Systems. Some tools she suggests are the Nakuru accord, pre-mortems, and innovative financing mechanisms—what she calls “Mistake Money”. What's the key? Getting communities involved in the conversation.

Raising our expectations: how our pre-conceived notions cause us to fail

Juan Echanove talks about how we fail at workshops because we have come to expect that most of them will be bad. It's not just a problem for people in the room, these low standards for workshops ultimately cost us in terms of program design, productivity, and local ownership.

A Year of Listening: Why we struck out with social movements the first time we tried

"It's all about being slapped in the face by others" says Sofia Sprechmann--CARE International's Program Director--about how CARE misfired on its first effort into working with social movements in Latin America, and how we had to focus on listening and building trust.

Fourth Quarter Failure: How we got the FY18 budget wrong, and what we're doing now

Michelle Nunn discusses how CARE's FY18 budget missed the balance between audacious goals and operational excellence. She ends with a call to all staff to err on the side of candor and speak truth to power.