1. Irene Guijt, Learning by Design Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge
Stories and Statistics with SenseMaker® New Kid on the Evaluation Block
Irene Guijt, Learning by Design
Dave Snowden, Cognitive Edge

2. Examples of applications
Liverpool Museum of Slavery
culture of violence – Latin America
grassroots groups - East Africa
girls’ empowerment – Rwanda, Ethiopia
agricultural value chains - cotton, tea, banana
water service delivery - Ghana, Uganda
youth leadership - global

3. Why use SenseMaker? Dynamic contexts need adaptive programme
Respond to emerging needs
Understand diversity of perspectives
Focus on values and people’s experiences, with quantification
Not stand alone approach
Build in other evaluation frameworks

4. Research & monitoring Prediction Hypothesis/inductive Null-hypothesis/
Derived from material created by Max Boisot
Academy of Management Montreal 2010
Research & monitoring
Prediction
Pareto world
Hypothesis/inductive
Null-hypothesis/
abductive
Log of event frequency
Gaussian world
Probable
Possible
Trigger
Anticipatory awareness
Plausible
Log of event size

5. Rewards before the fact
“Economists and workplace consultants regard it as almost unquestioned dogma that people are motivated by rewards, so they don’t feel the need to test this. It has the status more of religious truth than scientific hypothesis.”
“The facts are absolutely clear. There is no question that in virtually all circumstances in which people are doing things in order to get rewards, extrinsic tangible rewards undermine intrinsic motivation”
New Scientist 9th April 2011 pp 40-43

6. Essence Not only numbers Not one ‘truth’ So …
Numbers have meaning from their context
Not one ‘truth’
Stories and experiences as collective filters
So …
Lots of ‘fragments’ – micro-narratives
People signify themselves
Use visualization to see patterns and trends

7. Contextualized Statistics
From question to action
Prompting question
Story capture
  patterns
Many Narratives
Contextualized Statistics
Emergence
Self-signification
Act on signals
Visualize patterns (theme, org, time, geo)
Make sense 7

8. Methodology in Practice
start

9. Scale - GlobalGiving 2011 Roll Out Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania
Continuous collection
20+ GG partner NGOs
2000+ scribes
24,400+ stories
1,800+ organizations named
2010 Pilot
Kenya
2 months
5 GG partner NGOs
120 scribes
2,637 stories
242 organizations named

10. Asking what? Goals, values, behaviours Non-negotiables seek surprise
& confirm known

11. Tell us about a time when a person or an organization tried to change something in your community.

12. Stage 1 Analysis – Sensemaker® (& SNA, text analysis)

13. Stage 2 Analysis – People
Who
Pre-analyzes
Makes sense
What
Curiousity
Which patterns matter
How
Clean up
Action…. ‘What can be done to get more of this kind of story’ (or less of that kind)’

14. Mapping dispositions – evolutionary potential of a system

15. After 18 months Library of lived experiences
Visualizing shifting story patterns
Dissemination to official aid sector
Actionable – client, constituent voice
Rolling baselines
Useful for organizations – facilitate decision-making
Information challenges existing frameworks
Cross-organizational thinking
Stories for evidence-based policy changes
Framing the impact for/to donors
Peer-to-peer knowledge management

16. Last thoughts See- Attend-Act Measure success without pre-defining
It’s not just getting material in front of people
Statistical links (especially self-discovered) create attention
Linked “objectivised anecdotes” provide explanatory power and lead to action
Measure success without pre-defining
measures of success change over time
allowing learning through tolerated failure
contextual adjustment
Evidence-based policy
tests of coherence empower ‘people’ to use statistics
potential for whole of population engagement
complexity/narratives alternatives to “Delphi” to allow real time distributed consultation