1. Documenting Success and Overcoming Failure
To begin this training, we need to understand what policy is and what the policy landscape is for a given issue in a given country.

2. How Does Monitoring Improve Negotiation and Advocacy?
Understand which actions and decisions played a key role in success
Identify missteps if goal was not achieved
Increase likelihood of success in future negotiations
In the Budget Mapping session, we discussed monitoring budgets to track whether commitments are being implemented and hold decisionmakers accountable. There is another type of monitoring that can be beneficial for negotiations and advocacy. At the end of a negotiation, it can be helpful to revisit and assess our own process, regardless of whether we successfully achieved our objective or not. Internally-focused evaluation of our efforts is focused on the process of a negotiation, and documenting the key steps along the way.
This type of monitoring can help us in three ways:
Understand which steps and actions were beneficial to any successful outcomes of the negotiation;
Identify where the negotiation may have gone wrong, if it was not successful;
With this increased understanding of what was done well and what wasn’t, we are more likely to succeed in the future.

3. Success: Key Questions to Ask
Who was the right decisionmaker?
What was the right timeline?
What communications and outreach methods and messages were used?
What role did outsiders play?
Several factors may contribute to a negotiation’s successful outcome. Here are some questions to ask when evaluating a successful negotiation, so that we better understand which decisions and actions made a difference along the way.
Who was the right decisionmaker? Perhaps previous negotiations only focused on a single decisionmaker, such as the Ministry of Health, but in this case we focused on members of key committees in Parliament.
What was the right timeline? As discussed in the Budget Mapping Session, budget development and approval follows a very prescribed process with specific entry points. Did we choose to begin our negotiations at a moment when the decisionmakers were focused on our goal and able to achieve change?
What communications and outreach methods and messages were used? Did we tailor our communications materials and messages to resonate with the audience? Was a new message, or new evidence, introduced to make our arguments stronger?
What role did outsiders play? Was our negotiation public, and did the media or social media have a role in increasing awareness and building support? Conversely, were we able to keep a sensitive negotiation quiet so that decisionmakers felt more secure in having frank discussions?

4. Failure: Key Questions to Ask
Is the outcome mutually beneficial to all parties?
Did you understand other parties’ interests—especially where they differed?
Was implementation planned in advance?
Were nonfinancial issues addressed?
Is there a silver lining?
If a negotiation or advocacy effort has not resulted in the desired outcome, these questions can help identify the factors that may have contributed.
Perhaps we entered a negotiation process with multiple goals but we only achieved one. Is that a failure, because we didn’t succeed in 100% of what we set out to do? What are some reasons that only achieving a partial goal could still be considered a success? Generate responses.
Perhaps the goal we achieved was the only one that was also beneficial to the other parties. Achieving a single goal that is mutually beneficial, rather than multiple goals that are only beneficial to one party, improves the overall relationships as well as the prospects for future negotiations with that party.
In the overview session, we discussed the importance of understanding each others’ interests. If a negotiation is not successful, it may be because we didn’t fully understand what was ultimately motivating the other party. If you asked a member of Parliament to make a major policy change, but didn’t realize that she wasn’t willing to take a stand on a controversial issue immediately before an election, your goal may have been unworkable from the start.
It is common for negotiations to fail in the last stages, even after a commitment has been agreed, because implementation wasn’t well-planned. All parties may commit to a policy change, but if there is no discussion of how it will get done and who will do what, the change is unlikely to take place.
Perhaps we entered a budget negotiation focused on economic and financial issues. This is understandable, but social, political, and cultural issues may also have a major influence on negotiations, regardless of the specific topic. For example, perhaps a commitment was made to fund adolescent sexual and reproductive health services, but no outreach was conducted with community leaders. A district council, in the face of real or perceived cultural opposition, could choose not to allocate the program funds as intended.
Sometimes there is an unexpected benefit, or a “silver lining,” when a negotiation failure occurs. We can learn a lot from the process itself. Perhaps in learning more about the other parties, and the broader policy environment, we realize that our goal was not realistic, or that it wasn’t the right goal to start with. We can then reframe and revise our process to have a better chance of success next time.

5. The AFP Decision Tree
Advance Family Planning (AFP) has developed a simple tool, called the Decision Tree, that can be used to document the steps of an advocacy effort. While it is project-specific and not intended for formal evaluation, this tool is a good first step at diagramming the steps of a negotiation or advocacy effort. Others have developed more rigorous, intensive evaluation tools and guidance, some of which are listed on the last slide. Let’s start with a look at the Decision Tree.
The Decision Tree is designed as a planning tool, to outline how to track a commitment once it is made. The agreed-upon commitment is entered into the top of the diagram. Each expected step is entered into the incremental outcome boxes. These incremental steps should include every small step you expect in the process from commitment to impact. As implementation of the commitment takes place, negotiators and advocates monitor whether each step actually happens, by simply choosing yes or no. The ultimate impact is entered into the final box of the Decision Tree. We’ll practice using the Decision Tree in an exercise next.
Source: Advance Family Planning, Advocacy Portfolio, 2015.

6. Learn More
Advance Family Planning, “Implement a Plan Part 1: Monitor for Impact—The Decision Tree and Part 2: Evidence-Based Brief—Make Your Case,” accessed at
Advance Family Planning, “Results Cascade & Decision Tree,” (January 2015), accessed at
Julia Coffman, Monitoring and Evaluating Advocacy: A Companion to the Advocacy Toolkit,” accessed at
Nicole R. Judice and Elizabeth Snyder, “Framework for Monitoring and Evaluating Efforts to Reposition Family Planning,” (July 2013), accessed at
K4Health, “M&E Guides,” accessed at
Idalene F. Kesner and Debra L. Shapiro, “Did a ‘Failed’ Negotiation Really Fail?” Negotiation Journal 7, no. 4 (1991): ; Summary available at:
If you are interested in learning more about formal monitoring and evaluation of negotiation and advocacy, these resources provide much more detail.