Pathways to Change
How to run an impactful workshop using our free template
Recently, we ran a Theory of Change workshop for the team at the Digital Credentials Consortium, which is hosted by MIT. We’ve found that organisations and projects that are looking to create big impact can benefit from this way of seeing into the future.
Theory of Change (ToC) is a methodology or a criterion for planning, participation, adaptive management, and evaluation that is used in companies, philanthropy, not-for-profit, international development, research, and government sectors to promote social change. (Wikipedia)
In this post we’ll outline what this kind of session aims to achieve, share a template which you can re-use, and explain how to make best use of it.
We’ve become pretty good at running these kinds of workshops for all kinds of clients, large and small, and find them particularly useful in charting a course for collaborative working. Thanks goes to Outlandish for introducing this approach to us!
Note: around seven people is ideal for this kind of workshop. We run this workshop remotely, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t be done in person.
🥝 At the Core
The template has several sections to it, but at the core is the triangle of Final goal, Outcomes, and Activities. You work through these in turn, first defining the goal, moving onto outcomes to support that goal, and then activities which lead to the outcomes.
One of the first things to figure out as a team is the timeframe for the work you are doing together. In terms of the final goal, is that to be achieved in six months? a year? 18 months? three years?
Write that down on the sticky note at the top left-hand corner just to remind everyone.
⛏️ Breaking down the goal
The final goal can be difficult to write, so we’ve broken it down into three sections to make it easier for participants:
Before asking people to contribute ideas, we run through some examples from our own experience. The first row relates to work over around six months, the second over about 18 months, and the third over about three years.
Next, we use the section to the right hand side where each individual participant can take some time to write down what they think the organisation does (or should) do, to influence their stakeholders, to have the desired impact in the world.
They can approach these boxes in any order — for example, some people find it easier to go straight to the impact and then work backwards.
Once everyone has written something in all of the boxes, we go around and ask everyone in turn to explain what they’ve written. This adds some context.
Then, we go around again, and ask everyone to point to things that other people have written that they definitely agree with. This sets the scene for combining ideas into a collaborative final goal.
✅ Good enough for now, safe enough to try
After a quick break, participants are ready to collaborate on a combined final goal. We ask if anyone would like to have a go at filling in one of the boxes. They can do this directly themselves, or we can screenshare and fill it in for them.
After some discussion and iteration of what’s been written, we move onto the other boxes. It’s worth mentioning that the most important thing here is facilitated discussion, which means timeboxing in a way that doesn’t feel rushed.
The phrase to bear in mind is “good enough for now, safe enough to try” which is a slightly different way of “perfect is the enemy of good”.
🔍 Identifying the Outcomes
Getting the goal agreed on by the team is 80% of the work in this session. In our experience, it’s entirely normal for this to take an entire 90-minute session, or even longer.
Moving onto the outcomes, these are statements which support the goal. They are change or achievements that need to happen to help it be achieved; they should be written in a way that it’s possible to say “yes that has happened” or “no it has not”.
For example, “the world is a better place” is not an example of a well-written outcome, but “more people agree that the city is a safer place to live” would work.
Other examples of decent outcomes from different kinds of work might be:
- Local biodiversity is enhanced and pollution is reduced.
- Parents demonstrate improved understanding of internet safety and digital citizenship.
- Economic diversity within neighbourhoods is increased.
There are several ways we’ve run this part of the workshop, from full-anarchism mode where people just ‘have at it’ through to taking it in turns in an orderly way to add (and then discuss) an outcome.
🚣 Getting to the Activities
People new to ToC workshops often conflate Outcomes and Activities. The easiest way to tell the difference is to ask whether it’s something we’re working towards, or whether it’s something we’re doing.
So, for example, if we take the outcome “Local biodiversity is enhanced and pollution is reduced” some supporting activities might be:
- Introduce incentives for creating wildlife-friendly spaces, such as green roofs and community gardens.
- Run regular river and park clean-up operations to remove pollutants and litter.
- Enforce stricter regulations on industrial emissions and waste management.
- Offer subsidies for businesses that implement green practices that reduce pollution and enhance biodiversity.
- Promote the use of environmentally friendly pesticides and fertilisers in local farming and gardening.
Again, we’ve run workshops where we’ve just had a free-for-all, others where it’s been more orderly, and then others where teams have gone away and come up with the activities outside the session.
Some, in fact, have taken the existing activities they’re engaged with and tried mapping those onto the outcomes. It’s an interesting conversation when those activities don’t map!
💡 Final thoughts
A ToC workshop is a powerful way to chart a course together. It’s a collaborative endeavour for a small group to spend time on. What’s important is strong facilitation, as without it, participants can spend too much time (or not enough!) sharing their thoughts.
If you would like to explore WAO running a ToC workshop for your organisation, get in touch! We also have other approaches and openly-licensed templates that you may want to use and peruse at our Learn with WAO site.
