Simple RBM

In 1997 Greg Armstrong -- a governance advisor to the Canadian International Development Agency implementing a series of constitutional reform workshops in Thailand -- was asked to evaluate one of CIDA's most successful governance activities, using a Results-Based Management framework.  Those activities, the creation of conflict resolution networks in Cambodia and Thailand, had begun in 1994 before RBM was widely used in the organization, and the interventions were not originally phrased in Results-Based Management terms.


Like many development activities it was not, in fact, a single project. It was a combination of many activities funded over time, by several different Canadian and other international agencies, and by local organizations in Thailand and Cambodia.  Given that it had never been planned using the RBM framework, that framework itself, particularly the jargon, helped nobody in the field -- the NGOs, the universities, the participants from agricultural organizations, human rights workers or the police -- to explain what they were seeing as the very real accomplishments of the conflict resolution programming. 

The need for a more realistic reporting framework

It was clear from this experience that a more field-based approach to using results-based management for planning but also for project monitoring and evaluation, was needed.  This was particularly true for governance projects of the kind CIDA was funding that time under the SEAFILD (The Southeast Asia Fund for Institutional and Legal Development) umbrella, on public service reform, democratic development, decentralization, parliamentary reform, rule of law  and human rights.  

Governance and democratic development projects often have difficulty in specifying concrete results using Results-Based Management terminology, not because the results are not there, but because the language commonly used for describing results in measurable terms is inadequate, as indeed it is often inadequate in other fields too.

Working with Isabel Lloyd, the SEAFILD Director,  Greg Armstrong undertook a series of case studies over three years to illustrate how professionals working under real time and real world pressures both understood and could describe their own and others' results.

From these case studies, and from those derived from activities funded by other agencies including UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNESCO and a number of international and domestic NGOs, a clear, simple and workable terminology was derived to help field managers, project implementers and policy makers (from government and civil society) describe, define and then assess their results, in a simple, but effective results-based monitoring and evaluation approach.

Subsequent work on health, education, gender, agriculture, environment and rural development projects has further contributed to the RBM framework. The approach continues to evolve.  In collaboration with managers, line professionals and, increasingly, programme beneficiaries, the language and common-sense basis of this approach to RBM is regularly tested, reworked and adapted to suit different agencies' needs, application in new fields, and feedback from implementers on the ground, on what they know about their own results.  The result is a common-sense framework that can be used to build simple needs assessment, rapid appraisal, planning, monitoring and evaluation systems in any development field.



Top of page

Simple Results Language

The bottom line for any organizational innovation -- and for people who are not using it, that is essentially what results-based management is -- is that if the ideas it promotes do not resonate with the users, do not serve them, do not make the lives and work of practitioners easier or more productive, and are not to some extent adaptable to the real needs of the users, the innovation simply will not generate support from either leaders or practitioners and will not, in the long run, be used effectively.  The concepts will be ignored, or co-opted into existing practice.

But if the language and the ideas make sense to the people expected to use them, if service providers and practitioners can recognize themselves and their own work in the terms used and the methods proposed, then a concept like RBM -- and the actions and ideas that underpin it and flow from it -- will have a fighting chance of surviving and perhaps even flourishing.

User-friendly explanations of results

The language in the user-based approach to RBM training presented here is derived from the experience of field workers and project managers in countries and sectors throughout Asia. It can, therefore, be understood in, or translated into any language in the region. 

The emphasis is on the use of clear, easy-to-understand terms that make sense to the practitioners in their own work, but which can also be translated, eventually, into any of the RBM-specific terms used by aid agencies.

To date training in this simplified approach to Results-Based Management has been provided in

• Cambodia
• Thailand
• Lao PDR
• Vietnam
• Indonesia
• India
• Tajikistan

Emphasizing simple, common-sense language for thinking about policy and practice, these RBM concepts have been used in training with professionals and practitioners from the field level to the most senior levels of host governments, coming from a wide range of government ministries:

• The Interior
• Women’s Affairs
• Environment
• Finance
• Health
• Education
• Agriculture and Rural development 
• Justice
• Defence

Participants have come from agencies as varied as UNICEF, UNIFEM, UNESCO, national Administrative Courts, aid coordinating agencies, specialised planning and reform units, universities and NGO’s.

Experience implementing this results-based management framework has shown it to be effective with active politicians and parliamentary staff, professionals, managers and finance officers, and with service providers in a wide range of roles, from teachers, to police, and human rights workers.

Fundamentally, this is an approach that has proven successful because it starts from where participants are; applies basic concepts of adult learning and organizational change; and can be shared easily by, and across partners working at all levels. 


Top of page

Next: RBM Training