MEASURING IMPACT Making Use of the Portfolio Organizational Learning at USAID

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Learning from experiences to improve future actions has been a priority of the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) for decades. Indeed, a number of approaches to learning and
knowledge management have already been tried in the Agency through general and sectorspecific
initiatives, with varying results. Few, however, have been able to achieve sustained
cross-Mission learning for conservation interventions.
This technical analysis explores previous and ongoing social learning efforts, best practices,
challenges, and lessons in USAID as a foundation for improving the implementation and design
of the Agency’s forestry and biodiversity programs. This analysis is particularly relevant as the
Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and the Environment’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity
(E3/FAB) begins to develop a Cross-Mission Learning Program under the Measuring Impact
initiative, a five-year activity to promote the adoption of best practices in the USAID program cycle
among Missions using biodiversity funds. The findings reported in this document can help inform
the overall design and structure of the Learning Program and provide insight into possible
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challenges and best practices.
A comprehensive literature review on organizational learning and key informant research on
previous and current internal and external USAID-supported social learning efforts produced
several suggestions for the design and implementation of future such learning efforts in the
Agency, including the Cross-Mission Learning Program. The following paragraphs summarize
these suggestions.
1. Recognize Different Challenges for Internal- and External-Facing Social Learning
Efforts. Internal social learning efforts focused on groups in the Agency tend to have
difficulty sustaining activities because they often lack facilitation resources and dedicated
staff time. These efforts also usually involve only a small number of people and suffer
membership loss from staff turnover more than external-facing efforts, which usually
engage many times more people.
Several Agency Bureaus support external-facing social learning efforts run by outside
implementing partners, which have dedicated staff and resources so they can maintain
consistent leadership and online presence. The main challenge for these efforts is to
maintain participant engagement, especially through online platforms. These efforts draw
participants with wide-ranging interests from disparate geographic areas, which makes it
difficult to identify relevant content for a large number of people that is specific enough to
be novel and interesting. USAID’s large, diverse, and geographically broad membership
makes it hard to bring members together for in-person interaction and knowledge
exchange, which is critical for engagement and motivation.
2. Cultivate Motivation. Maintaining staff motivation, often overlooked in activity design
and launch, is challenging for internal and external social learning efforts. Future social
learning efforts should identify the most interested and engaged participants and focus on
their learning needs, while also investing in knowledge dissemination and products that
are relevant to broader audiences. This strategy aimed at core engagement would also
provide benefits for the larger group with varied interests, an audience that is harder to
focus on strategically.
Motivation can also be encouraged by attaining senior leadership buy-in for learning
activities, deploying incentives for participation, and holding in-person events.
3. Keep Focus with Learning Agendas. A Learning Agenda is a set of questions related
to an organization’s work. Answers to those questions help the organization work more
effectively. Learning Agendas help focus group efforts on the creation and sharing of
1 Appendix C describes how these recommendations will be integrated into the Cross-Mission Learning
Program.
MEASURING IMPACT – ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AT USAID EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3