Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

You face a complex situation when the relationship between what you will do and its
effect is unknowable until the results finally emerge. These are circumstances when
reaching agreement about action tends to be a political negotiation because there are
diverse opinions on the best course of action or different judgments about what will work
and not work, and often both disagreement and uncertainty are high. The principal
results-based management challenge presented by complexity is not so much to plan
what you will achieve – to predict the unpredictable – but to monitor what actually
emerges so that it informs future action. This is not easy because it involves
understanding how a campaign contributed to outcomes when the contribution is
indirect, partial and many times unintended or unexpected.
Typically for advocacy campaigns, the environments in which they work, as well
as the campaigns themselves, are complex. Thus, the outcomes – changes in the
behaviour, relationships, activities, policies or practices of individuals, groups,
organizations and institutions that the campaign attempts to influence – are highly
unpredictable. The relationships of cause and effect tend to be nonlinear and multi-
directional. Thus, the outcomes may be plausibly linked to the activities of the campaign
although the relationship is indirect and even unintentional. In addition, the campaign’s
contribution to the outcome is usually limited; other actors and factors contribute too.
And, frequently campaigning success rarely is replicable because achievements are
highly dependent on context and the campaign itself changes in the process.
For campaigns, even when the relationships between activities and outputs are simple
or complicated, generally there is enormous uncertainty about what will be the
campaigning outcomes and the impact. Much of what a campaign will do is decided
month to month and what will be achieved is uncertain. This is true not only of
campaigns but of all efforts for social change. In a study sponsored by McGill University
and DuPont Canada, the authors conclude, “…to know step by step, in advance, how
the goals will be attained [is] an approach doomed to failure in the complex and rapidly
changing world in which social innovators attempt to work…. In highly emergent
complex environments, such prior specification is neither possible nor desirable because
it constrains openness and adaptability.”
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Campaigns December 2011