This article is written by Schuyler Miller, Presidential Management Fellow in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Across both the public and private sector, professionals often reflect on whether we are meeting our goals. It is widely accepted that learning through self-awareness is not only a way to grow personally, but also a key driver for professional effectiveness.  Research suggests that it improves workplace decision-making, communication, and effectiveness.  If self-awareness is important for individual success, is the same true for organisations?

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Existing research indicates institutions with a strong learning culture – organisational self-awareness – tend to perform better.  This culture includes practices such as analysis, knowledge sharing, training and development, and evaluation.  Studies have found an organisation’s learning culture is the greatest driver of impact.  For example, employees in organisations with a strong learning culture are  37 per cent more productive, on average, than their peers in organisations without strong workplace learning.

Recognising this, the U.S. Congress has passed several laws aimed at bolstering federal learning cultures, including the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policy-making Act, which requires federal agencies to develop evidence to support policymaking. My bureau, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs  (INL), has made organisational learning a strategic priority.

The Division of Design and Learning is fostering a learning culture by first  focusing on our  program design  process

INL leverages diplomacy and over $4 billion in foreign assistance to counter crime, illegal drugs, and instability abroad.  In operation since 1978, the bureau currently works in more than 90 countries.  In 2018, INL launched an effort to make the bureau a strategic, agile, and learning organisation.  Under  this initiative, INL created the Office of Knowledge Management to lead bureau efforts to better understand and advance the effect of our programs and efforts.  Our journey towards a learning culture offers lessons for Apolitical readers on a similar path, and the Apolitical platform also presents an opportunity for us to learn from others.

INL’s  learning  story

The Office of Knowledge Management is not INL’s first or only effort at examining ourselves or our results.  For example, INL’s Office of Western Hemisphere Programs developed over 100 indicators to track  key strategic measures in the region.  INL also shares practices through its Performance Management Working Group and collects data on transnational organised crime (TOC) programs under President Trump’s counter-TOC  initiative.

Our office is building on these initiatives to help the bureau achieve its learning goals.  I work in our Division of Design and Learning (KM/DDL), which stewards INL’s program design, monitoring, and evaluation processes.  Colleagues in other divisions of our Office of Knowledge Management provide technical guidance on criminal justice sector issues, continuing education, and training for staff and partners.

KM/DDL is fostering a learning culture by first focusing on our program design process.  In October 2019, the bureau adopted evidence-informed standards from the evaluation field to guide how we design programs.  For example, the relevance standard focuses on identifying significant needs.  Another, plausibility, prioritises activities that will reasonably achieve change.

While INL has made notable progress, we recognise becoming a learning organisation requires planning, resources, and cultural change

KM/DDL has trained nearly 500 staff and implementers on the standards in half-day sessions with 15-20 participants on average.  DDL facilitators have walked program managers through the design process, including identifying the problem and then determining attainable goals, objectives, and activities that “add up” to systemic change and minimise harm.

INL staff have begun applying the standards to select 2020 projects.  As we learn this new approach, our office is developing tools to help staff analyse their country context and design informed interventions.  For example, we are refining our in-country assessment process and creating knowledge products that synthesise evidence and experience-based lessons.

INL’s  learning  about learning

While INL has made notable progress, we recognise becoming a learning organisation requires planning, resources, and cultural change.  As KM/DDL pursues our goals, we have identified some key challenges that INL — and other agencies with similar goals —  may face.

  1. Roles: It is essential to identify the right program design and management roles for staff and partners, and then to support these roles.  Which stakeholders need to be involved in design, monitoring, or evaluation?  How can we build a bureau-wide learning culture?
  2. Resources:  Staff often face barriers such as limited time and resources as they design and oversee programs.  How do we best equip staff with accessible resources and efficient processes to facilitate systematic program design, monitoring, and evaluation?
  3. Real Learning:  It can be difficult to make an honest assessment of progress and adjust accordingly.  What are good practices for learning from both successes and failures, and communicating results to audiences such as Congress, partners, and citizens?

Our way forward

To begin addressing the challenge of roles, KM/DDL continues to provide our design training beyond INL domestic staff to field staff and program implementers, both relevant stakeholder groups.  Before training our interagency partners, INL leadership also met with partner agency leadership to build buy-in.  Beyond training, we are promoting INL’s vision of program roles by commending learning practices, devoting time to workshopping program planning, and prioritising new tools for staff.

Our current  picture of  success  has three features —methodically design and manage programs,  seek to  know what works and what does not, and honestly  apply what we  learn  to improve results

In response to the challenge of resources, KM/DDL is rolling out tools and knowledge products to better equip program officers to design and manage programs effectively and efficiently.  As we do so, INL is learning to distil lessons from evidence and our experience to inform programs.  Our initial knowledge products focus on police corruption and corrections.

To foster real learning, while also refining roles and providing resources, INL is establishing a bureau-wide monitoring database, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) guidance, and practices that reward learning from success and failure.  This builds on research that program M&E, when done well, can increase impact.  This data will help us design programs, conduct adaptive management, and communicate our learning quicker and better.

So, can INL become a more self-aware learning organisation?  Our current picture of success has three features:  we will 1) methodically design and manage programs,  2) seek to know what works and what does not, and 3)  honestly apply what we learn to improve results.  INL’s efforts to build systematic program design and monitoring work towards this picture.  As we do so, we welcome collaboration with governments who have experience to share.  — Schuyler Miller

Schuyler Miller is a Presidential Management Fellow in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.  He serves in the Office of Knowledge Management’s Division of Design and Learning, where he supports bureau program design and implementation.  Schuyler has multiple years of experience overseeing foreign assistance programs and supporting multilateral engagement focused on anti-corruption and democratisation.  Find him at  MillerSM@state.gov.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)