
A tension with intention - again
Here I am, back thinking about intention, intentionality, preferred direction of change, who is setting this direction, etc. A tension that is not going away and is worth pondering and writing about regularly. And I'm anew standing in the middle of that tension with the new job I just started.
But let me explain. I am talking a lot about Theories of Change with my colleagues, and how we at Fondation Botnar can formulate viable ToCs so that they are actually evaluable and we can at some point say that we are making a difference for the people we aim to make a difference for, and how we can learn and adjust to make that difference we make more significant. Now I am not an adherent of a very structured, linear-causal way of approaching theory of change. To start with, I tell people to write down what the current situation is, what they want to do, why or what for they want to do that, and how they know it worked or not. Based on that, we can then go and start to add detail and think about how to measure certain things. We do that on different levels (organisation, systemic arenas, thematic portfolios) and then weave these different levels together.