RBM

Act 1: The Future of Development Management

Ottawa - 2020. The curtain lifts, showing a grade twelve 'World Politics and Development' class. A teacher is standing at a white board and students sit at tables, in a U around her. The teacher writes three letters - R B M - on the board and turns to the class:

Sara: (quietly, in awe) Ah, the famous acronym!

Teacher: Can anyone tell me what this stands for?

Four hands shoot up. The teacher points to a student.

Simon: (with confidence) Ren Min Bi - the People's Currency

Teacher: (apologetic, but humored) I'm sorry, Simon, I think you've got your letters crossed - that's RMB. (Laughter ripples through the room, but is quickly squelched by the teacher's no-nonsense look) Does anyone else want to try?

Three students wave their arms enthusiastically while the rest of the class shift their gaze back to their laptop screens, slouching cool-ly. She points to the boy on her immediate right.

Johnny: (rather smugly) Results Based Management... a key term in International Development.

Teacher: That's right Johnny. We'll be focusing on RBM for the next few days as we explore Bilateral and Multilateral approaches to Development. Before we jump into the course-pack, can anyone tell us where the term RBM came from?

The same three hands shoot up... (all of whose owners have parents working at CIDA Head Quarters)

Teacher: Yes Sara?

Sara: RBM is a form of strategic management and planning that grew out of the demand for greater government accountability in the 80s and 90s. It does what it says, it manages projects and programs for 'results'.

Teacher: Very good Sara... and what exactly are the 'results' these development organizations are trying to create and/or manage?

Simon: (slightly apprehensive, but desperate to redeem himself) Well, my mom always talks about the complexities of sorting out the 'outputs' from the 'outcomes' from the 'impact'. These are all what she call 'results'... but she's told me there are different levels of results, and that people she deals with in the field often get them confused. She gets frustrated because there's a logic to it all - the outputs roll up to outcomes, and outcomes to impacts... whatever that means.

Before RBM, mom told me that organizations didn't think big picture enough... they thought that activities alone would create the impact, but apparently it's not that simple. It's the impact that people and organizations are trying to work towards, it's why they're doing the project in the first place. But 'outputs', and 'outcomes'... they sound like tech jargon to me.

Teacher: Thank you Simon. With answers like this it looks like we won't be needing the course pack much. You've given us a great introduction to the terms, and pointed out one of the challenges of this management approach as well - sorting the 'levels of results' for people not accustomed to working with this type of 'logic'. Let's explore more of these ideas in a case study of a UNDP project that used RBM. We will see how these terms actually connect to development management on the ground.

...end Act 1


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In mid-December I spent the better part of a week at a CIDA RBM Workshop, and as you can tell, this little acronym has been taking up a lot of my head-space since. Having studied RBM in university, and co-written a case study about the evaluative processes - including RBM - of a CIDA-funded project in Sri Lanka (now used in a 4th year IDS class at Trent, shortly to be published in a condensed version in the undercurrent journal), it was interesting to approach RBM from a different angle... RBM in practice.

As you can tell from the futuristic scene above, I think that RBM is more than a 'flavour of the month'... in fact it is being integrated more and more extensively in institutions like CIDA (on project, country-program, and institution levels). I see this continuing in the short-term at least. The global accountability trend means that even UN bodies are talking 'resultspeak', so it's important that those of us forging a career in the field know how to relate to donors and international orgs. As a student I was somewhat critical of the whole RBM approach, (and don't get me wrong, I still have many reservations) but, after this workshop I now see how RBM helps those 'planning for change' to look at the big picture, and then systematically break down all the resources and activities needed to get there.

Of course this assumes that change is needed, and can be controlled. I think it's important to back up and ask big questions like:
- Is change needed?
- Who determines what change is needed?
- How it should be approached... are suggested interventions culturally and economically relevant?
- How does the project or program contribute to human development or the empowerment of those involved (or targeted)?

If these things are explored upfront (instead of assumed), I do not think the idea of 'engineering social change' is an inherently negative one. In the context of PPIC-Work we are seeking to provide loans for technological advancements that will eliminate child labour in some sectors (brickyards and quarries), and drastically change the type of work children are doing - thereby increasing the learning opportunities available to them - in other sectors (automotive repair, carpentry, textiles). I think in this case, it’s an innovative approach to improving child wellbeing, and a relevant one as a result of rigorous consultation with and ownership of project stakeholders. (For example, business owners will not take on a loan if they do not feel it is benefiting their business as well as the children).

I will always struggle with the narrow causal logic of the RBM frame - I believe that as you move up the results chain you can attribute less and less of the developmental change to your activities or project alone - but, I will concede it's useful as a planning and management tool if its application does not prevent it from responding and adapting to things outside the original project/program frame. On a positive note, I think the use of RBM has evolved enough (at least within CIDA) that its application allows for an active and participatory engagement with process as well as product (a huge potential danger with so much emphasis on results). At the workshop I was tremendously impressed by CIDA staff members' articulations of their commitment to include diverse stakeholders at all phases of the project cycle and their willingness to grapple with how to move beyond stakeholder 'buy in' to a western (and imposed) model.

Alright, I think I've finally got RBM out of my system now! Thanks for staying with me.