Coordinating multiple interventions

MSD competency B3

Coordinating multiple interventions

Manage a portfolio of interventions that combine to stimulate sustained system change

Competency definition

Practitioners develop and coordinate multiple interventions that together create coherent change in a system. They choose to target changes that can spread and scale after programme support ends.

Knowledge areas

Practitioners with this competency will be knowledgeable about concepts and ideas described and explored in these resources...

Tools for adaptive management: how to make a large complex project more adaptive, flexible and responsive
Achieving systemic change in markets: an example framework for defining and populating pathways for systemic change
Leverage points: places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything
Crowding in: how and why firms copy business models introduced by market facilitators (case study from Uganda)
Building a technical strategy as described in this blog from Bangladesh, about setting goals for systemic change

Skills and experience

Practitioners with this competency will have acquired qualifications, skills and practical experience that may include:

development of a coherent policy portfolio or set of programmes all targeted towards a common goal such as change in certain indicators or delivery of a public service
coordination or management of a strategic planning process in a business or organisation

Guidance for teaching this competency

Content delivery
Frameworks on how change spreads in complex systems. For example: Donella Meadow’s leverage points; the innovation adoption curve; crowding in of business practices; institutional norms. Application of these ideas to how a combination of programme activities could be designed to create change synergistically.

General guidance on content delivery

Case study
Provide practitioners with a case study of a given market system or situation and a programme goal - for example improved access to a product/service. Challenge them to develop interventions that go beyond one partnership with a market actor and instead aim to spread a changed practice across the system. For example media-based interventions, exchange visits, incentive structures, government policy.

General guidance on using case studies

Coaching & mentoring advice

Encourage staff to focus on the system, rather than any one partnership, especially if a partnership is showing signs of dependence on programnme funding. Nurture a willingness in staff to re-focus programme efforts towards creating systems change, even if it means changing partner organisations.
Push staff to think of scale-up and crowding-in strategies as early as possible, rather than multiplying a successful business model/intervention with more and more partner organisations.

Guidance for assessing this competency

Traditional questions
Probe for the ability to analyse a situation (from past experience or a current event) from different angles. Push for practitioners to generate different ideas of how they might intervene to shift dynamics in the situation.

General advice on traditional interview questions

Presentation of case analysis
Ask practitioners to develop a portfolio of interventions for a given market systems case. Probe for ability to sequence the interventions that allow for the gradual spread of the change in the system. Push them to rationalise their choice of interventions with regards to feasibility, sustainability, and scale.

General advice on case analysis methods

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