This past week’s discussion surfaced a rich and timely tension at the heart of future-informed evaluation, i.e., whether evaluation should remain oriented toward prediction and linear change, or whether it must shift toward preparedness, plurality, learning, and adaptation.
Rick Davies pushed this strongly by arguing that, in a world of deep uncertainty, evaluation should engage multiple, sufficiently diverse futures rather than rely on a singular predictive logic. He also raised the important question of what criteria we should use to evaluate futures, suggesting both cognitive criteria about how we think and behavioral criteria about how we respond. He further cautioned against using the language of “transformation” too loosely, reminding us that transformation is not inherently good and that evaluators must remain attentive to the aims and politics of change itself.
MicheleFriend offered an important philosophical and methodological reframing. Rather than asking what must change first, she argued that transformation should not be seen as a linear sequence at all. Methods, criteria, institutions, and mindsets evolve together through feedback loops between assessment, dialogue, feasibility, and implementation. Her example showed evaluation as an iterative, reflective process that not only judges performance but also helps people and institutions ask who they are becoming.
Dr. Uzodinma Akujekwe Adirieje grounded the conversation in African and low-resource health systems, emphasizing that the deepest shift must be one of mindset: away from compliance-oriented, donor-facing reporting and toward adaptive, locally owned, problem-solving learning. His contribution was especially valuable in showing that transformative evaluation is not abstract; it can produce concrete results when evidence is embedded in real-time decision-making and community realities.
Rhode Early Charles expanded the discussion by arguing that transformation also depends on how evaluation knowledge is communicated. Reports often remain too technical and evaluator-facing. She called for evaluation findings to become multiple, tailored knowledge products that different audiences can actually use, while also warning that overly lean data approaches may miss emerging issues and strategic learning opportunities.
Taken together, the week’s exchanges suggest that future-informed evaluation may require not one single shift, but several at once…from prediction to preparedness, from singular to plural futures, from linear models to feedback-rich learning, from compliance to local ownership, and from static reports to more usable forms of knowledge.
On a technical note, Silva asked a practical platform question. To my knowledge you cannot pick a thread and contribute to another person’s comments. I’ll pass this onto the EvalForEarth team though.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 06/04/2026
Week Two Summary
This past week’s discussion surfaced a rich and timely tension at the heart of future-informed evaluation, i.e., whether evaluation should remain oriented toward prediction and linear change, or whether it must shift toward preparedness, plurality, learning, and adaptation.
Rick Davies pushed this strongly by arguing that, in a world of deep uncertainty, evaluation should engage multiple, sufficiently diverse futures rather than rely on a singular predictive logic. He also raised the important question of what criteria we should use to evaluate futures, suggesting both cognitive criteria about how we think and behavioral criteria about how we respond. He further cautioned against using the language of “transformation” too loosely, reminding us that transformation is not inherently good and that evaluators must remain attentive to the aims and politics of change itself.
Michele Friend offered an important philosophical and methodological reframing. Rather than asking what must change first, she argued that transformation should not be seen as a linear sequence at all. Methods, criteria, institutions, and mindsets evolve together through feedback loops between assessment, dialogue, feasibility, and implementation. Her example showed evaluation as an iterative, reflective process that not only judges performance but also helps people and institutions ask who they are becoming.
Dr. Uzodinma Akujekwe Adirieje grounded the conversation in African and low-resource health systems, emphasizing that the deepest shift must be one of mindset: away from compliance-oriented, donor-facing reporting and toward adaptive, locally owned, problem-solving learning. His contribution was especially valuable in showing that transformative evaluation is not abstract; it can produce concrete results when evidence is embedded in real-time decision-making and community realities.
Rhode Early Charles expanded the discussion by arguing that transformation also depends on how evaluation knowledge is communicated. Reports often remain too technical and evaluator-facing. She called for evaluation findings to become multiple, tailored knowledge products that different audiences can actually use, while also warning that overly lean data approaches may miss emerging issues and strategic learning opportunities.
Taken together, the week’s exchanges suggest that future-informed evaluation may require not one single shift, but several at once…from prediction to preparedness, from singular to plural futures, from linear models to feedback-rich learning, from compliance to local ownership, and from static reports to more usable forms of knowledge.
On a technical note, Silva asked a practical platform question. To my knowledge you cannot pick a thread and contribute to another person’s comments. I’ll pass this onto the EvalForEarth team though.