How can better management lead to better service delivery?
This essential question at the heart of public service reforms in many countries, also directly concerns civil society organizations (CSOs), including those in Chad, that are key players in driving social change and promoting inclusive development.
The answer to this question inevitably requires a profound transformation in the way interventions are designed, managed and evaluated.
The capacity-building workshop for CSOs on planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning, held in N’Djamena from 27 to 28 May 2025, immersed participants in Results-Based Management (RBM). This is an approach that offers a genuine paradigm shift. It breaks away from bureaucratic logic towards a managerial culture focused on the real effects of project actions.
What we call a “result” here refers to different realities: outputs directly produced by activities, intermediate outcomes affecting beneficiaries, or even deep, long-term transformations. Knowing how to distinguish between these levels of results is an essential prerequisite for organizations to understand their actions, adapt them, and sustainably improve their impact.
Far from any rigid logic of stability, RBM lays the groundwork for adaptability and invites the manager to strive toward the ideal, like a curve tending toward an asymptote without ever reaching it. The asymptote, that infinite line, represents meaning, ambition, direction. To approach it, evaluation must become a faithful companion.
Yes, evaluation, a word that often sends a shiver down the spine. It’s a scene many know too well. A project is underway, partners are engaged, reports circulate… then comes the announcement: an external evaluator is arriving. Faces freeze, eyes turn away, voices lower. As if being evaluated automatically meant being judged, weighed, measured, and often found wanting.
This fear is inherited from an old bureaucratic model that turned evaluation into a tool of control or an instrument of power.
RBM tells us that evaluation is not about pointing fingers. It is there to examine the process, detect blockages, make adjustments and improve. What is at stake here is the ability to learn from mistakes to enhance managerial and organizational efficiency. It is also about the ability to grasp the evolving demands of citizens and to serve them as best as possible.
The facilitator guided participants through the logic of RBM, which is based on a dynamic sequence: planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
Everything starts with planning, a strategic, almost political act, involving defining a vision, setting objectives, identifying expected results, anticipating risks, and allocating resources. When done well, planning maps out a flexible trajectory. It draws the roadmap to the ideal we aim for.
But a roadmap isn’t enough: one must also watch the road. Monitoring means collecting data, observing effects and measuring deviations. It’s an exercise in clarity. Monitoring acts like a mirror. A mirror doesn’t lie, doesn’t flatter, doesn’t conceal. It shows what is there, without filter. For a manager, having the courage to look at oneself, with all the approximations and shortcomings, is what makes progress possible.
Evaluation goes further than monitoring. It does not merely document what has been done; it questions why things did — or did not — work. It examines choices, assumptions, strategies. It asks the right questions: Were we relevant and coherent, effective, efficient, sustainable? Did we have the expected impact? What could we do differently? In this light, evaluation becomes a stage in the journey, a landmark, a reference point for better understanding, better decisions, better action.
Learning, finally, is the fruit of this entire cycle. It is the moment when insights become levers for action. When mistakes are not buried but transformed into guidance. When one understands that the goal is not to be perfect, but to improve, continuously
That need for continuous learning was strongly voiced by the participating civil society organizations, aware of the growing complexity, instability, and unpredictability of their operating environments. As frontline actors, closely connected to communities, their needs, and emergencies, they must constantly demonstrate adaptability, responsiveness, and innovation. To build on the momentum sparked during the workshop and deepen their understanding of results-based management tools, the organizations emphasized the importance of nurturing a genuine culture of learning. On their own initiative, they created a WhatsApp group on the spot, requesting the facilitator to join in order to maintain a direct connection and continue benefiting from his guidance. In doing so, they expressed a deep conviction: in a world in constant flux, only organizations that are able to learn from their experiences and engage in continuous learning can hope to generate lasting impact.
The answer to this question inevitably requires a profound transformation in the way interventions are designed, managed and evaluated.
This blog post was made possible thanks to financial support from the European Union under grant agreement No. NDICI AFRICA/2022/435-927. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the EU.
