Change with greater purpose
Accelerating impact of
project portfolios
Notes from the frontier of [ir]relevance
@gquaggiotto
AP Regional Innovation Center

About me

Delhi: 286 μg/m3 for PM10
WHO: 20 μg/m3 for PM10
A tale of 2 Asias

Relevance
gap
The challenge of relevance

The plaster syndrome
Source: adapted from Cassie Robinson

The limits of quantitative in a VUCA world

The second half of the chessboard

The limits of foresight

Accelerator Labs are in one third of the world’s countries
▪ Algeria
▪ Angola
▪ Argentina
▪ Azerbaijan
▪ Benin
▪ Bosnia and
Herzegovina
▪ Burkina Faso
▪ Cambodia
▪ Caribbean
(Based in
Barbados)
▪ Cape Verde
▪ Central African
Republic
▪ Chad
▪ Colombia
▪ Congo
▪ Democratic
Republic of
Congo
▪ Dominican
Republic
▪ Ecuador
▪ Eswatini
▪ Ethiopia
▪ Ghana
▪ India
▪ Iraq
▪ Jordan
▪ Kenya
▪ Lao PDR
▪ Lebanon
▪ Lesotho
▪ Libya
▪ Malawi
▪ Malaysia
▪ Mali
▪ Mexico
▪ Morocco
▪ Namibia
▪ Nepal
▪ Niger
▪ Pacific (Based in
Fiji)
▪ Pakistan
▪ Palestine (PAPP)
▪ Paraguay
▪ Philippines
▪ Rwanda
▪ Serbia
▪ Sierra Leone
▪ Somalia
▪ South Africa
▪ South Sudan
▪ Sudan
▪ Tanzania
▪ The Gambia
With thanks to the State of Qatar (Qatar Fund for Development) and the
Federal Republic of Germany for their generous contributions.
▪ Timor Leste
▪ Togo
▪ Tunisia
▪ Turkey
▪ Uganda
▪ Ukraine
▪ Uzbekistan
▪ Vietnam
▪ Zambia
▪ Zimbabwe

Come work with us
We will digitize our
processes and reduce the
time for citizens to get a
driving license by 30%
We will redesign mobility
so that we will no longer
use cars, depend on fossil
fuels and we’ll provide
healthier life for everyone

Competing on the rate of learning

Where to start?

Accelerating learning
NEW INTENT
INTENT
DO STUFF
NEW INTENT
REFLECT
Source: adapted from Chora

Stuff happens…
… so what?

While UNDP is still valued, its relevance and influence has
declined.
A key challenge UNDP will need to address if it is to preserve its
relevance and influence is the progressive fragmentation of its
support. Over a period where both delivery and staffing resources
has declined, the number of projects in the country office’s
portfolio has continued to increase. The combination of a
declining budget and pressures from many different agencies and
geographical regions means that the UNDP programme includes
many very small programmes that operate in widely scattered
locations. It could be argued that many of these are too small to
be relevant or useful. Many provide only limited short term
benefits and do not have a plausible approach to generating real
learning and influence beyond project boundaries.

Engaging with the mothership

A health test

2 questions
• Why this particular set of projects at this point in
time?
• Are these projects relevant and coherent to the
type of problems that governments are facing?

Portfolio: given curse, or something to be
actively shaped?

“A set of connected
interventions that learn from
each other”
- T. Mitchell

Transitioning to a new system
DELIVERY
LEARNING
Source: Berkana Center

Mindsets

In systems thinking, we define the ideal future state
(the goal) and try to get there, which only works when
you have a high level of predictability.
In complexity, we describe the present and see what is
possible to change, defining a direction, not a
destination, setting ourselves on a discovery journey.
D. Snowden

Don’t think like Linnaeus

Existing portfolios
New portfolios
Hypothesis: 2 pressure points

Do you want to accelerate the
impact of your portfolio?

Extracting intelligence from ongoing
portfolios

MVP

Effectively manage portfolios
A new social dynamic
Iterative
A muscle to be trained
Non obvious capabilities (abstraction,
pattern recognition, rethoric)

A long term journey

Investing in people

Developing a community, knowledge base

Working outloud

Finding the right entry points
Country
planning
New
management
Program
reviews
Office retreats

“Change happens one
person at a time, and for
their reasons, not yours”
E. Semple

A2i
Accumulation effects?
Mexico
Indonesia
Malawi
Serbia
Zimbabwe
Mongolia Montenegro
Philippines
Vietnam
Malaysia
Thailand
Pulse Lab
UN Secreteriat
Pacific

Accumulation effects?
• Integration into core business processes (e.g. country
programming)
• Shift in regional funding to “big pivots”
• Shift in HQ innovation funding to “deep demonstrations”
• New corporate transformation strategy centered on “new
competencies for system transformation” and set up of a strategic
intelligence unit
• One-to-one calls between the big boss in NY and regional
managers

Still a long way to go
1.Policy coherence for governments
2.Development of a “non-obvious” module
3.Revisiting financing mechanisms (portfolios/system transformation
vs projects)
4.Revisiting partnership modalities (transactional vs. relational)
5.From project implementer to orchestrator (mission driven)

R&D for 2020 – spatial representation of
systemic risks

Existing portfolios
New portfolios
Hypothesis: 2 pressure points

The need for pivots

Early insights

If we want more strategic innovation…

Opportunities & tough nuts to crack
• New donor/gov’t proposition – joint investments in accelerated learning,
coherence
• New types of skills (abstraction, strategic arguments, etc)
• Change is a feature, not a bug. Design for that
• The design thinking curse/ scalability
• Structural short-termism (e.g. rotations, incentives)

Change with greater purpose
Thank you
@gquaggiotto
AP Regional Innovation Center