Unique Collaborative Project Builds Culture of CLA to Help Achieve Goals

MOMENTUM represents USAID's vision for the next generation of development assistance, with a focus on building the capacity, sustainability, and resilience of local governments and partner institutions to deliver evidence-based and high quality maternal, newborn, and child health care and family planning and reproductive health (MNCH/FP/RH). MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator is the "connector" among six awards, playing a unique role in guiding suite-wide monitoring and evaluation, knowledge management, adaptive learning, and strategic communication. The project's design is distinct, and the context is complex, requiring the alignment of interests, incentives, and inputs across a wide range of players. Further, Knowledge Accelerator began its work just before COVID-19 hit; most other MOMENTUM awards started after offices went virtual. Given that few other projects have this design and context, we recognized that the project's legacy would be tied to outcomes as well as how it modelled a new way of "doing business." To effectively "build the plane as we flew it," purposefully creating a strong culture of collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) within the project would be critical. Doing this required promoting a safe environment and developing and adapting practical tools and systems.

Fostering a culture of CLA within MOMENTUM knowledge Accelerator has resulted in leadership modeling vulnerability and staff feeling motivated to learn from instances where things do not go well and adapt. It is now the norm to build in moments of reflection and continually seek ways to improve. At this stage, early successes and challenges are also examined and shared within and beyond MOMENTUM. Overall, the project's CLA culture supports us to continually adapt how we measure MOMENTUM's outcomes, help capture and apply programmatic learning, share knowledge impactfully, and bring visibility to the work happening across the complex and continuously evolving suite.