The phrase “military-industrial complex” describes a self-reinforcing system that continues producing more of something because the incentives favour production. Development occasionally feels as though it has built its own version. A framework-industrial complex.
Faced with uncertainty, we build a framework. Faced with complexity, we build a framework. Faced with criticism that nobody really knows what works, we build a framework about how to think about what works. Then we wonder why nobody knows what works.
The problem is not that we have frameworks. The problem is that we seem unable to stop producing them. At some point, a field has to ask itself a simple question. If the biggest challenge is a lack of evidence, why do so many of its smartest people keep spending their time inventing better ways to think about doing things rather than better ways to learn from having done them?
A field that loves tools
Every profession has its habits. Scientists run experiments. Lawyers write contracts. Consultants create PowerPoint slides. Development practitioners build frameworks. Lots of frameworks.
The pattern is remarkably consistent. Whenever a challenge emerges, the instinct is often to create a new tool, a new methodology, a new canvas, a new diagnostic, a new maturity model, a new set of guiding questions or a new visual representation of an existing idea. Sometimes this can add real value, particularly if the new “thing” distils accumulated evidence and experience. Often, it doesn’t. The symptoms are everywhere. When a concept becomes popular, it rarely stays a concept for long. Before long it acquires a visual identity, a workshop process and a facilitation guide.
Systems become ecosystem maps, usually dense enough to resemble a plate of spaghetti dropped on a printer. Complexity becomes an iceberg, because apparently every difficult problem can be improved by placing most of it underwater. Strategy becomes a roadmap, even though development programmes rarely know exactly where they are going, let alone the route they will take to get there.
The problem is that development has become remarkably good at producing new ways of thinking about problems while investing far less in understanding what happened when somebody tried to solve them. Theory of change templates provide a particularly good example. There are now countless versions in circulation, each offering a slightly different route to visualising causality. Yet the field spends far less time revisiting old theories of change to ask a more uncomfortable question: were they right?
It is hard to escape the feeling that we have become more interested in improving the diagrams than testing the assumptions they contain.
Waiting for tool number 242
One of the most common observations in MSD is that the evidence base remains limited. Practitioners regularly call for more evidence, more learning and more understanding of what works in different contexts. Questions about sustainability, scale, crowding-in and systemic change continue to surface after decades of implementation. At the same time, the BEAM Exchange currently hosts 241 tools, guidance notes and frameworks.
That is not a criticism of The BEAM Exchange. It is doing exactly what it was established to do. The number simply raises an awkward question. At what point does a field have enough tools? More importantly, what problem is tool number 242 expected to solve that tools one through 241 could not?
Perhaps the existing iceberg diagrams have the wrong colour palette. Perhaps what is missing is another canvas. Or another matrix. Or a framework designed to explain the framework that was created to improve the framework that came before it.
Thinking versus learning
The distinction matters because frameworks and evidence do different jobs. Frameworks help us think about doing things. Evidence helps us learn from having done them. Development often treats these as interchangeable. They are not.
Imagine two potential contributions to the field. The first is a new systems framework. It comes with fresh terminology, an attractive diagram, a facilitation guide and a training package. The second is a frank account of an intervention that failed. It explains the assumptions that proved wrong, the incentives that were misunderstood, the decisions that were regretted and what happened after programme support ended.
Which contribution would teach the field more? Now consider a different question. Which one is more likely to be funded, published, promoted and presented at conferences? The answers may not be the same.
This is not because development practitioners are irrational. The incentives make perfect sense. Frameworks are visible. They can be launched, branded, shared, taught and marketed. They create tangible outputs within project cycles. They demonstrate innovation. They offer something new – with limited risk.
Learning is harder. A synthesis study might take years. An ex-post assessment may produce messy conclusions rather than neat answers. A comparative review may end with the deeply unsatisfying finding that success depended heavily on context. A paper documenting failure is unlikely to attract the same enthusiasm as a new methodology. Somebody somewhere fears getting blamed.
Escaping the complex
The first systems map may have transformed how we think. The first theory of change may have improved programme design. The first iceberg may even have helped explain complexity. But by now, development has enough icebergs to sink a fleet of Titanics. Every new framework consumes time, attention and money that could instead be spent learning what happened when somebody used the ones we already have.
The next breakthrough is unlikely to come from another diagram. It is more likely to come from the less glamorous work of documenting experience, testing old assumptions and learning what happened after the workshop ended.
That requires different choices: by donors about what they fund, by practitioners about what they publish, and by conference organisers about what gets a platform. Frameworks get launched. Post mortems get buried. Until those incentives shift, the complex will keep producing tool number 242.