The Deal Wheel - A framework for developing interventions for systemic change

Most interventions fail. Or at least fail to achieve sustainability and scale of impact. And that's fine. It's the creative destruction of innovation through market forces.

But more of them fail than they should and there are a number of reasons why. A good intervention comprises five key components and Agora's "Deal Wheel" helps you to understand these components and try to avert these failures before they arise.

Is a 'deal' because a good intervention always involves a quid pro quo - not necessarily financial but in terms of give and take, risk and reward. And 'wheel' because until it's round, it won't roll; successful interventions need to have considered all five components before they're ready to be deployed. We still use lots of optional alternative heuristics within each component from the MSD world, but asking the right questions is the key.

Success can't be guaranteed, but its likelihood can be increased in following the framework. Here, we explain the components in more detail.

1. Nodal Stakeholder Analysis

   You need to develop a vison of what type of actor, at a high level, is going to everything that needs to be done in the system to address some of the constraints identified and - crucially - why! We're not talking about specific people, companies, or institutions here but, in theory and in aggregate, if some of the underperforming functions of a system were fixed who would need to do something differently and what would be their capabilities and incentives to do so. We're talking here, for example, at the level of 'private training centres' will 'offer new and improved training course' because 'they will increase their revenues'. This is, of course, simplified and would likely require parallel changes with perhaps regulators licencing new training institutions because it aligns with their policy goals and students enrolling on and paying for courses because they see an employment opportunity.

   
   

2. Planning for sustainability and scale

   Many interventions get stuck in 'pilot mode'. Things that maybe work for a company or in a small area or while being supported, but which don't really include the incentives to drive scale up and broader systems change. This is not something you have to 'wait and see' to assess if it happens - you can plan for it. At the outset, you should be able to assess the extent of and variation within the problem that you are trying to address and, therefore, what the mechanisms for scale might be. Asking the question how do we expect this to achieve more benefits to more people over time, should help you to adapt the intervention at the outset. It might mean there are different partners or change agents who need to be brought in at the outset or different terms in your agreements. You need to have a vision for how different actors will be able to continue their behaviour change without continued support and how new actors will change their behaviours if that is needed for the intervention to achieve scale.

   
   

3. Understanding individual incentives

   While much market systems work is focused at the 'system' and 'function' level, systemic change relies on behaviour change, and functions don't change behaviours; people do. People, be they individual workers or consumers or the the people that run governments and companies, behave in the way they do because of their incentives to do so. These incentives are pluralistic ranging from financial gain and loss avoidance down to quality of life, social status and moral compulsion. The incentive and capability scorecard helps to map out these incentives to help you figure out how to respond to them. https://beamexchange.org/tools/1621/

   
   

4. Intervention tools

   Following stages 1-3 you should have a good idea of who needs to change which behaviours and what might drive them to do so. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be is what you have to fill with your intervention tools. Market systems programme don't have any magic wands - they deploy cash, loans, guarantees, technical assistance and all of the other things that any other external intervention might deploy. The difference is how, when, how much, and to whom they are deployed. If you've narrowed down a vision of working through a government departments to change labour policy and determined that decisions within that department are made by a status-driven technical lead and not by the politically driven department head, then it might be that you steer intervention instruments towards supplying them with data to help them deliver on their KPIs and get a promotion - suiting your needs of making policy change more likely while suiting theirs of elevating their visibility and status. Every intervention will be different and intervention tools should be determined so that they do not impede the chances of achieving sustainability. Even if a particular actor is lacking the capital necessary to invest in an impactful idea, bearing too high a proportion of the cost might mean that their commitment to the idea is diluted and the chances of sustainability is undermined.

   
   

5. Intervention approach

   The final piece of the puzzle is how these tools are deployed. This is effectively the soft-skills and marketing of your offer and ideas in a way that is most likely to lead to behaviour change. The same message delivered by a different messenger can be very different in its outcome. Successful intervention must be sensitive to and plan for this - the humans and their interrelationships that comprise systems are not objective agents and respond to multiple incentives in behaving in the way that they do.

And their you have it. It may appear complicated - it is. This is why interventions that aim for systemic change are more difficult than those with more linear theories of change - with the reward of sustainability and scale of impact.

We hope you find this tool useful to put in place the key dimensions of effective intervention for systemic change.