metadata: authors: 0: author: Campos,Jose Edgardo L.
1: author: Randrianarivelo,Benjamina
2: author: Winning,Kay
count: Burundi
docna: 0: docna: Escaping the capability trap: turning
            "small" development into "big" development
docty: Policy Research Working Paper
subtopic: Health Care Services Industry,Educational Sciences,Educational Institutions & Facilities,Energy Policies & Economics,Hydrology,Effective Schools and Teachers
teratopic: Public Sector Development,Health, Nutrition and Population,Education,Finance and Financial Sector Development,Private Sector Development
abstracts: cdata!: The international development community
            has been grappling with the challenges of implementing
            development programs and, consequently, with the design of
            practical approaches to attaining program objectives. This
            paper contributes to the emerging discussion on addressing
            the implementation capacity gap in developing countries. It
            presents the post-conflict experience of Burundi in building
            the capacity of its public sector to deliver basic services
            and demonstrates a practical approach to implementing what
            has been called problem-driven iterative adaptation. The
            Leadership for Results approach shows that a results-focused
            process of learning through disciplined experimentation
            enables local officials and stakeholders to more willingly
            learn and adopt new ways of doing things. This approach can
            be structured to address the time inconsistency between a
            development program and political or electoral concerns,
            both of which are critical to overcome implementation challenges.
geo_reg_key: 517196,517191
repnme: repnme: Escaping the capability trap: turning
            "small" development into "big" development
display_title: Escaping the capability trap:
            turning "small" development into "big" development
listing_relative_url: /research/2013/12/18622245/escaping-capability-trap-turning-small-development-big-development
topicv3: Teachers Management m1326119 1523,Water m1326522 137,Education m1327048 470,Power and Electricity Sector m1327094 515,Health m1504661 3480
publishtoextweb_dt: 2013-12-01T00:00:00Z
historic_topic: Public Sector Development,Health, Nutrition and Population,Education,Finance and Financial Sector Development,Private Sector Development
no_of_pages: 33
author_keys: 0: author_key: 95614
1: author_key: 782221
2: author_key: 972261
model_extractions: WPS6717 Policy Research Working Paper 6717 Escaping the Capability Trap Turning “Small” Development into “Big” Development _J. Edgardo Campos Benjamina Randrianarivelo Kay Winning_ The World Bank World Bank Institute Leadership Department December 2013
Policy Research Working Paper 6717

# **Abstract**

The international development community has been grappling with the challenges of implementing development programs and, consequently, with the design of practical approaches to attaining program objectives. This paper contributes to the emerging discussion on addressing the implementation capacity gap in developing countries. It presents the post-conflict experience of Burundi in building the capacity of its public sector to deliver basic services and demonstrates a practical approach to implementing what has been called problem-driven iterative adaptation. The Leadership for Results approach shows that a results-focused process of learning through disciplined experimentation enables local officials and stakeholders to more willingly learn and adopt new ways of doing things. This approach can be structured to address the time inconsistency between a development program and political or electoral concerns, both of which are critical to overcome implementation challenges.

This paper is a product of the Leadership Department, World Bank Institute. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The authors may be contacted at jcampos@worldbank.org.

_The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent._ Produced by the Research Support Team
# **Escaping the Capability Trap: Turning “Small” Development into “Big” Development**

J. Edgardo Campos, Benjamina Randrianarivelo, and Kay Winning<sup>**1**</sup>

**Keywords:** Problem driven iterative adaptation, capability trap, time inconsistency,  Burundi, Leadership, public sector capacity building, results, change management, implementation challenges, science of delivery

> 1 J. Edgardo Campos (jcampos@worldbank.org), Benjamina Randrianarivelo (brandrianarivelo@worldbank.org), and Kay Winning (kwinning@worldbank.org) are all from  the World Bank Institute’s Leadership practice. This paper has benefited immensely from the support and encouragement of Alassane Sow and Mercy Miyang Tembon, Country Managers for the World Bank in Burundi from 2006 – 2012 as well as the invaluable assistance and advice of Cyprien Mbonigaba, former Minister of Transport, Posts and Telecommunications (2000-2001) for the Government of Burundi and RRA national level coach in Burundi since 2007.  We would also like to acknowledge Moira Hart-Poliquin for having the foresight to introduce leadership development as a key aspect of the dialogue and engagement with the Government of Burundi in the immediate post-conflict period, and Edouard Aldahdah for recognizing the early signs of an emerging dynamic that the leadership program was engendering and encouraging us to study and articulate its logic.
In a seminal piece on capacity building and development, Pritchett, Woolcock and Andrews (2013) make a compelling case regarding the persistence of weak capacity among developing countries despite decades of institutional and policy reform efforts supported by billions of dollars in concessionary loans and donor assistance. Their argument can be summarized in the following way. The international logic of development the past fifty or so years induces (a) developing country governments to engage in what they call _isomorphic mimicry_ and (b) multilateral financial institutions and donor countries to encourage the practice of such mimicry. Isomorphic mimicry, simply put, is the adoption of practices proven to have worked in more well-developed or advanced settings without the concomitant development of capabilities necessary to make those practices work in a new setting. Developing country governments seek legitimacy for their development programs. What better way to “persuade” the citizenry that their programs have been proven to work well in more advanced countries so by adopting them, “we will be able to hasten the pace of our own development.” Donor countries on the other hand can claim to their constituents that their aid is enabling poorer countries to “follow in their footsteps” and thus become more developed. The incentives work beautifully to propagate a sustained process of institutional transplantation. There are hundreds of examples of this littered throughout the developing world. . . . budget systems that work well in the OECD being transplanted to poor African countries. . . . solid waste management practices in modern urban settings being used as the gold standard by rapidly growing cities in Asia. . . . Weberian meritocratic civil service adapted to former colonies . . . elections and “competitive” campaign finance foisted on nascent democracies. . . etc. But the experience to date suggests that this model of “Big Development” has rarely produced real development, where poor countries are able to develop the capacity to get things done and move programs forward. In those rare instances where a poor country has managed to advance rapidly and develop the requisite capacity, the government pursued policies and institutional reforms that often ran orthogonal to the above logic, with programs anchored on home grown approaches,<sup>2</sup> e.g., South Korea (see Amsden, Haggard), Japan (see Johnson), Taiwan, China (see Wade).

The flaw in “Big Development” is that, for the most part, it has ignored the challenges of implementation. Donors and Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFI) have excelled at providing developing country governments with excellent in-depth diagnostics of gaps and weaknesses in a given sector or area and in offering a menu of “good practices” from elsewhere that could fill those gaps. Thousands of trees have been felled to produce the paper needed for these analyses/reports. These are of course good and necessary. But they ignore the most challenging aspect, implementation: How do you move in a sustained manner from the status quo (where there are big gaps) to an expected better state (where some of the gaps are filled)? The presumption often made is that, with sufficient technical training (and hardware) in a proposed new approach or methodology, the government will be able to engineer and manage this move. But, again as Pritchett et al. suggest, this rarely happens. The challenges that confront governments in implementing a new initiative go far beyond technical issues and oftentimes, the underlying non-technical challenges are the most daunting – and government officials and other stakeholders often do not have the skills and tools to deal with these challenges. Not

> 2 See for instance Amsden (1989) and Haggard (1990) on South Korea, Johnson (1982) on Japan, Wade (1990) on Taiwan, China.

2
surprising, implementation falters and the program fails to meet its objectives. Implementation has been the Achilles heel of Big Development.

The development community is only beginning to grapple with the issue and challenges of implementing development programs. The World Bank for instance is refocusing its efforts towards developing a so-called “science of delivery” for development programs, which at its core is about developing a better understanding of handling, as well as concomitant practical approaches for, overcoming implementation hurdles towards attaining program objectives.<sup>3</sup> This paper hopes to contribute to this emerging discussion. It presents an approach to implementation and service delivery – Leadership for Results (L4R) -- that offers a path (and certainly not the only one) towards helping developing countries address implementation challenges. The insights are based on several years of experience developing and refining an approach to support the efforts of the Government of Burundi in developing the capacity to deliver basic public services.<sup>4</sup> From the lens of Big Development, Burundi is by no means a so-called star performer and, as Pritchett et al. would argue, it will take the country a long time to reach the capability levels of Denmark. But, from the perspective of making progress towards developing the capacity to deliver basic services, it certainly has made significant in-roads and is in many ways exemplifying what it means to tackle development through problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA).<sup>5</sup> And the hope is that, through its home grown efforts, the country will be able to hasten the process of developing its own implementation capacity and ultimately “bend the arc of history” by reducing poverty much quicker, i.e. reach middle-income status in less time than it would take via “Big” Development.

There are two fundamental insights drawn from the Burundi experience and which underpin the basic philosophy of the approach. First, a results-focused process of learning through disciplined experimentation enables local officials and stakeholders (including skeptics) to more willingly learn and adopt new ways of doing things, i.e. shift behavior and mindsets. Second, by consistently producing small tangible results that build on each other, the process induces key decision makers to create and sustain the authorizing environment needed to enable operational teams (those who actually do the work) to conduct the disciplined experiments through which learning what works and what does not can take place, i.e. in the language of the economist, it creates a politically incentive compatible mechanism. Both are essential for change (and thus development) to emerge organically. These insights and the rich experience from which they have been drawn have helped shape the L4R and define its constituent elements.

The paper is structured in four parts. Section I provides a brief historical background on Burundi as a post-conflict state and presents the state of service delivery in 2006 when the L4R (as itself an

> 3 See for instance, World Bank (May 2013)

> 4 Since 2011, the approach has been deployed in a number of other developing countries to support development programs including among others the implementation of medium term development plans, performance contracting in the public sector, delivery of basic services in post conflict states, water sector reform, agency restructuring.  See http://www.lead4dev.org.

> 5 See Andrews et al (2012) for a discussion of the PDIA and Andrews (2013) for its relevance to institutional reforms.

3
experiment) was first broached to the government. Section II presents an analytic narrative of the sequence and logic of events and milestones that demonstrate the growing capacity of the public sector in Burundi to deliver basic services.<sup>6</sup> Section III extracts from the Burundi experience the elements of an approach to capacity building in developing countries – Leadership for Results (L4R) – that can be adapted flexibly to different contexts. Section IV concludes with implications for the development of a “science of delivery” for development programs.

# **<u>I. From Civil War to Post-Conflict State</u>**

Emerging from a ten-year civil war that began in 1993, Burundi began a long peace process, which resulted in what has been characterized as an exemplary transition from conflict to post-conflict. In August 2000, a peace and reconciliation accord was signed, and a transition government and parliament were established in 2002. A new constitution was approved in a national referendum in February 2005, communal elections were successfully conducted in June 2005, and parliamentary elections were held in July 2005. Mr. Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the former rebel movement, was elected the new president by the Parliament and sworn into office in August 2005.

However, despite these promising circumstances, the new president inherited a country with huge institutional, financial, political, security and service delivery challenges left over from the civil war. For example, in the education sector, a serious loss of infrastructure (school buildings) as well as the collapse of provision networks for educational materials and equipment, such as the delivery of textbooks, was greatly hampering formal child education. Desertion of students from their schools due to insecurity (in 1992, 650,000 children were in school, yet by 1994 this had dropped to 440,000<sup>7</sup> ), as well as death and departure of teachers compounded lack of infrastructure and materials, leading to insufficient service delivery in education. In the academic year 2005-2006, the student to classroom ratio was 87:1, and the ratio of math textbooks to student was 20:1<sup>8</sup> .

Given the high rate of turnover at the vice-presidential and ministerial level, coupled with the fact that many Cabinet members and senior decision-makers in the newly constituted government were relatively inexperienced in professional government roles, the capacity of the public sector to act and absorb the large in-flows of money to the newly post-conflict environment and generate results from this was a matter of concern for the government, the donor community, and the citizenry. Emphasis was therefore placed on the need for an intensive and sustained process of capacity building to enable the public sector to perform its functions. Delivering on the pledges of the president in the new five-year plan was of utmost importance to security and development in this post-conflict, delicate power structure. The elected government needed to demonstrate success in priority areas, deliver needed services to citizens and gain political capital and trust from all to support the process of establishing stability and security in the country.

> 6 See Bates et al (1998) for the basic idea of an analytic narrative. 7 World Bank Institute (2007a)

> 8 World Bank Institute (2007b)

4
# **<u>II. Organic Capacity Building: 2006 - Present</u>**

In early 2006, at the request of the World Bank’s Representative Office in Bujumbura,<sup>9</sup> a small team from the World Bank Institute (WBI) visited Burundi and engaged government officials in a discussion of the potential for initiating a leadership development program. This program would aim to support the government and strengthen the capacities of the country’s leaders to drive change at the institutional level and accelerate the implementation of national programs aimed at delivering results to benefit the population and the country at large. At the request of the government, a WBI-supported leadership development program was initiated in the spring of 2006 and aimed to meet demands for capacity development among a range of stakeholders at the local and national levels of leadership, as well as across government, civil society and the private sector.

In collaboration with the government, this program was designed on an implicit theory of change: Small initiatives would be launched to demonstrate the possibility of producing quick, tangible, and meaningful results; an in-country Cabinet retreat would be convened to showcase these results and generate political support/buy-in for expanding the program; continuous cycles of expanded initiatives and corresponding Cabinet retreats would sustain a process of capacity building over time. The Cabinet retreats would aim to bring together government ministers and other senior officials to coalesce around identified challenges and determine a vision to overcome them. Pilot initiatives and follow-up on implementation of decisions reached at these retreats were to be supported through the Rapid Results Approach (RRA). The RRA was introduced as a methodology that would be applied to jump-start and accelerate project implementation in line with the vision and priorities established during the retreats.

The RRA was developed circa 1960 by Schaffer Consulting for private sector companies in the United States to enable them to tackle quickly and overcome hurdles towards attaining a project’s goal.<sup>10</sup> It is a methodology anchored on good project management techniques, and it implements Rapid Results Initiatives (RRIs) - “small projects designed to quickly deliver mini-versions of the big project’s end results”<sup>11</sup> in around 100 days – to work towards achieving the broad, overarching end-goal. The RRA was more recently, circa 2007, formally adapted by the Rapid Results Institute to support development projects of developing country governments in overcoming constraints to project implementation. Through learning by doing, Rapid Results practitioners, including those from WBI and the Rapid Results Institute, recognized the value of ensconcing the RRI within the broader framework of results-based management (RBM). RBM lays out a results-based chain for a program or project; the RRI then becomes the implementation instrument to drive the attainment of milestones, outputs, and intermediate outcomes towards attaining the goals of the project (see Annex 1 for a detailed description).

> 9 The World Bank Country Manager at that time, Alassane Sow, was instrumental in persuading the Government to engage the World Bank Institute and in providing the internal support and encouragement to the team throughout her tenure.  Subsequently, Mercy Tembon , who succeeded Alassane as Country Manager, enthusiastically supported the scaling up of the program.

> 10 Matta and Ashkenas (2003).  Matta is the President and Founding Board Member (2007) of the Rapid Results Institute and a senior partner of Schaffer Consulting, the parent for-profit firm of the not-for-profit Institute. Schaffer introduced the RRA in 1960 to the private sector.

> 11 See Matta and Ashkenas (2003).

5
At this point, the government had not heard of the RRA and was naturally skeptical of what it could do to help build its capacity to deliver basic services. But given its desire to get things moving, it agreed to conduct two small RRI pilots to assess the potential of this approach for tackling the challenges of implementing service delivery. In May 2006, a Steering Committee headed by the Second Vice-President was formed to decide in which areas to conduct the pilots and to provide political cover for their implementation. In late 2006, a decision was made to conduct two pilots, the first in the education sector and the second in the health sector.

In the first, one of the pressing concerns of the Ministry of Education (MOE) was the long delay in getting primary school textbooks to village schools, which typically took one year.<sup>12</sup> The Director General of Education proposed to conduct an RRI in the province of Bubanza and committed to the Steering Committee that her team would reduce this delay to within 100 days in the province. The team in fact successfully delivered 25,000 textbooks within 60 days, well within the 100-day target of the RRI. In the second, the Ministry of Health (MOH) successfully increased the number of HIV/AIDs screenings of pregnant women in the pilot health care center from an average of 71 per month to 482 in the first month, more than a six-fold increase.<sup>13</sup> While these pilots were miniscule in the whole scheme of things, they enabled the respective teams to learn what works and what does not in attaining key service delivery priorities, involving the complete chain of actors required for implementation – textbook delivery in the case of education and HIV/AIDs screening of pregnant women in the case of health. The pilots demonstrated solutions to overcome long-standing constraints to implementation in two priority sectors, jumpstarting results beyond expectations.

In May 2007, the MOE and the MOH presented the results of their pilots at a high-level government retreat attended by the President, the two Vice-Presidents, and the Cabinet and organized by the Steering Committee. The participants were astonished (and elated) that government ministries, which presumably had little or no capacity to get things done, successfully managed to tackle seemingly intractable problems. The Second Vice-President (VP2) proposed that these pilots be scaled up nationwide and that new RRIs be initiated in pressing service delivery areas. The President and the Cabinet endorsed the proposal and urged the Committee to proceed quickly. The scale-up of the pilots was now seen as achievable because the respective RRI teams were able to develop solutions to longstanding constraints that hindered implementation. They each learned how to address the “pain points” along the delivery chain and could now share this with colleagues in other provinces. Moreover, in the process of conducting the pilots, they learned team building and collaborative skills that were necessary to make an RRI work and could thus help advise other teams (not just in their respective ministries) in the use of an RRI.

> 12 In the context of the RRA, a reduction in the delay in delivering textbooks nationwide would constitute the project.  An intermediate outcome of this project would be reducing this delay to within 100 days in Bubanza.  An RRI is then launched to attain this intermediate outcome.

> 13 See World Bank Institute (2013).

6
The experience with the pilots ushered a “mindset change” among the Cabinet. The Council of Ministers was also highly supportive of this program and the Second Vice-President became the champion for its continuation and expansion. Even more concretely, in his closing statement at the retreat, the President communicated an unanticipated enthusiasm for extending the approach to additional line ministries and in cross-cutting areas: “In light of the results from pilot experiences using Rapid Results in health and in education in Bubanza, we recommend the application and the scale-up of the approach in all sectors of national life and at all levels of decision-making... the approach will become a tool for programming, monitoring and evaluation, on a regular basis, the actions of the government”.<sup>14</sup> Immediately thereafter, the Steering Committee communicated the results of the pilots widely across various ministries of the public sector and engaged the line ministries in selecting five officials from each relevant ministry to participate in a training that would enable them to apply the RRA to address constraints in their respective service delivery problems. Eight ministries then launched corresponding RRIs.

One particularly instructive initiative was launched by the Ministry of the Civil Service (MCS) in late 2007. A gnawing problem the Ministry faced then was in getting newly minted civil servants their first paycheck, i.e. de facto getting them into the public sector payroll. The problem was particularly acute for newly recruited primary school teachers – it took approximately a year on average for them to receive their very first paycheck. This led to a host of problems including absenteeism, as the teachers had to constantly come to the provincial capital and the capital city to follow up on “getting into the payroll”, and corruption, as many had to bribe education officials to facilitate the process. The Ministry launched an RRI covering six remote provinces in September 2007 and the DG of Civil service, supported by her Minister, made a public commitment to reduce the payment delay in these provinces to 90 days. This was considered a bold initiative and many in the Cabinet had doubts that the MCS could attain this stretch result. To their surprise, the MCS did accomplish the feat<sup>15</sup> , as attested by the Minister of Civil Service, Ms. Annonciata Sendazirasa speaking in 2010: “There was a time in the civil service when new teachers did not receive their first pay-checks and worked unpaid until between eight months to one year after beginning work. Sometimes we received incomplete files from the relevant ministry and sometimes we did not receive a file at all. Now we have devised a system that ensures they are paid within two months”. Because teachers comprised about half the civil service, this had an enormous impact. The RRI helped the MCS identify the “pain points” and build capacity of a core team in implementing an RRI. With this increased knowledge and capacity, the MCS was then able to design a system to address this problem not just for all new teachers but also for other newly minted civil servants<sup>16</sup> to receive payment within 60 days.

With the confidence, knowledge, and capacity built up by the success of the “payroll” initiative, the MCS launched two RRIs in October 2008 to reduce the number of fictitious staff within the Civil Service: supporting the completion of the census of civil servants and distributing 43,000 cards – one for

> 14 President Pierre Nkurunziza, 4th May 2007, Closing remarks of Government Retreat, Bujumbura 15 World Bank (2008). 16 Kazoviyo and Nyaburerwa (2011)

7
each civil servant - within 100 days. This helped identify those who were on the payroll, but not in active civil service and resulted in the suspension of payment of 728 salaries to ‘ghost’ individuals leading to monthly savings of approximately 60,000,000 Burundi Francs, reported the Director General of the MCS, Ms. Marie-Rosette Nizigiyimana. This is roughly equivalent to US $470,000 per annum (equivalent to the annual budget of the Ministry of Commerce) – a significant saving for a severely cash-strapped government budget.

From mid-2007 throughout 2008, the government launched numerous RRIs involving many ministries, including the above examples, and, in March 2009, it held a second high-level retreat to review the results of these cycles of initiatives. Over that time, RRIs broadly speaking had been used to institute mechanisms geared towards enhancing transparency and accountability within ministries and within the government as a whole. They had helped to reduce processes and increase awareness on the demand side. For example, in addition to the more expedient processing of payment of new civil servants, there was increased effectiveness and transparency in the Ministry of Justice through a reduction in the time it takes for copies of judgments to be made available from four days to just one day. Also, the amount of information being made available online was increased due to the establishment of a computerized database relating to the trade registry, securities and titles of credit. And in the Ministry of Energy, Water and Mining there was a reduction in the period of time taken between invoicing and collection, and an increase in collection rate of charges for drinking water from beneficiaries in rural areas (33 areas) from 12% to 80% of those serviced. Having these results presented at the retreat by ministries implementing RRIs provided the leadership with context and an evidence-base for informed decision-making and strategic planning about next steps. This was particularly important in light of the evolving priorities of the government two years on from the previous high-level leadership retreat, which was held in a very recently agreed post-conflict context.

This retreat also provided an opportunity to consider the extent to which the initial capacity development and learning goals had been reached, particularly in terms of project implementation and management. An additional key outcome of this retreat from the President and the Cabinet, who were encouraged by the broadened set of results across more ministries, was their endorsement of a decree (that was ultimately signed by the two Vice-Presidents in July 2009) to institutionalize the RRA as the preferred method for meeting the objectives of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The decree required each ministry to launch RRIs each trimester to make progress in meeting their respective sector priorities.<sup>17</sup> Having moved forward in implementing new RRIs, a third governmental cabinet retreat was held in March 2011 to review the results emanating from the additional cycles of RRIs conducted since the second retreat in 2009 and to launch the application of the new World Bank strategy for Africa 2011<sup>18</sup> in

> 17 Arrêté Conjoint No 121/VP1-VP2/006/2009 Portant Institutionalisation et Décentralisation de la Méthode des Résultats Rapides Comme Outil de Mise en Ouevre du Programme du Gouvernement, stating “the Rapid Results Approach would be institutionalized and decentralized... that it will be applied in all ministries and public services to support implementation of the PRSP...Within this framework each ministry will launch a new wave of RRIs each trimester... in line with the priorities of their sector”

> 18 World Bank, March 2011

8
Burundi. This forum was an opportunity to review and strategize going forward with the new Cabinet members (following recent elections) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the L4R approach and gain buy-in for its continued support. Session discussions focused on identifying potential solutions and designing action plans to confront challenges surrounding the evolving three priority areas of concern to the government at the time: (i) economic growth, (ii) public finance and fiscal space, and (iii) good governance<sup>19</sup> which were directly aligned with the three themes of the World Bank Africa Strategy 2011: Competitiveness and employment; Vulnerability and resilience; Governance and public sector capacity. These areas highlighted the need to further strengthen the delivery capability of the public sector. Following a request from the President<sup>20</sup> in February, multiple RRIs were launched to translate into action the recommendations emerging from this retreat.

Of concern to the Cabinet throughout 2011 was the dismal ranking of Burundi on the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Indicators (its DB 2011 ranking was 177 of 183)<sup>21</sup> : they wanted to undertake concrete initiatives that would help the country improve its rankings. One indicator was ‘Getting Electricity’ and so, building upon previous efforts since 2009 to improve the service delivery of water and electricity as mentioned above, an RRI was launched to increase the rate at which new clients were connected to the national electric grid. The RRI introduced a streamlined approach whereby clients make just one payment at the time of connection (rather than an application fee and later a connection fee), reducing administrative requirements and processing time for the responsible agency. Consequently, delays in connection times, which had previously been three months, were reduced to a more reasonable wait time of two months. With the results from this successful REGIDESO<sup>22</sup> initiative in early 2011, supported by the IFC (the private sector arm of the World Bank Group), Burundi managed to improve its Doing Business ranking from 177 in 2011 to 169<sup>23</sup> in 2012 and featured among the top 10 economies that improved the most worldwide on the ease of doing business in 2010/2011.<sup>24</sup> The DB Indicators cover not only ‘Getting Electricity’ but also indicators relating to warehouses more broadly, including construction permits and connection to utilities other than electricity – such as water. Drawing on the innovations and learning from the RRI piloted on connecting electricity, a subsequent RRI was launched by the same REGIDESO unit in June 2011 to expand this success to include their work on connecting clients to the water supply. This initiative led to a reduction in connection time to both water and electricity supplies in the capital city, Bujumbura, from 3 months to 1 month. By 19 World Bank, April 2011

> 20 " _To sustain economic performance, we must demand greater efficiency, and we expect results from all sectors... In this regard, we have already motivated people towards improved accountability, planning and performance using the Rapid Results Approach. We are confident that this improved performance is proof that sound management means the needs of the public become reality_ ". Pierre Nkurunziza, President of the Republic of Burundi, 14th February 2011 during the Belgian Week in Bujumbura, a yearly event aiming to promote trade and investment between Burundi and its main economic partner, Association de Reflexion et d’Information sur le Burundi, February 2011.

> 21 World Bank/IFC (2012) World Bank and IFC, _Doing Business Economy Profile 2012: Burundi_

> 22 The state electricity company in Burundi, which sits under the Ministry of Energy, Water and Mining

> 23 Although the published ranking in the 2012 Doing Business report, this was adjusted in the 2013 Doing Business Economy Profile for Burundi in 2012 to 172. This was necessary to reflect the fact that two economies (Barbados and Malta) were added to the DB sample that year.

> 24 World Bank and International Finance Corporation, _Doing Business in the East Africa Community 2012_

9
December 2011, this RRI team reported to have shown improvements in connection rates: of the 2,092 new requests for connection in the months of June, July and August, the team managed to process and connect all these, whereas in the period March, April, May, they had connected only 1,347 of 2,052 requests.<sup>25</sup> Another priority of the Cabinet was preparing for action on the National Strategy for Good Governance and Anti-Corruption that was adopted in September 2011. One important aspect of the good governance strategy was to reduce waste in government expenditure. And all ministries were tasked with improving the efficiency of expenditures. RRIs were launched in March 2011 to help achieve this objective.

In December 2011, the Cabinet held a fourth retreat under the Leadership program (opened by the President, chaired by the Second Vice-President, and closed by the First Vice-President) to review action on this most recent cycle of RRIs and strategize on evolving government priorities relating to Doing Business and good governance. During this retreat, the government heard evidence, from ministry teams and reviewed results from the numerous RRIs conducted over the course of the year. For example, Mr. Bonaventure Ndikumana (Ministry of East Africa Community Affairs) noted: “Before the launch of the RRI, in March 2011, this department spent 750,000 Burundi Francs per month on electricity, by July 2011 (100 days later) this had been reduced to 500,000 Francs, and by November (another 100 days later) this had been reduced again to 436,250 Francs – meaning a 41.8% reduction on electricity used, and savings for the department of 313,750 Francs” for the same level of productivity as previous to the RRI.<sup>26</sup> Efforts to reduce waste in government expenditure was seen more broadly across other ministries, for example, General Major Ntirantibagira of the Ministry of National Defense and ExCombatants reported the ministry had reduced its consumption of fuel from 210,000 liters in May 2011 to 150,000 liters in September 2011 without affecting its productivity.<sup>27</sup> As exemplified, the results proved encouraging and the Cabinet expressed they would be continuing throughout 2012 with the L4R model for prioritizing, decision-making and implementing government-wide initiatives with a particular focus on improving governance, reducing corruption and improving the business climate to attract private investments.

The purpose of this temporal narrative (2006 – 2012) has been to illustrate how Burundi has been gradually and successfully improving the capacity of its public sector to deliver basic services since transitioning to a post-conflict state. Progress has been sustained through an organic learning by doing process anchored on repeated and expanded implementation of RRIs. Figure 1 below succinctly captures the progress of this learning process: the number of RRIs undertaken rose from 2 in 2006 to, cumulatively, 246 RRIs by 2012; Figure 2 below shows that in 2006, only 2 ministries were willing to engage in RRIs but by 2010 all had implemented RRIs. Annex 2 provides evidence that these RRIs have

> 25 Cabinet of the President, Government of Burundi, December 2011

> 26 Cabinet of the President, Government of Burundi, December 2011

> 27 Cabinet of the President, Government of Burundi, December 2011

10
indeed produced tangible results; and, more important, Annex 3 provides indications that the RRIs have become more challenging over time, suggesting that the public sector is improving its capability to tackle implementation.<sup>28</sup> <!-- Start of picture text --> Cumulative Number of<br>RRIs implemented<br>300<br>200<br>100<br>0<br>2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012<br>-100<br><!-- End of picture text --> Figure 1: Cumulative Number of RRIs implemented between 2006-2012 <!-- Start of picture text --> Percentage of Ministries<br> that have implemented RRIs<br>100%<br>50%<br>0%<br>2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012<br><!-- End of picture text --> Figure 2: Percentage of ministries implementing RRIs between 2006 and 2012 Indeed, in isolation, an RRI appears to be a very minor blimp in the screen. But when viewed chronologically and globally, RRIs paint a compelling picture of burgeoning capacity.

The key point to make is that Burundi has begun to build its public sector on its own terms through what Andrews (2012) calls problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA). Undoubtedly, it will take a long time for the country to become a Singapore and it will confront many bumps along the way. But, because it has adopted a PDIA approach to building capacity, it now seems capable of escaping the dreaded “capability trap.” One might thus consider Burundi’s experience to date a “preliminary test” of the PDIA hypothesis as laid out by Andrews et al. (2012).

# **<u>III. Learning from Burundi</u>**

> 28 The number of RRIs implemented began to decrease in 2011 and continued in 2012 as the program transitioned to the ‘institutionalization’ phase whereby WBI began slowly withdrawing financial and coaching support, and the National School of Administration began to take over the role of training and providing coaches.

11
The biggest challenge that any new government faces is how to deliver results that matter to citizens. This challenge is particularly acute in poor countries where capacity of the public sector is considerably weak. Governments often despair because of the enormity of the problems they face in overcoming this challenge. Burundi’s experience to date suggests that there is a way out of this seemingly hopeless labyrinth. In this section, we lay out an approach to capacity building that grew out of the World Bank Institute’s continued engagement with the Government of Burundi and which matured into what is now called the Leadership for Results (L4R) program. A distinctive feature of this approach is its focus on creating what economists might call a politically incentive compatible mechanism.

# _Creating the Authorizing Environment: Pilots and Knowledge Exchange_

As noted above, the post-conflict Government of Burundi had to come to terms quickly with the need to deliver on its promises – delivery of basic services particularly in education and health -- in order to keep the country from sliding back into conflict. Hence, it was open to options on how it could begin to do this and “get some action going.” The first hurdle WBI confronted was how to overcome the skepticism of government on the use of the RRA as a way of delivering tangible results quickly. To address this concern, the WBI offered to conduct _pilots_ to demonstrate the potential of the approach. The success of the pilots – in terms of delivering results (albeit miniscule in the larger scheme of things) was enough to convince key decision makers to expand the approach within the ministries that conducted the pilots and to try it in other ministries.

The next hurdle was to convince a larger cadre of decision makers, in this case the Cabinet, of the potential of the RRA to help their respective agencies meet the challenge of delivering services. To address this, the President and his two Vice-Presidents convened a Cabinet-wide retreat during which the results of the two pilots were presented and officials and practitioners from other African countries who had been engaged in RRA-supported programs shared their experiences with the RRA. This retreat was thus in part a _knowledge exchange_ event designed to give participants a good sense of the pros and cons and the potential benefits of the RRA. The knowledge exchange in turn was used to get “buy in” from senior decision makers and bring consensus among them on priority areas where the RRA could be used to improve service delivery. Conceptually, knowledge exchange was de facto used as an instrument to help create the _authorizing environment_ to launch the RRA and conduct corresponding RRIs.

# _Why Rapid Results Matter_

In the development field, we often hear donors and experts lament about the “lack of political will” and the concomitant failure of development programs to meet their objectives, particularly those involving institutional reform. The implicit assumption is that one needs to wait for political will to “appear” before any real change can take place. But in fact political will can be engendered. It is not some exogenous factor over which one has little or no influence. What the Burundians learned was that it can be created and increased.

12
For politicians and senior decision makers, results are precious political assets. If they can claim credit for a result (even partial) that benefits citizens, they enhance the chances of maintaining their current positions, whether as an elected, appointed, or career official.<sup>29</sup> But most decision makers tend to be risk averse and so are rarely enthused by the prospects of a promising development program whose results will materialize only after several years. The challenge then is how to produce tangible results within a short time horizon that build momentum towards a longer-term goal. For a newly elected mayor of a city who must run for re-election in three years, this horizon translates into a year or a year and a half at most as he or she must start campaigning by the third year. For a minister of health, it could be as short as a year. For a new head of state winning a hotly contested election by a sliver, it could be the length of a honeymoon period. So for many decision makers, there is an incompatibility between the promise of a program and their political interests. The key then is how to address this.

As the Burundi experience illustrates, the RRA offers decision makers an instrument for bridging the time gap between their interests and the longer-term impact of a development program. Through an RRI, the risk of failure is reduced considerably – what is the worst that can happen in a 100 days? But if implemented effectively, it produces tangible results that a decision maker can point to (and claim credit for) and demonstrates how tangible results can be achieved systematically on a wider scale (and which minimizes risk), i.e. it helps the decision maker meet his or her delivery “score card” and, for politicians, enhance their re-electability. This creates incentives to consider the RRA and support the conduct of RRIs.

Following the completion of two pilot RRIs in health and education, this is in fact what we observed happened during the first Cabinet retreat (2007) organized by the Steering Committee. Due to the demonstration effect of successes created from these pilots, the Cabinet became energized and sanctioned a first round of eleven new RRIs that were launched in eight different ministries in October 2007 and underwent final review in February 2008. In 2009, a second Cabinet retreat was held to review the results of these rounds of RRIs that had been implemented to translate into action the recommendations emerging from the first retreat and, given the success of many of these initiatives, authorized additional rounds of RRIs going forward that would support implementation of the evolving priorities of the government at that time. In fact, in July 2009, the two Vice-Presidents issued a decree declaring the RRA as the approach of choice for implementing development programs. In March 2011, a third Cabinet retreat was organized to launch the application of the World Bank new strategy for Africa to Burundi and present results of RRIs to a newly elected government and cabinet members, and gain their buy-in for sustaining the leadership development program. The new leadership was convinced and supported a renewed round of RRIs; a fourth retreat was held in December 2011, timed to tackle urgency around private sector investments (measured by Doing Business indicators and rankings) and good governance strategies. In sum, the _authorizing environment_ over the past six years has been sustained through an interplay of RRIs and Cabinet retreats, with the former providing the fuel for and

> 29 This is true even in non-democratic regimes (see Campos and Root, 1994)

13
the latter the keys to the engine. Political will, which is crucial to the success of any development program, emerged out of and has been fortified with this interplay.

# _The Role of an RRI_

The RRI is the molecule that has driven the political dynamic of capacity building in Burundi. While there have been numerous articles written on it and its utility,<sup>30</sup> it is not well understood as an instrument for fueling change, which at its core is what capacity building is about: how to shift the mindsets of people and induce them to do things differently. While seemingly simple in its structure, it is complex in its implementation.

An RRI is a process divided into three phases. It starts with what is called a _shaping phase_ . This begins with preparatory work with the leadership (political sponsors and strategic leaders) on identifying core, priority areas to which an RRI team may contribute their efforts and act in alignment towards supporting the achievement of a broader strategy, policy or overarching development goal. Typically, a political sponsor (who is a high-level official) provides overall institutional support for the RRIs. For example, in the case of Burundi, a Minister sponsoring RRIs within his/her ministry, and the Leadership Steering Committee created to oversee and guide the overall portfolio of RRIs across the government. A strategic leader (for example the permanent secretary of the relevant ministry) is designated and his/her role is to keep the team focused on its “stretch” result (see below) and assist in unblocking constraints to achieving it. An RRI team leader is selected to coordinate the tasks of the team members and problem solve on a day-to-day basis. A core team is then identified with members carefully selected after extensive discussions with relevant parties (which could involve several ministries, agencies, units within these, CSOs, and/or relevant private sector groups). A key selection principle is that the team must include someone from any group that is critical to the successful implementation of the initiative<sup>31</sup> (which could include skeptics and potential detractors).

The team then begins the second phase: _the implementation phase_ . The core team is formed, based on identification by the strategic and team leaders, and they start the launch session, during which the team debates and agrees on the stretch result that is to be achieved within a hundred days (or less). The result must be measurable, achievable within the hundred days, but ambitious and outside the team’s comfort zone – hence the term “stretch”. A ‘challenge note’ is signed by the political sponsor or the strategic leader to the RRI team that will allow the team to move forward and will help them to hold their leaders accountable to the team and to other ministries whose work may rely upon

> 30 See for instance, Matta and Ashkenas (2003).

> 31 For example, in an RRI focusing on the distribution of textbooks from a warehouse in the capital city to schools in the provinces, a wide variety of actors were necessary at all levels to complete the chain of delivery. This included Ministry of Education officials at the central government level, the Governor of the Province, the Provincial Education Directors, members of the Parent Teacher Association. In another example – the accelerated payment of teachers – this required working across ministries: the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Civil Service to accelerate the communication and processing of recruitment files which were initiated in the Ministry of Education, but which the process of hiring was undertaken within the MCS.

14
the success of the RRI. The team then prepares a detailed action plan with the understanding that things may need to be changed midway. Roles and accountabilities are then assigned to each member of the team so that it is clear who is responsible for what at each point in the process.

Mid-way through the implementation process, the team conducts a _mid-term review_ during which progress to date is discussed, e.g. have the relevant milestones been reached and, if not, why. If there is a need to alter things and change direction, the rest of the action plan is revised accordingly. At the end of the 100 days implementation, a _final review_ is held with the relevant decision makers, which concludes with a public celebration of success that gives kudos to the RRI teams. Insights gained from this final review session are used to frame the third phase: _planning for sustainability_ . At this point, discussion on the plans for sustaining these results takes place. Also considered at this time are the opportunities for potential scale-up – including next steps in terms of either geographical expansion (beyond the pilot area/province) or sectoral expansion (to seek to extend these results and gains in other sectors of the government).

This process looks deceivingly simple. But it is challenging to implement. The underlying thrust of an RRI is to help the team members discover what works and what does not through a learning-bydoing process. As the team proceeds with the work, their perspective gradually changes because they see in real time what is possible. They also learn to appreciate the importance of collaboration and acquire skills in fostering it – because they have to work together to attain their targets. At the end of the process, team members will have developed more confidence in their ability to make things happen and get things done. An RRI team member within REGIDESO, Mr. Thierry Ngezahindavyi described how “the RRI structure really helped them work together as co-workers, rather than working through a hierarchy, speeding up the process of taking action, and learning quickly from our efforts”. Likewise, Mr. Isaac Nzitunga in the Ministry of Agriculture tells how this L4R and the RRI structure helped “leadership engagement from the top [the minister] right down to the base [even in decentralized provinces] encouraged a ‘spirit of results’ and mobilized people from all areas [the government administration as well as the local citizens] to work together to achieve what they wanted.”<sup>32</sup> For all these to materialize however, a seasoned RRA coach is needed to “accompany the team in its journey.” The role of the coach is to help team members discover (a) what works and what does not and (b) what hidden capabilities they might have in addressing constraints and the like to making progress. And this requires special skills that are acquired through a combination of training and field experience. Typically, the longer the experience, the more effective the individual is. Table 1 indicates the number of coaches trained in Burundi over the six year period and Annex 4 summarizes the skill requirements for a coach.

The role of a coach is best described metaphorically. Imagine having to teach your five-year-old daughter to ride a bicycle. You can describe to her what it takes to ride and control a bike, noting the function of the steering rod and the brakes. But for her to learn, she needs to get onto a bike and

> 32 Field interviews (Bujumbura, December 2011).

15
actually learn how to ride, which means falling down, getting scratches and wounds, and maybe even suffering sprains. On your part, to help her learn more quickly, you can push the bike fast enough so that she begins to sense that more speed will help keep her from falling down. You can then mention to her that if she pedals faster, the bike will speed up, and then encourage her to try that. Once she has learned this then the next challenge is how to get onto the bike and generate enough speed. There are many different ways to do this and each individual will eventually discover his or her preferred style. Your role is to observe her and suggest alternatives that might work better for her. So a coach is very different from an expert. The latter teaches primarily through manuals, lectures, workshops, and the like. A coach teaches through self-discovery.

Table 1. Coaches trained each year from 2006 through 2012.<sup>33</sup>

||**2006**|**2007**|**2008**|**2009**|**2010**|**2011**|**2012**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|External<br>coaches|+1|+2|+2|+1|+10<br>(incl. ENA)|+ 6<br>(incl. ENA)|-|
|Internal<br>coaches|0|+11|+6|+8|+13|+8|+2|

Sources: Coaches One aspect of an RRI that has not been fully appreciated for its strategic value is the very public celebration that is organized around the final review to which media, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders are invited. The event is designed to acknowledge the RRI team(s) for their innovation and success, i.e. providing psychological rewards.<sup>34</sup> This is important in encouraging behavior change more widely within the relevant organizations and among stakeholders. But more important and less appreciated is its value as a credible commitment mechanism. Often, during these events, ministers, politicians, and senior decision makers bask in the success of their respective teams and announce their sponsorship of future initiatives (RRIs) to tackle new problems. Because media covers the event and often highlights these commitments, their reputations (and political capital) are put on the line as the coverage and fanfare raise public expectations (as well as the expectations of superiors). This creates very strong incentives for them to monitor the progress of the new RRIs.

The close attention that a sponsor, e.g. a minister, gives to an RRI generates a “sense of urgency” and a fear of failure among RRI team members which boosts their adrenalin and encourages them to take personal accountability for their designated tasks and to work collaboratively to achieve their stretch result. Moreover, when the task is finally done, it gives team members great pride in their accomplishment. In other words, an RRI is not just another task to be completed in a long list of “to do’s.” It embodies so-called “zest” (invisible) factors that add spice and tang to an otherwise commonplace meal, turning it into a memorable experience that ultimately changes the attitude of leaders and team members towards risk and change.<sup>35</sup> The DG in the Ministry of Civil Service explained

> 33 Based on reports from Burundi national Coaches

> 34 See for instance, Ariely (2013) and Dewhurst, Guthridge and Mohr (2009)

> 35 See Schaffer et al (2005).

16
how through the RRI process “with a little effort, we changed our way of thinking and working to achieve more with the same resources... by increasing motivation through our urgent focus on the RRI objective within a strict, short timeline... and by working inter-ministerially, and more closely with leaders... and by having support of an external coach we succeeded”.<sup>36</sup>

# **<u>IV. Conclusion</u>**

There is increasing disappointment among multilateral development institutions, donor agencies, and developing country governments in the progress over the long term towards reducing poverty and sustaining economic growth, particularly among the world’s poorest countries. Despite billions in aid, many developing countries still struggle to win the race against poverty.<sup>37</sup> As Pritchett et al. (2012) argue, a major contributing factor to this conundrum has been the lack of attention to building the capability of government and non-government actors to implement development programs. Implementation is assumed to be something government and non-government actors must learn on their own and that they will eventually manage to figure out how to address implementation challenges. The experience and evidence to date suggests otherwise.

Recognizing this gap, a number of international development organizations have begun to turn their attention to helping their client countries deliver results through improving their capacity to tackle implementation challenges.<sup>38</sup> The “How” of development is finally, albeit slowly, getting much needed attention. This paper has attempted to contribute to the emerging discussion and debate. Through the lens of Burundi’s s experience since transitioning to a post-conflict state, it presents a practical approach for developing home grown implementation skills within the public sector over the long term, an approach that recognizes the importance of aligning the skills-building process with political incentives and that operationalizes the concept of PDIA. And it demonstrates how so-called “Small” Development efforts can be translated into larger-scale impact.<sup>39</sup> One question that arises at this point is how to assess the efficacy and cost efficiency of the approach – the Leadership for Results (L4R) program. There has been an initial attempt at addressing the first, employing an assessment methodology called Outcome Harvesting.<sup>40</sup> This methodology identifies links between the many different interventions, large and small, undertaken during an RRA process and establishes a logical path of how interventions have led to intermediate results and those results have led to further interventions and results down the line. The story line is then substantiated with third parties who were privy and witness to the various interventions. What emerges is a plausible

> 36 Field interview (Bujumbura, December 2011).

> 37 “In 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the extreme poverty rate (living on less than $1.25 a day) is above 60%, and in 4 countries, it is above 80%”. World Bank, The World Bank Group Goals: End Extreme Poverty and Promote Shared Prosperity, 2013. Examples in 2010: Madagascar 81.3%, Nigeria 68%, Malawi 61.6% of the populations were living on less than $1.25 per day. Data available at: http://data.worldbank.org

> 38 See for instance GIZ’s Capacity Works Program, http://www.giz.de/en/ourservices/1544.html

> 39

> See Swidler and Watkins (2009) on the concept and practice of Small Development. 40 See World Bank Institute (2013)

17
assessment that attributes the results to the interventions. More will of course need to be done on this aspect.<sup>41</sup> The issue of cost efficiency of the approach has not been evaluated. But what is evident from the limited experience with the L4R is that very little resources outside of client staff time are needed for its implementation.<sup>42</sup> Most of the work revolves around learning by doing by client teams on problems that they would have had to address in any case. A small team of L4R trained resource persons (ranging from two to four depending on the needs) and an RRA coach are all that are needed to support a program.<sup>43</sup> These non-staff time costs are considerably lower than the cost of many consultant-supported technical assistance programs.<sup>44</sup> The World Bank is embarking on a significant change process that will reorient the organization’s engagement with its client countries towards assistance in problem solving (which may or may not involve lending). At the heart of this change is the development of what has been called a “science of delivery” for development programs. Though there is an ongoing debate on exactly what this means, there is agreement that it will involve the application of the scientific method to improving our understanding of implementation challenges. But there is also an emerging criticism that it ignores the “art of delivery” of which politics is so much a part of: context matters, so does how this will be addressed.<sup>45</sup> The L4R begins to respond to this criticism. Art is indeed unique but, with guidance and hard work, the skills needed to become an artist can be developed. A few will of course have natural talent and will rise to become masters. But many can develop good enough skills to become decent artists, producing marketable art work. Change contexts are likewise unique; but the skills needed to manage change and thus implementation can be learned.

> 41 Future L4Rs will utilize the Outcome Harvesting methodology to assess the effectiveness of and introduce improvements to the program.

> 42 Since 2011, L4Rs have been launched in several countries: Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Comoros, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Indonesia, Iraq, Philippines, Cameroon.

> 43 For more extensive programs, two or more RRA coaches may be needed but typical programs involve only one coach, either international or local.  Part of the task of the RRA coach is to train a member of a client RRI team (called an internal coach) in coaching so that he or she can gradually take on an increasing role in supporting the team further down the line (and likewise be deployed to help other teams). Internal coaches receive enough training to do rudimentary coaching; with more experience, they can work their way to being national/local coaches and eventually international caliber coaches.  The World Bank Institute has established a coach training and certification program for the latter.

> 44 Based on delivery to date, the average annual cost of the Burundi Leadership program  has been $188,843 (including consultant fees, travel costs and all other variable costs). The total cost of the program from 2006 – 2012 for seven years of implementation support was $1,321,906 ($1,039,676 in trust funds and $282, 224 in Bank Budget, World Bank Institute cost data).

> 45 Schneider (2013)

18