“theories” of change - bc we’re working on different levels and the TOC might be different depending on the level
TOC provides a framework for evaluating different opportunities
when things don’t fit, also an opportunitity to update the theory of change
also valuable for fundraising.
share out
courtney - Tech Matters + Terraso. They’ve been working on TOC. And wanting to get more familiar with OT
PASA - Julie - wants to understand what openteam does better
Someone interested in sharing process between orgs
Cory - Regen Network - excited about TOC in general. Has been out of the loop with OT, so excited to hear some updates fom 2023 to 2024
Jessica Clark - National ag ddata coop. Learning about OT and also excited about TOC
Rob Trice - need OT to succeeed
Karen - PHD student anthropology studying ag tech. Also facilitating HCD eworking group
David Thomas - wants better grounding for how OT strategic vision is evolving. They’re also thinking about their own TOC
Hannah Whitman - Big green DAO - stewardship council
Kara Weinstein - better understanding of what WE do to ahve a better understanding of what I do
Greg - TOC are critical forcing functions to say how you view the world and help others understand the value you bring
looking over TOC draft (insert link here)
Do we see ourselves being the arbriter of the science? No, but we want to be explicit that our role is supporting that outcome.
how do we create the space? The structures to fill in gaps.
Steve - also sits on the stewardship council - which exists to systematically provide advice.
Reason we need theory of change is to enable a communication strategy
It’s up to the staff to articulate what they’re feeling - this is the beginning of this
What steve would like to see - if we do this, then we think this can happen, because we think that this is a good think to happen.
creating enabling conditions
providing specific components
etc… specific strategic things that OpenTEAM is doing to enable this future
Who is this TOC for? What is the problem we’re trying to solve with the TOC?
also working on a communications framework because there are lots of different people working at different levels
First step is to have clarity for staff and leadership. Clarity is key - human readable.
Also community members, understanding how they fit within the broader system
a bit of crunchiness in what this is intended to be used for. Opportunity we have is to shape long term vision of what openteam can be and how we can reach this. Piece that is missing is “for this to be true, what is the contribution needed? What is the community’s contribution? What is the staff contribution? How does this ladder up?” We’re in a visioning space.
Legacy partners is also a piece - here’s the new shiny piece do you want to move forward? Then need to do some ecosystem mapping to make sure that we’re filling the niches that make sense.
What is the problem we’re trying to solve with the TOC?
When OT was launched, ideal was to figure out what it would look like to fill the gap and see what is necesary for cross-ecosystem collaboration. This has been a PoC. We’re at an inflection point, there’s some work we’re doign that’s clear it should mature, other things that should be clarified and new relationships formed. Out of necessity, have tested a number of different ToCs at concept level, but not at a more scalable level.
OT started with a particular mission to enhance open source community around soil health. And then they grew and took on more work and are more complex. This is an attempt to look at OT’s activities and opportunities and rationalize work being done and help set course for future work.
Feedback on framing
Ending at claims feels like a strange place to end. Claims in support of what? Bringing products to market? Ensuring quality?
Primary outcome is adaptive management (change on landscape)
Not super clear - especially if it’s for both staff and maybe even farmers/ranchers
needs more accessible language (Get specific suggestion from @GOATforMikeD )
Madalyn - this is a very linear process. But it should really be cyclical, given the system we’re talking about
question is really - does this make sense. Not how do we visualize this in its various permutations.
DC - We have documentation for each of these individual theories of change and how they relate to each other.
Question of intent - keywords like “claims” “collective impact approach”
is OT focused on open agtech ecosystem that relates to “claims making” which is different from farm productivity + farm management data collection
Focus is on adaptive management, claims are proof of adaptive management
Greg would offer changing the word claims - to him that’s about proving to someone else.
Also trying to provide room for ecosystem service markets in our ToC. Word claim is triggering. Calling a spade a spade.
intent is change for its intrinsic value and MRV is a way to get to that.
Collective impact approach is a fundraising strategy? Connotation it’s about resource gathering. It’s fundraising language. Scale of impact.
Intent is that it’s a governance structure that allows for autonomy of multiple orgs to work with credible trusted authority to scale out. Allows for concentration of resources, but more about scaling out than attracting fundraising to a central entity.
Belief that this is the right mechanism and that requires a strong backbone and structure.
Primary question is why there’s a resistance to change and why ToC can help make the change. Not knowing if change is going to make an impact, not knowing if I have the ability to make the impact. It’s a theory of change not a roadmap for change.
As it reads now we’re delivering an MRV claim. But to whom? Why? Is it going to a farmer? Is it going to a buyer?
Adaptive management - proving that it works is step 1. And then adopt and scale is next.
Question about if ToC is for staff members? Or is it for community?
Sees this as a roadmap for what our community does, but not necessarily what OpenTEAM staff does as its function.
Facilitation, collaboration, network that we actually do as staff members isn’t reflected.
Collective impact is this part
How do we best spend time to get this where it needs to be? We’re pushing back a lot on the framing. Too much at once. Conflating of impact we want to see in the world, outcome of openteam staff and community and where we see those. Having a hard time with that. If there’s general nodding with framing even if language isn’t there yet. Can we get to good enough alignment on this now?
Challenge to throw metrics out there. It sounds tactical, but if you can aligned on shared metrics and build out from there it might help anchor us in a single vision.
Challenge of articulating this is that it’s not just OpenTEAM staff, but have to account for all the various stakeholders. We’re acting in support of that, but don’t directly manage that.
Next step brainstorming
What will come out of this? What can people see?
If you don’t know the answer, what would be the next step to get to the answer?
If you have a specific piece of feedback provide that now.
We won’t get to the solution right now, there’s a lot of work to be done.
Metrics
not dollars, not acres, not transactions. How do you measure successful adaptive management?
Output to the process is the theory of change, so that’s the question.
Number of partners, sophistication of participants, maturity and number of participants, sophistication of market incentives, diversity of participants.
A ToC is chosen based on what the mission of the org is. Also at an inflection point. Asking about mission and potential change based on the ToC. Originally concept was about need for collaboration between technical layer and user layer and connection between the two. We’ve done parts of that over time. This feels like we’ve taken that, and stuck two things on the end to validate what people in the ag community would find valuable. Adaptive management is what humans who eat food in planet earth cares about. Governance wasn’t there also.
How opinionated is AM?
Fishbone diagram. Implied single rib fish in here. "Our approach for adaptive management is to connect tech layer to boots on ground and to facilitate collaboration. There’s another step in there that we consider all the other ways and this is the one that we focus on and why.
This context isn’t saying the only thing that is going to change, but its he piece of the change that we’re going to tackle. This is really clarifying Also creates space for others.
If this is your theory of change, then you have to state assumptions. This way to approach it with community linking developers with boots on the ground. This is the assumption that this is how you drive the change. Part of change is predicated on this assumption.
And then actually grounding this ina. real example. And having a good set of metrics that ground this.
Michael DeChellis’s list
specific
values based
clear, simple language that anyone can understand
circular, non-linear
clearly defines missing link
clearly defines what we’re not doing, and why
connects action of external partners and staff so they can articulate to other people why they’re doing what they’re doing
and what are the pathways for contribution and iteration
what are the different cycles by which staff are getting bought in, council is getting buy in, community is getting buy in
And then when are we checking this? Versioning cycle, accountability.
How does this theory of change motivate the end customer 2. how does this empower the end user to liberate what is there and plug into this?
community and participant = end user and customer
What format would feel most familiar to people.** Does anyone have a favorite theory of change?** We’re doing this as a community to get to this end goal. Would appreciate sharing that.
Tomorrow we have a session on charter for ag data commonwealth. Hoping to get to a framework of working on shared common goals. Getting to a mechanism to map our efforts to common efforts.
“Ag tech ecosystem supports adaptive management, which leads to adoption of pracices and tools, which leads to collective impact”