Tool 5a
Most Significant Change Stories (MSCS)
Introduction
As a supplement to the ongoing indicator-based monitoring of projects and programs, IBIS stress
the importance of combining with other types of monitoring approaches, which can provide new
information and enrich the quality of the monitoring process. To this end, the approach used in the
evolutionary monitoring tool Most Significant Change (MSC) can be utilized as point of departure.
MSC is a form of participatory monitoring and organisational development tool, originally
developed by Rick Davies1 for one major project and one partner organisation.
What is Most Significant Change?
MSC can be described as a ‘story telling’, and ‘evolutionary’ monitoring method, which involves
the participation of stakeholders and beneficiaries from different levels within and around the
organisation. Each participant is asked to express the changes that she/he individually considers the
most important in relation to a certain period of time related to a number of predetermined domains
or areas of change which the organisation is interested to gain more information about. Normally,
the participants are involved in determining the domains and often a free or open domain is
included in order for participants to be able to express their opinions/experiences about whatever
they find most relevant.
The stories of most significant changes are then recorded and systematized within the selected
domains and the free domain. Next step is a participatory process of analysing and selecting the
most significant changes among the collected stories, which are then brought up (evolution) to the
next level of the organisation. This process of analysis and selection of the Most Significant Change
stories continue to be carried up through the organisation until 2-3 MSC-stories end up at
management level. This evolutionary process of selection is combined with a thorough and
continuous feed back process to the lower levels of the organisations aiming at securing knowledge
and ownership to the monitoring process and its outcome. The final 2-3 Most Significant Changes
decided upon by the overall management, can be used for next year’s action plan, organisational
learning, management decisions, strategy adjustment etc. A thorough guide to the full version of the
MSC methodology, among others supported by IBIS, has been developed by Rick Davies and
Jessica Hart2.
In brief, these are the important arguments for applying an indicator free monitoring method in
combination with an indicator based approach:
 MSC provides a special kind of quality information and personal testimonies, and can
thereby serve as a counterbalance to the tunnel vision which can sometimes be a
consequence when monitoring is exclusively based on indicators.
 MCS is extremely friendly to all kinds of participants, including illiterates, children, external
resource persons, and persons from all layers of partner organisations. Everybody can
express the change they found most significant in relation to a certain theme.
1
Rick Davies, 1996: An evolutionary approach to facilitate organisational learning: An experiment by
The Christian Commission in Bangladesh.
2
Rick Davies and Jess Dart, 2005: The Most Significant Change (MSC) Technique: A Guide to its Use.
A short tool paper describing the 10 steps in MSC can be found in the IBIS Global Learning System (GLS).
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MSC builds on personal and subjective stories that often reveal unintended outcomes, which
are often not captured through conventional indicator-based monitoring.
MSC builds on a bottom-up approach and direct participation from a diverse group of
stakeholders which, if handled the right way, can lead to strong organisational learning,
ownership and increased motivation of staff and constituency.
Even though stories are left out along the way, the process described below in steps 7, 8 and
9 ensures that these are thoroughly discussed and contribute to joint learning among staff
and partners.
MSC can be designed to focus on both Most Significant POSITIVE changes and Most
Significant Challenging Changes (or negative) related to specific domains/areas.
As a side-product, the MSC-stories can potentially be used in information work or
fundraising initiatives.
During recent years, some IBIS programmes and projects have worked with the full organisational
version of MSC. Others have been experimenting with a reduced version of the MSC, focusing on
collecting testimonies or stories from a diverse group of participants related to strategically
important domains. Based on these different experiences and good practices, of which some are
well documented and accessible on the GLS, IBIS has developed a short guidance that outlines an
approach to how IBIS’ projects and programmes can include stakeholder stories in their monitoring
processes that relate to strategically relevant domains of projects or programs. This reduced version
of MSC will from now be referred to as Most Significant Change Stories (MSCS) because the
stories and testimonies are the focus of the approach.
Process for planning, collecting, analysing and using the MSC stories
1. When formulating domains, the number should not exceed 2-4 domains aiming at keeping the
amount of stories and information manageable. A domain is often, but not necessarily, related to
one of the objectives of the TP. Unlike indicators the domains are broader categories or areas of
possible change that represent strategic interest to TP management, partners and participants in
order to ensure high quality of program or project implementation. Domains provide guidance,
but are not too prescriptive and normally participants are encouraged to express either positive
or negative changes (or both) related to the domain. Two examples of domains formulated by an
IBIS partner organisation could be:

Changes in gender relations in our organisation.
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Quality of communication and interaction between leadership and constituency in XX
organisation.
2. It is often decided to have a free/open domain, where participants in the process are able to
express changes that are important to them no matter the connection to the actual TP or project.
Often this will reveal unexpected changes that have happened in the TP or project.
3. Participants in the MSCS should reflect gender equity and a broad spectre of stakeholders
related to the project or TP.
4. Stories are collected through direct interviews by framing the same two questions to all
participants. The example above on changes in gender relations would be framed as follows:
a) “According to you, what has been the Most Significant Change (positive or negative) in
relation to gender equality in your organisation during the period of January – December
2010?”
b) “Please explain why you consider this to be the Most Significant Change.”
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5. MSC-stories can be used at all levels. They can be collected by TP partners and used in the
continuous work and meetings with communities or as part of the Step 2 and 3 monitoring at
project level. MSC-stories can also be collected by TP staff and partners as part of the
monitoring process leading up to the Step 5 Annual Partner Forum or the Formative Monitoring
every second year.
6. A TP staff or the partner organisation documents the stories according to an agreed format,
which should not exceed more than 1 page per story.
7. A workshop is organised for discussing and analysing the collected stories. The stories are used
by the participants in the workshop to listen carefully to and learn from the voices of the
participants in the project or TP. Depending on time, resources and strategic needs, the
workshop can be organised in many different forms.
8. Group work followed by plenary can be a good way of thoroughly analysing and prioritizing the
most important learning aspect related to each of the formulated domains. Each group might
prioritise 1- 3 MSC-stories and present these to in plenary and argue for why these stories have
been chosen. In relation to the process of prioritizing, it is very important that partners and IBIS
discuss and agree what should be the criteria for selecting the most important stories: Criteria
might be:
 Extent to which the MSC-stories was attributable to partner / TP.
 Relevance of story to the domain
 Significance and replicability.
 Examples of negative and unexpected changes
 Examples of results planned.
 Stories the exemplify gender equality or inequality
 Scale of outcome
 Sustainability
 Innovation.
9. A process of plenum discussion, summing up and applying the learning into the action plan in
order to further strengthen the project or TP.
10. A feed-back process informing about the partners’ monitoring results at step 3 or 5 to all
participants and constituencies is an inherent part of the process. This will ensure that men and
women who have expressed their MSC-stories during the monitoring process realises that their
stories have been heard and seriously included into the future action plans or their own
organisation.
Revised January 2012
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