October 22, 2026 | By: Elba Garcia, Senior Consultant
I hate change. If you’ve ever worked with me, you might be surprised to hear this. My colleagues and partners know that I’m comfortable with emergence, don’t sweat the twists and turns of evaluation, and can readily chart new paths through ambiguity. So how do I, a creature who craves consistency and routine, navigate change well? I lean on practices that allow me and my partners to move with rather than resist change.
Change is a fact of life, and being able to navigate it well with partners is key to keeping relationships strong as you maneuver messiness towards shared impact. If you or others you know struggle with change, read on for some of my best tips to plan for change! While they are anchored in my experiences as an evaluator, they apply to many contexts.
Start the Relationship Expecting and Planning for Change
When we kick off a new project at LFA, we talk with partners early about how we will navigate change together. Key questions we discuss are:
Where is our plan most likely to need to shift?
What could signal that a change is needed?
How does your team handle change?
What conditions best support you to navigate change?
Asking these questions at the outset normalizes change and sets us up to align on how we will navigate the changes together.
The benefits of planning for change extend beyond evaluation. They can also strengthen how a team or group of partners collaborate in the day-to-day. A collaborative of post-secondary education partners, aligned on a shared agenda to advance college-going rates in their community, engaged us to evaluate their impact as well as their implementation. Because they had an ambitious agenda (increasing the college-going rate by 5% in 5 years), they jumped quickly into implementation and hadn’t stepped back to discuss what a successful implementation process would look like, including how they would work together. During our project launch, we learned that partners had some key differences in how they approached the work, which also meant differences in how they recognized a need for change. Some looked for signals in relation to the progress on the workplan (how on or off track they are from our project milestones) and others in relation to the progress toward their shared goals (what the data say about progress on college-going rates). Surfacing these differences set them up to work more effectively together on the evaluation as well as other aspects of their project work.
Don't Build a Plan That Breaks at the First Surprise
If systems change or collective impact strategies are part of your work, you probably have an intimate relationship with messiness. You may draw up a plan and then need to make changes when a new opportunity emerges, an assumption needs recalibration, or priorities shift. The more innovative the work, the less likely it is to follow a straight path.
Earlier in my career, I saw those moments as disruptions. Today, I often see them as evidence that the work is unfolding as it should because the social issues we aim to shift are interconnected and constantly evolving. So, how we organize our efforts to address them needs to be just as dynamic and adaptive. Approaches that I have found helpful are discussing contingencies early on, maintaining regular communication, and treating the workplan as a guide rather than a rigid contract. On one really messy project, we decided to navigate the complexity together with our client through weekly check-in meetings. In these meetings, we took stock of the current context, discussed new needs, and made adjustments in real-time. What I’ve learned from projects like this is that the goal isn't to anticipate every surprise. It's to build enough flexibility and trust that surprises don't derail the work.
When the Plan Changes, Return to the Why
I’ve noticed that adapting to change is harder when you lose sight of the purpose, or the purpose becomes murky. In those situations, I’ve found it helpful to pause and realign the group on the common purpose we established at the outset. But what happens when the original purpose no longer serves you?
I learned a valuable lesson about this recently on an evaluation whose original purpose was to learn from investments made to change the childcare ecosystem. In the final year of the evaluation, everything shifted. The funder decided to move away from childcare investments, and suddenly the questions driving the evaluation no longer matched where the organization was headed.
We had a choice: finish the evaluation as originally designed or adapt it to meet the moment. We met the moment with a new purpose. We decided to focus on learnings that would support the sustainability efforts of the funded partners who were being transitioned out of the portfolio. This shift was difficult, especially in the final year of the evaluation, but it was worth it because it breathed new energy and intention into the work we were doing.
Ready to Design for Change?
The strongest evaluations are built to adapt to change. Looking for support in planning for change? The LFA team is here to help! We are excited to share our experience designing emergent evaluations. Reach out at connect@learningforaction.com to start a conversation.