Most Significant Change Technique

Stage One: Establish Domains of Change

The first step is for the people managing the MSC process to identify the domains of change they think should be evaluated. Selected stakeholders are asked to identify loosely defined areas, such as “changes in [Page 262]people's lives,” that can be flexibly interpreted by the people who collect the stories. This discrete activity need occur only once, although it can be worth revisiting. It helps to have one category that is broad enough to include unintended and unanticipated outcomes.

Stage Two: Collect and Review Stories of Change

Stories of significant change are collected from beneficiaries, clients, field staff, and others directly involved in the program. A simple question is used to help collect the stories: “During the past month, in your opinion, what was the most significant change that took place in the program?” Respondents are asked to allocate their stories to a domain category. They are also encouraged to report why they consider a particular change to be the most significant one.

Next the stories are analyzed and passed up through the levels of authority commonly found within an organization or program. Each level of the program hierarchy reviews the stories sent to them by the level below and identifies the single most significant account of change in each domain. The “winning” stories are then passed on to the next level, and the number of stories is gradually reduced through a systematic and transparent process. At every stage of story selection, the selection criteria are recorded and made available to all interested stakeholders. This means that subsequent stages of the collection and selection process are informed by feedback from previous rounds. In this way, the organization effectively records and adjusts the direction of its attention—and the criteria it uses to assess the events it observes there.

...