Monitoring and Evaluating the Results and Feedback with CLBDM

This chapter presents the final step of our framework, CLBDM, which is the monitoring and evaluation loop. This step is about checking and measuring the results and feedback of your implemented ideas, based on indicators and metrics that reflect the system’s behavior and performance over time. It also involves reviewing and revising your ideas based on new information and learning that emerge from the system’s feedback loops, delays, and nonlinearities. We explain how systems thinking can help in this step of creativity by providing a way to understand and improve the system and the idea holistically and dynamically. We also discuss how systems thinking can help to identify the feedback loops and mechanisms that influence the behavior and performance of the idea in the real world, to understand the interrelationships and interactions among the different elements or components of the idea, as well as its environment or context, and to anticipate and deal with potential problems or risks that may arise during or after the implementation of the idea. We use examples from different domains such as climate change (Gilbert et al., Systems thinking in the geosciences and education research: A synthesis of research methods and future directions. Journal of Geoscience Education, 67(4), 353–368, 2019) and stakeholder collaboration (Hovmand et al., Group model-building ‘scripts’ as a collaborative planning tool. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 29(2), 179–193, 2012), etc., to illustrate how these feedback loops work and how they can be used in idea monitoring, evaluation, and improvement continuously. We hope that this chapter will inspire you to use systems thinking creativity loops in your own monitoring and evaluation process. We believe that by using CLBDM, you can measure and improve your ideas smartly and creatively. We invite you to try out our framework and tools and share your feedback and experiences with us.