Giving Compass' Take:

• In this Feedback Labs post, social entrepreneur Kathrin Frauscher from Open Contracting Partnership explains an approach to listening that involves "you said, we did," with emphasis on action items.

• This exercise could work for many different organizations. Are we embedding enough diligence in both the "listening" and "doing" stages across our work?

• Survey says: Sector leaders agree that collecting feedback is a priority.

We at Open Contracting Partnership have been trying to make feedback loops front and center to both what we do and how we do it. Naturally, we decided to co-develop our next organizational strategy with our partners, which we have been doing in workshops around the world over the past few months.

Following our workshops with partners, we found the perfect moment to ‘borrow’ one of our favorite Feedback Labs mantras, which they use for their awesome Feedback Labs Summits: “You said, we did." We love this concept of listening and then acting. In our new strategy we are trying to get better at both.

  • You said: change is tough, plan better for the dips. So we will be looking at our entire approach to ensuring that we help reformers reach impact and overcome political challenges, inertia and bureaucracy. One significant pivot for us will be to work more with those actors that have pressing problems that need to be solved, be it at the city, sub-national, or federal level.
  • You said: Pick your engagements (even) better. So we will revamp our engagement criteria to include a better understanding of the local political economy in order to better prioritize our support and make the most of our resources.
  • You said: Engage and support more diverse actors. So we will do that with new programs to work with the private sector, media, academia, and procurement monitoring organizations.

Read the full article about the "you said, we did" listening model by Kathrin Frauscher at Feedback Labs.