REFLECTION – LEARNING LAUNCH

CHALLENGE  My team was assigned to improve business continuity of local legal aid services in a developing country while  promoting access to justice for vulnerable groups. It was found that the legal aid services had not been  operational during the government's lock-down measure COVID-19 pandemic. We focused on identifying the  root cause of the challenge.

SELECTION  We decided to try learning launch to test our idea as we had already gone through several activities and tools  such as sense-making and mind mapping.

APPLICATION  We had several consultations with the target country government partners to collect data and assessed  capacities and existing resources. We tried to look for patterns and possibilities based on what we had and  generated a hypothesis that the digital transformation, even partially, would benefit the local legal aid offices  and users. Considering the local capacities, we articulated the assumptions on which basis the idea could be  implemented, including essential technical capabilities, equipment, systems, etc. With a small investment, we  designed the hypothesis and tested the idea, which is still in progress.

INSIGHT   Our team identified our assumptions and designed launches to test these assumptions by applying the learning  launch tool. As it was small testing, it was adopted by stakeholders more quickly than expected.

In the course of testing, we faced several unexpected challenges, both operational and technical. However, we  did not perceive them as a failure but a learning process and continued refining our idea as the initiative  seemed working. Both my team and stakeholders have also built confidence throughout the learning process  and enhanced abilities to accelerate efforts.

APPROACH  The team agreed that the learning launch was an appropriate tool considering the time and nature of the  initiative. The test is still in progress. We will iterate the process to further improve the hypothesis and scale it  up once succeed. The insight and lessons learned from the test should feed into the entire process.

