What to do when it’s not the right time to scale

Sometimes, it is just not the right moment to scale even the most promising education innovation.

This is painful to confront. Plans are made, staff hired, stakeholders engaged. There’s an important problem to be solved, and you have identified and tested an innovation proven to create positive change in response to the problem. You’re ready to work hard to expand its impact to help more people.

But suddenly everything changes. There might be significant circumstances within your context—difficult electoral politics, new fiscal challenges—or an external shock, such as a pandemic or a freeze on U.S. bilateral aid, that make the conditions no longer right for scaling or that turn attention to higher priority issues than the one you’re working on.

In these circumstances, you might not be able to move scaling forward at all. But that doesn’t mean you should stop.

Sort of like a bear might hibernate during the cold season only to reawaken in the springtime, you can use the time when scaling can’t be advanced to strengthen your organization, regroup, and prepare to spring into action the moment circumstances turn favorable or when a sudden window of opportunity opens.

But what does that mean in practice?

1. Reassess your assumptions. The world in which your scaling plans were made no longer exists. This doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch now, but it does require that you interrogate your foundational assumptions, reassess the situation, and plan for where to go next. The question to ask yourself is not “How can I proceed as planned?” but rather “What has changed and what new or different steps (if any) are necessary now?” For example, suppose you work in three regions, one of which just had an election that brought in leadership hostile to your scaling efforts. You might decide to pull out of the region entirely to use your limited capacity in the other regions, or you might decide to focus your efforts primarily on fostering grassroots support in that region.
2. Recommit to listening mode. What dynamics and pressures are they experiencing that shape their perspective? Understanding the situation from their point of view will help you to better determine if you have the ability to support them to address the issue, perhaps in a way different from what you originally envisioned.
3. Focus on deepening your roots. If scaling is not realistic or even appropriate right now, you can spend this time consolidating your progress to date, deepening your knowledge of the environment, and strengthening relationships with the government, local communities, and other stakeholders. For example, helping the government respond to a sudden emergency such as school closures due to natural disaster would require you to put your own scaling efforts on pause. But joining forces with other education actors to address the new shock to the system also has the knock-on effect of building community and deepening collaboration—something that may be beneficial later when you return to your scalingAnalyze data and information that will support future scaling. If circumstances preclude you from attempting scaling progress right now, you can turn to those research questions and data needs you may have been putting off. Ask yourself what types of information will be needed to advance scaling once you resume, and work to gather that data if possible—or to analyze your existing data since you now have the time. This also might be a good opportunity to focus on strengthening existing data collection systems.
4. Analyze data and information that will support future scaling. If circumstances preclude you from attempting scaling progress right now, you can turn to those research questions and data needs you may have been putting off. Ask yourself what types of information will be needed to advance scaling once you resume, and work to gather that data if possible—or to analyze your existing data since you now have the time. This also might be a good opportunity to focus on strengthening existing data collection systems.
5. Engage in frank dialogue about equity issues and other trade-offs. In urgent crises such as drought or conflict, the number of children in need can surge overnight. Children who were once in school may suddenly be displaced, their schools destroyed, leaving a new wave of students at risk of falling behind or dropping out entirely. In such moments, your priorities might need to shift from scaling your innovation with high quality and sustainable impact to responding swiftly to the crisis. This likely necessitates tough choices: Should you prioritize rapid access to education for as many children as possible at the potential expense of some impact? Or do you focus on the most vulnerable children, accepting a narrower reach? There is no empirically right answer; you must critically and collaboratively weigh the tradeoffs of each choice and then chart a path forward based on the values of your organization, community, and context.

Five years on from the COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered schools around the world, we know that shocks, shifts, and about-faces in education systems are more the rule than the exception. Over the past weeks, many education practitioners are again facing sudden and significant disruption in the wake of the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development. It is clear that scaling is a long-term and iterative process, but these situations remind us that this can (and often must) include pauses, strategy changes, and even decisions to scale down. Though far from ideal, it is possible to use the times when scaling is not possible in service of the ultimate scaling goal.