One possibility? Drawing on my five years at USAID, I believe practical wisdom—the exercise of good judgment in weighing competing values—offers a better path forward to addressing today’s complex challenges.  

Practical wisdom (phronesis) is a concept first codified by Aristotle. It requires both experience and a thorough understanding of the context in which a decision is being made. It also demands careful consideration of how that context should influence the exercise of other important virtues such as kindness and integrity.

Approaching development through the lens of practical wisdom requires donors and implementing partners to empower their staff to act more quickly in accordance with their professional judgment. And when given this freedom, practitioners must ask hard questions about their programs and weigh the difficult tradeoffs that emerge.

The Regime of Rules

Rules can be essential in development practice. For instance, they may be necessary to protect the safety and well-being of program beneficiaries and staff—especially when the consequences of a wrong decision can result in serious harms.

However, while rules limit downside risks, they also prevent high levels of flourishing. As my former professor Barry Schwartz once wrote, “rules alone guarantee mediocrity.” And the organizational structures of many professions (including development) often constrain how practitioners undertake their jobs.

USAID was a rule-heavy institution, in part to prevent the misspending of funds. These rules supported a broad political legitimacy that enabled the agency to survive changes in administration. But its structure also hampered expediency and efficiency at times.

This reflects an asymmetric risk calculus common across development organizations: practitioners who excel rarely receive tangible benefits, yet misspent funds or unintended harm can bring severe reputational and budgetary consequences.

Moreover, development organizations also layer on policies, strategies, guidelines, incentives, and targets that can make it more challenging for practitioners to apply good judgment. Such tools have their place, but applied inflexibly, they can make things worse.

So how might practical wisdom find a way into development practice? The following lessons offer a brief road map.

Development’s Context-Specific Tradeoffs Are Best Made Deliberately

Balancing factors such as risk, feasibility, resources, and timeframe when prioritizing projects is a task that is ill-suited to rules. Rather, navigating these decisions requires a clear understanding of stakeholder goals and the most salient values for each partner. Where there is no obvious “right” answer, approaches that allow practitioners to apply their best judgment can help identify how to address competing values and objectives.  

Take the commonly experienced tradeoff between need and capacity, for example. Communities with the greatest needs often possess the least capacity to implement development programs. Focusing on the most urgent needs may deliver greater impact, but it comes with real challenges—including corruption risks and potential reputational damage.

All of these factors make deliberation essential. When resources are limited, when is it preferable to program in communities where needs are smaller, but the likelihood of successful implementation is higher? What tradeoffs (safety, corruption, effectiveness, or reputation) should practitioners be willing to make? What are the consequences of these tradeoffs? How does data availability and quality shape decision-making?

When One Value Dominates, Competing Demands Go Unanswered

Development practitioners must weigh competing values which can lead to challenging programming decisions. For example, equity is often cited as a key motivating value. Many populations face structural disadvantages, including women and girls, racial/ethnic minorities, and Indigenous Peoples. Development activities often focus on these groups to reduce inequities.

Yet other considerations, like cost, practicality, available time, and environmental sustainability, also shape decision-making. If marginalized groups require more expensive or logistically complex interventions, is the resulting cost justified even if fewer people are served? Should programs prioritize improving population-wide averages or focus on closing gaps for the most disadvantaged? And should disparities which disproportionately impact structurally advantaged groups (such as men) be command the same resources as those facing the marginalized? None of these questions have universal answers—which is precisely where practical wisdom comes in.

Goals Shape Everything Downstream and Require Clear Intent

Should a development program focus on improving how development work gets done, or on directly improving people’s lives? These are different objectives that require different approaches, and yet practitioners often find it tempting to address both goals under the auspices of a single program. 

Localization—shifting funding and decision-making power from Global North actors to those in the Global South—is a good example. Local partners can face real short-term challenges: limited technical and organizational capacity, financial management hurdles, and unfamiliar incentive structures. The result can be delayed or ineffective project implementation, with beneficiaries bearing the cost until those issues are resolved. Localization may be a worthy objective, but practitioners should be clear-eyed about potential tradeoffs.

Practical wisdom can help navigate these questions. When does it make sense to prioritize process over outcome objectives? When faced with the choice of improving process, which may entail short-term costs but also long-term benefits, the tradeoffs with investments designed to address more immediate needs require intentional exploration. Are investments in local capacity building justified if they take years to pay off and result in reduced investment to alleviate immediate welfare harms? And what steps and assumptions are required to turn better processes into improved long-term outcomes? Are such assumptions tenable?  

Disparities In Process Indicators Require Contextual Analysis

A common approach to push for change in development is to highlight disparities in funding or other process measures. Yet such disparities can be misleading. On their own, they don’t necessarily mean something is wrong or that development goals are being undermined.

A recent Stimson Center event highlighted that small island developing states receive far more climate finance per capita than conflict-affected states. Both groups have significant needs. But per capita disparities don’t tell the whole story. Small island states face outsized climate risks and high project costs due to their small, often remote populations, and also possess geostrategic importance.

So what is the right balance between supporting smaller populations facing complex and costly threats (such as in small island states or rural communities) and directing more funds to larger, underserved geographies? And when might a funding disparity be a sign of effective development practice rather than a problem to be fixed?  

Inflexible rules and bureaucratic processes in development often lead to the poor outcomes which have contributed to recent retrenchment in the sector. Practical wisdom—wise judgment over rigid rules—offers an alternative. Of course, applying it is easier said than done. The prerequisites themselves—high levels of trust between organizations and their staff, and between development organizations and beneficiaries—can be difficult to achieve.

Such trust is in short supply given the upheavals of the past year. But the status quo is untenable. Leading with judgment rather than rules offers a hopeful path forward for the field at a time when resources are scarce and careful discernment is required to navigate increasingly complex challenges.

This article was originally published on newsecuritybeat.org