Adaptability Over Anxiety: How Can We Really Build the Plane While Flying It? by Lea Theodorou

Date: Sunday, August 31, 2025

Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.

Hi, my name is Lea Theodorou, MPH, MA, CHES and I’m an evaluator at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This post continues the series: What is reflective practice (and why is it important to us as individuals and evaluators)?

In times of change I often hear, “we are building the plane while flying it,” or its nautical counterpart, “building the ship while sailing it.” These idioms are commonplace; they have inspired poetry and an advertisement for an information technology company, for example. I also hear these phrases used to describe programs, processes, and evaluations constructed as implementation occurs.

Reflections

When leaders use these phrases, I believe it’s often a reasonable call for flexibility when resources or priorities are changing. This agility is critical for organizational success, and in public health, saving lives. I want to embrace flexibility and act on opportunities as they arise.

Despite the value of adaptability, I experience discomfort with these idioms. I wonder, what could I overlook as we simultaneously develop, implement, and evaluate programs? Though often well-intended, for me, these phrases are fear-inducing and feel like a declaration of urgency (which may or may not be appropriate). In times of unavoidable turbulence (or high seas), I strive to reduce anxiety and focus on actions that promote adaptability, learning, and quality via purposeful action. 

Recommended Actions

Reflective practice allowed me to pinpoint how I’ve advanced program or evaluation implementation without the opportunity for full planning in advance. Amid change or uncertainty, I try hard to:

1. Motivate, not exaggerate. Communication can alter motivation and signalcatastrophe (intended or unintended). For example, when an outbreak of mpox was identified in Europe and North America in May 2022, CDC activated its Emergency Operations Center to work with partners to better understand the outbreak and raise awareness. In public health, outbreaks evolve in real time, and we motivate teams and inspire creativity when we communicate with clarity, timeliness, and transparency.

• Use evaluation tools matched to current conditions. I’ve learned to meet moments of ambiguity with approaches sensitive to context. For example, I used developmental evaluation principles when planning an evaluation of a new leadership training program. Focusing on use, cocreation, and timely feedback helped me and others understand the program and more accurately document advancements, challenges, and opportunities. Similarly, evolutionary evaluation can align evaluation activities to program phases, and evaluability assessments can inform whether a program is ready to be evaluated.

• Explain and stay true to known mission. I do my best to ground evaluation planning in understandings of my and partner organization’s missions, and program to be evaluated. A logic model can help depict an evolving program and aid in conceptualizing questions about incremental progress. Especially amid change, logic models have been crucial in my evaluation practice (e.g., to understand how changes are expected to occur); they can be a much-needed anchor.

• Seek and document learning. Working through dynamic situations has substantially contributed to my personal and professional growth. Frequent reflection via informal or formal processes are crucial for learning. The after-action review has helped colleagues and me foster, record, and share learning to prepare for near and longer-term activities.

Reflective practice was a catalyst to understand my discomfort with the flying and sailing idioms. Agility is especially important in today’s public health landscape, and I want to identify how to maximize evaluation during times of change or uncertainty without feeling overwhelmed with anxiety. I have a renewed appreciation for the evaluation competency domain of context, and see it as the key to feeling more prepared to serve as an evaluator in dynamic conditions.

Rad Resource

For much more on idioms, see “Endangered Idioms: Is the Use of Idiomatic Expressions in English Declining with the Younger Generations?” by Álfdís Freyja Hansdóttir (University of Iceland, 2025).

Disclaimer: The findings and conclusions in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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