International Evaluation Academy Week: Seeing Differently: My Transformative Journey into Systems-Informed Evaluation by Liliana Lucaciu

Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Hi, I’m Liliana Lucaciu. I’m a policy evaluator with more than 20 years of experience in EU policies inside and outside the EU. Alongside evaluation, I’ve always been interested in how people and systems learn. In many ways, learning and change have been the constants in my career.

In recent years, as I searched for “something more” in evaluation, two experiences shaped my path. One was joining the EES TWG8 on Systems Approaches and collaborating with colleagues from AEA’s Systems TIG (SETIG) and IFSR. The other was contributing to the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc) article Reframing Evaluation: Complexity, Systems, and Transformation with colleagues who, like me, were exploring what transformation could mean for our field. It felt less like writing and more like learning together. I was delighted to recognize my own small journey reflected in the broader changes we were describing — as if the system and I were shifting in parallel.

A framework that helped me make sense of this was the Three Horizon framework. I found it useful not only for thinking about systems “out there,” but also for understanding what was happening inside me.

• Horizon 1 was my familiar way of doing evaluation — structured and reliable, but no longer enough.

• Horizon 3 represented the evaluator I aspire to be — systemic, learning-oriented, participatory.

• Horizon 2 became the transition zone — the space where I experiment, unlearn, and adjust my mental models.

For me, Horizon 2 is where individual action matters: collaborating across boundaries, joining learning communities, strengthening my values and positionality, and daring to imagine what evaluation could become. If you’re curious, IEAc offers a short explainer video on the Three Horizons and an overview.

This reflection also took me back to a book I first read 20 years ago, Luc de Brabandere’s The Forgotten Half of Change, and his course On Strategy: What Managers Can Learn from Philosophers. Back then, I didn’t notice how often he spoke about systems, patterns, and mental frames. I simply didn’t have the lenses for it. Reading it now, I realized the book didn’t change — I did.

What I now understand from Brabandere’s ideas is that every system has two layers: a visible one (tools, procedures, structures) and an invisible one “in the world of ideas” (beliefs, assumptions, mental models). We need both. Action and innovation matter, but so do creativity and perception. And with these lenses, I now see the Three Horizon framework differently. Changing methods or tools alone is not enough. We also need a shift in perception — the kind that lets us go “out of the box and create new boxes.” Horizon 2 invites exactly that: strengthen values and positionality, and imagine what evaluation could become.

Real transformation began for me only when my perception changed. That shift opened new possibilities, made old patterns visible, and allowed new ideas to emerge. It reminded me that evaluation’s transformation is not just about methods. It is about how we see. And because perception is shared, transformation is, for me, a dance in two: evaluators and users of evaluation need to see differently together.

Lessons Learned from an Evaluator’s Transformational Journey

1. Transformation needs both action and ideas — a change in reality and perception.
   New tools and methods help, but real transformation begins with an inner shift that lets us see the whole system, not just the familiar parts.
2. Learning and action go hand in hand.
   Communities, shared frameworks, reflection, and collaboration make learning stick. I now systematize my lessons so I can reuse them.
3. Evaluators and evaluation users advance together.
   We are part of the same system. Transformation is a dance in two, built on shared understanding and mutual learning.

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