Date: Monday, December 29, 2025
Greetings, fellow evaluators! I am Zenda Ofir, a transformation-focused strategy and evaluation specialist with deep roots in the Global South. Over the past year Ian Kendrick, Ian Goldman and I have been leading an inspiring coordination group – Andrealisa Belzer, Scott Chaplowe, Silva Ferretti, Jen Norins and Sibongile Sithole – in a Three Horizons for Evaluation Initiative (3HEi).
The Initiative answers a big question: If evaluation were truly fit for a world in polycrisis, what would it look like, and how can we get there?
The world is unraveling in real time. Seven of nine planetary boundaries have been breached. Only 35% of SDG targets are on track. Climate change, ecosystem destruction, inequality, AI disruption, and conflicts reinforce one another. Yet our field continues to operate with methods designed for a stable, predictable world – one that no longer exists.
This disconnect prompted the International Evaluation Academy (IEAc) to launch 3HEi in 2024 to reimagine the purpose, positioning, and practice of evaluation for the turbulent decades ahead.
The Three Horizons framework became our navigation tool. Horizon 1 is evaluation today – with all its colonial baggage, power asymmetries, and retrospective focus. Horizon 3 is our aspirational future ten years out – evaluation as a core societal capability for navigating complexity and catalysing regenerative futures. Horizon 2 is the messy transition zone where innovations either genuinely transform the field or get captured by business-as-usual.
All three horizons coexist. And “pockets of the future” are already present within today’s dominant system.
Our process brought together over 1,300 initial idea fragments from 39 diverse global thought leaders. We went through several rounds of collective clustering and sense-making, increasingly drawing in more perspectives from around the world. We also used AI not to replace human judgment, but as creative sparring partner; humans established all values and meaning.
This process produced three “railway maps” – visual systems diagrams showing interconnected pathways to the future. See for example this Horizon 2 map:
It shows that four key pathways need to advance together, supported by leaders who commit to transforming our field:
We can contribute to transformation by connecting and amplifying genuine “H2+ initiatives”. We therefore identified ten qualities that can help us design and assess initiatives with potential to drive transformation instead of merely decorating the status quo with new language.
A partnership is now emerging across the Academy, EvalPartners, IOCE, IDEAS, EvalforEarth and the continental associations to advance this vision together; the Global Evaluation Agenda 2.0 already reflects some of these insights.
We invite others to join! The polycrisis will not wait, and evaluation is at risk of becoming irrelevant without drastic action by those with power and agency. Three Horizons gives us systematic, participatory ways to envision and create better futures while navigating present complexities. Our guiding inspiration: Act as if you live in the early days of a better world – Alasdair Gray.
The Bottom Line: Stop asking if your evaluation practice is rigorous enough for yesterday’s world. Start asking if it is transformative enough for tomorrow’s.
Three Horizons video. Webinar/maps here. See JMDE early next year!
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