PDF Download: Self Selection
In a nutshell: Self selection helps a project narrow down who it is directly working with. It identifies a set of behaviours that signal progress towards desired systemic change. Market actors signal that they want to be involved by adopting those behaviours (i.e. they ‘self select’) and the project responds with facilitation support that further aids change. Actors that do not adopt the behaviours are effectively opting out.
Status: Optional/Advanced Tool
Key principles: Self-selection is based on Systems Thinking, focusing on lasting change by targeting the rules and norms that shape behavior. It connects big-picture system patterns with practical work involving individual market actors, who are key to driving systemic change and should be chosen for their potential to make an impact.
It also applies the principle of Facilitation—defined as a temporary action that sparks long-term system change. Three key aspects of facilitation are:
- Relationships: Does the intervention strengthen system connections, or just link actors to the project?
- Ownership: Are actors motivated to change for their own reasons, or only because of the project?
- Intensity: Are resources being used in a way that supports lasting, self-driven change—or creating dependence on the project?
Preconditions and preparation: Self-selection can be used as a project-wide strategy or as a way to guide specific activities. For it to work across the whole project, leaders and senior management must understand and support it, and explain it to donors. Ideally, it should be part of the project design. In ongoing projects, self-selection is more useful for sector leaders or officers working with individual firms, helping them use the ROI principles (Relationships, Ownership, Intensity) to understand why partners join the project.
Timeline and resources: As noted above, self selection requires significant thinking, reading and commitment to be internalised as a project management philosophy. However, it can also be adapted to ongoing projects as a useful set of prompts or reflection questions.
Outputs
The crux of self selection is to link specific behaviour patterns that need to change for each type of actor in a given local context, with the overarching systemic change objective. This helps to prioritise among a range of possible different interventions with different types of actors. The offer needs to be framed in a way that tests (a) actors’ commitment to specific changes; and (b) their capacity to influence the wider system.
The table below gives a detailed set of examples of the self selection criteria and possible interventions for an example in the horticultural sector, where the goal is “to improve the performance of the horticultural market system and the poor engaged in the system by improving the supply chain management strategies and practices of buyers”.
Local Actor |
Self Selection Criteria |
Facilitated Interventions |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer |
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| Aggregator / Trader |
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Outcomes / behaviour changes
In the short term, self-selection means working closely with individual market actors to develop strategies they care about – ones that also support systemic change. This should be framed as their strategic planning process, not the project’s. That plan then forms the basis for agreeing on project support.
From these plans, the project can identify key behaviours — Self-Selection Criteria — that show an actor’s commitment. When actors take on these behaviours, they’re signaling that they are “self-selecting in.” In return, the project provides targeted support through Facilitated Interventions.
If a firm stops following its own plan, the project can step back and reallocate resources to more committed actors. This approach – waiting for action before offering support – has proven effective in encouraging serious engagement.
In the long term, self-selection recognises that systemic change happens in phases. Actors will join, pause, or drop out. The project’s role is to continually shift support to where momentum is building. It’s not about sticking with early partners for the whole project, but adjusting based on real behaviours. Often, it’s not the first but the third or fourth adopters who create the biggest push for change.
System Change Phase |
Market System Conditions |
Project Priorities |
|---|---|---|
| Initiate Change | Few or no firms demonstrating behaviour and/or few interested in trying new behaviour. | Action: Project wants to work with small number of firms to take on or expand adoption of new market behaviours. Learn: Identify if there are any underlying drivers limiting adoption. |
| Early Adoption | A few more firms start taking on behaviour and a small percent start to adapt it to their business models. | Action: Project targets more adoption and pushes to catalyse adaptation of market behaviours. Learn: Comparative value of change to other competing behaviours (e.g. financial transparency versus informal financial management due to risk from corruption). |
| Early Adaptation | The behaviour starts to generate reinforcing internal and external feedback – e.g. competitive pressure to adopt. | Action: Focus more resources on the market actors that are creating wider influence. This will enable you to leverage energy for change in the system. Learn: Identify behaviour patterns that form in response to competitive and cooperative pressure, as well as influence/resistance from other functions in the system. |
| Reinforcing system change through interconnected systems | Behaviour is starting to root in the market system, but supporting/reinforcing mechanisms in the system are weak and start to slow and weaken the targeted behaviour. | Action Exit efforts where behaviour has started to root in the system and focus on related behaviour change processes. The project is entering and exiting change processes as behaviours get rooted but uncover underlying constraints that manifest in new or different behaviours that are not aligned with the systemic change objective. Learn: Assess particularly influential feedback – both reinforcing (e.g. social capital, competitive response, etc.) or negative (e.g. stigma, competitive response, etc.) feedback. For example, where are the reinforcing incentives as well as incentives that push back against the change coming from interconnected systems? |
| Alignment of systemic feedback creating new biases | The initial core behaviour change is rooted in components of the system, but overall system change has not happened because underlying. or more powerful. feedback is/are pushing back preventing the tipping point from taking place. | Action: The project shifts resources to catalyse change in interconnected systems that amplify or dampen specific feedback so that wide spread system change can reach the tipping point. Learn: Assess comparative connectivity and influence from other social, market, political and civil society systems to determine the level of robustness and resilience around the change objective. |
| Change rooted in the system | The change process has rooted to the extent possible given the time and resources remaining in the project. | Action: Begin removing resources in a way that is responsible and ensures some level of change remains rooted in the systems and cannot be reversed. Learn: Assess if the system, and related interconnected systems, are starting to create additional positive change evolving from targeted change catalysed by the project. |
This view of systemic change is based on feedback – either reinforcing a behavior or pushing back against it.
For example, in Kenya, agro-input retailers often focus on short-term profits. This leads to problems like fake products, poor information, and ignoring long-term health and environmental impacts.
A current program aims to change this by encouraging retailers to focus on long-term customer satisfaction, better management, and clearer product information linked to health and sustainability.
To make this change stick, other parts of the system – like regulators, consumer groups, media, and tech firms—must also support and reinforce these new behaviors because it benefits them. When many parts of the system align this way, firms are encouraged to act for inclusive growth—improving wealth and the market over time, not just chasing quick profits.
Resources and templates:
SEEP Network video: Explaining Market Actors Self-Selection Management