Monday 4 April 2011

Please stop distracting busy people

Just got back from South East Asia, where I have advised a human rights organisation. I had a hard time trying to make sense of the reports the organisation wrote to its donors. The information was sorted into three categories: "outputs", "outcomes" and "impact". For example, the fact that they organised a workshop was an "output"; the number of people who participated in the workshop was an "outcome", and the amount of extra knowledge people seemed to have after the workshop was called "impact". You can imagine that it was not easy to read those reports.