So how to get away from this tendency towards obsfucation and the same blah-blah? (we were commissioned to deal with SO## and IR##, to eradicate poverty in country x, and we did STTA and published reports after training so and so..). You see it’s about “did we meet the terms of the contract?”, not did we solve a problem or figure out how not to mess up?

The biggest issue is that organizations resist looking at development as a process. They spend too much time telling donors that they “solve” problems, therefore they have to document solutions or numbers, not stories about the process of development. But it is the process which is far more interesting and what donors should be interested in seeing to figure out what works. The numbers are only a manifestation of probable solutions, even if there is even a casual link. So it gets back to better evaluation plans, and a broader mix of lenses and approaches for documenting sucesses, not just PMPs (performance monitoring plans) and results-based performance plans (RBMs), but real stories about the process and successes in development.

It does not mean development funding without accountability, either, or poorly designed projects. But it means really peeling away the layers to get at what is driving the numbers in ways that people can understand, and how development is making progress at the human level, not in some table or chart in a document no one wants to read. Case in point: the annual report in comic book format from the conservation organization –an exceptional use of writing and graphics. We need more such examples to focus on and disseminate the story of making development work.