Friday 4 March 2011

Doing the right thing vs. doing what's required

I'm stuck in a bit of a strange position at the moment. My organisation are required to submit regular reports to funding organisations - and I don't think they're even close to up to scratch! If a junior PM submitted one of them to me for a programme I was running, I'd read the riot act!

Basically, it's simply a rehash of the project schedule (I said I'd do this, I did this)....and nothing else. No analysis of results, no qualitative review of the situation - pure stats. And the wrong stats at that. I remember reviewing one of these "reports" back in December and thinking - really? I'm sure this is going to get sent back with a load of questions. Apparently not....

And this brings us to my problem. I know it's wrong. We need to be able to do proper reporting, by which I mean we need to be able to measure our impact through the projects. At the moment, we can't do that - not even close. But (and it's a big but.....) the funding organisations don't seem to care. We say we're going to hold "12 sensitisation meetings" this month, we hold 12 meetings and they say "OK! Good! Well done! Carry on....."

I think I can change the behaviour here - it's a big challenge, but I'm up for it. At the same time, there are plenty of other challenges to be faced. I'm only one person and I've only got 9 months to make the maximum impact I can.

What's a volunteer to do? Answers on a postcard to the usual address.....


P.s. please don't send answers on postcards - none of the 3 letters I've been sent so far have actually turned up, so you'd waste the cost of a stamp. And a postcard.

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