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Thread on what we have against dashboards. (7 parts)
1/ Points about dashboards and indicators are from “Eyes Wide Open: Learning as Strategy Under Conditions of Complexity and Uncertainty” by Patti Patrizi at https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/tfr/vol5/iss3/7/. And from @tanyabeer.
2/ We rely too much on dashboards and indicators as mechanisms of accountability, particularly w boards, and waste all of our evaluative energy on data that at best tell us little, and at worst make us overconfident, reinforce our biases, and point us in the wrong direction.
3/ The most basic criticism of dashboards is that indicators tell us what happened at particular points in time, but do not tell us anything about how or why. The return on effort is low. But it is more serious than that.
4/ Performance measurement with indicators assumes that: a) your operational theory of change is correct, and b) your internally measured data are valid. Most social change strategies have much less certainty and a lot more complexity. Thinking we are correct is dangerous.
5/ Indicators reinforce our belief in linear, causal relationships and rarely help us to check our untested assumptions. Used with complex change efforts, they give us “indicator blindness.” When used poorly or in isolation they become far too deterministic.
6/ Dashboards also carry the danger of erasing differences and inequities in how people experience change. They help us to overgeneralize without attention to context. This is the opposite of what @equitableeval is asking us to do.
7/ If we use dashboards and indicators, we need to use them as just one part of the evaluative conversation. Not the only or main part. Use them as a place to start the conversation about progress and accountability; not as the place to end it. /end.
