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Why do we extol the virtue of “thinking outside the box” yet continually force so much of our thinking into tables, templates, lists and categories – and at what cost and to whose benefit do we do this?

Of course, classifying and organizing data is essential to the growth of human knowledge. The problem arises when this organisation of information comes to completely dominate how we think, and more importantly, how we act – as if we have no power of thought beyond these lists.

This tyranny of the template and the table creates major roadblocks in the path of those working for change and tackling social and economic inequalities.

• If everything important fits inside a box, then we will not pay attention to what exists “outside the box”.
• It leads us to become focused on “what” must be done rather than on “how” it will be done.  The sheer volume of items in many lists numbs our minds so that we forget to focus on the big picture. 
• In too many settings, the measure of success and sustainability are subjected to compliance monitoring rather than a multi-dimensional assessment of actual achievement.

These elements combine to create a technical, individual project, “silo” approach to development, and suck both our vision and our actions dry of any integrating social, political and economic vision or motivation.

I have chosen three examples to illustrate this point of view.

The Sustainable Development Goals

We begin on holy ground.

The SDGs are a hugely ambitious and admirable set of goals, with some quite radical targets such as 10.1: “By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40% of the population at a rate higher than the national average.”  I am not sure how often and for how long this has ever happened, but it is certainly quite a radical target. 

But practically, what happens with a globally endorsed set of 16 goals, 169 targets 232 unique indicators?  They become a kind of religious text, to which obeisance is paid by all, many of whom have probably never read them.  

Development projects, funding proposals, corporate Social Responsibility programmes and impact investments all faithfully identify which SDG goal, target and indicator the are addressing.  Does it make a difference to what plan to do? I doubt it.

I don’t know who first claimed that the world needs to mobilise 1 or 2 trillion dollars a year (name your figure really) to attain the SDGs.  But this mode of thinking neatly captures what happens when we “think inside the template.” It implies that there could be a series of neatly costed projects and investment attached to each of the 169 targets, and out the other end of this global development conveyor belt would pop a world without gender-based violence, racism, child labour, human trafficking and starving small farmers.   

The SDGs are indeed a useful tool for social justice activists to employ in holding governments to account for what they are doing to combat poverty and inequality.  That is not the same as saying that they should become our entire framework.  The SDGs are the epitome of a list of things we would dearly love to see.  What they lack, of necessity, is any discussion of how to get there, because that is intrinsically political.  

If the inspiring vision of the SDGs is to be achieved, it will be through intersectional struggles of women, workers, oppressed people and the global South to completely change the balance of power across the globe.  And those engaged in these struggles will not be quoting the SDGs.  The question to be answered by development agencies, impact investors, NGO’s and all the other actors who wish to contribute to a better world is not: which SDG are you helping to achieve through this or that project?  It is: How are your projects helping to change the balance of power in the global political economy?  

Monitoring and Evaluation: Logical frameworks

Logical frameworks (log frames) in various forms are no doubt the most ubiquitous template in the development world.  Project proposals and monitoring and evaluation frameworks are built around this logic: Your activities will lead to various outputs, which aggregate to identified outcomes which allow you to achieve your goal.  Fill in the table and you can show how well you have done, even to point of getting a specific score.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this – and it is indeed a logical way to look at certain kinds of projects such as (for example) reducing the number of new HIV infections in a community through education and by improving access to pre-Infection prophylaxis.  Even in this case though the framework becomes problematic if the real need turns out to be organizing sex workers, interdicting police from harassing them and challenging a set of patriarchal practices in the community.  These kinds of activities are responsive to changing conditions and generally cannot be either planned or reported in log frame format.

Similarly, a movement of informal businesses may find itself needing to negotiate changes to the law and policy, to combat monopolistic business practices, to challenge lending practices of financial institutions or to build a common front with a civic association to prevent gentrification processes that that are depriving them of places to trade.  These challenges arise out of the changing needs of members, and changes within the society at large.

I noted in the section on the SDGs, that changing the world is about power, and for the powerless, that is about movement building.  Movements are living, growing, changing entities. They simply do not fit into the straight jacket of the log frame.  The more our vision is shaped by these tick box templates, the less we see the need for those organisations and activities that cannot be so captured.  And one of the pernicious consequences of that is that funding is directed to projects, and not to the support of organisations that are central to creating change.

Outcomes are important – and the most important ones cannot be nailed to a two-dimensional table.  

If our aim is to alter the balance of power, then of every action (and some but not all actions are “projects”) we must ask: “What did we do? What happened? What lessons can we learn for our next challenge to power?” And these questions should be answered by the marginalized and powerless, not by M+E consultants sitting in offices half a world away (even if they are only a few kilometres down the road.)

Responsible Investing/ESG standards

If you want to be a “responsible” investor or company, you will not be short on guidance. You will find the UN Principles of Responsible Investing (UNPRI), the IFC’s ESG standards, the IRIS+ “generally accepted impact accounting system” and many, many more.  If fact you will be so overwhelmed by an alphabet soup of frameworks, guidelines, principles and indicators that you will need to employ a consultancy to help you find your way through maze. 

I have no doubt that in each case these are well intended efforts to give guidance.  But our love of the two-dimensional measure, means that we freeze into templates and compliance reports the multi-dimensional process of social change.  The IRIS+ self-definition illustrates the point.  In talking about its “generally accepted accounting system for impact” it clearly echoes the GAAP and IFRS of the financial accounting world.  

The difficulty is this:  people, communities and power structures do not behave like money.  You cannot count them and put them into columns and calculate the return on your investment and price the risk of engaging with them. The calculus of power and movement building is rather more complicated and so we leave it out of our “development project” or mission statements about “tackling the world’s most intractable problems.”

The projects and outcomes that we measure do often make a difference to the lives of people who happen to live where they are implemented. My challenge is to reconnect them in conception, implementation and assessment to the much bigger project of redistributing power and wealth in the global political economy.