Where the principle guides and directs, there is also a practice of Do No Harm. How do you put a principle into practice? A principle is a guide to decision making. The practice of Do No Harm is ultimately about decision making in complex environments.

There are techniques for thinking about and understanding a context and our impacts that bring the principle of “do no harm” down to earth in direct and simple ways. The bulk of this Guide contains discussion about four simple techniques and the concepts behind them, as well as how to build the techniques into frameworks, bringing them together, and showing how we can work in complex contexts.

What do you need to know to make good decisions? You need to know the context—you need an accurate enough map of reality. You need to have a model of change—you need to know how change happens. You need to know what you can do—you need to understand your own power and constraints.

Do No Harm is four simple techniques

• Dividers and Connector Analysis (DCA) reduces the amount of information about the context to a manageable level, while maintaining a focus on the most important factors
• The ABCs consists of two related techniques. Resource Transfers and Messages through the RAFT model how behavior changes context along those factors, again filtering information into a useable flow
• Critical Detail Mapping (CDM) makes project details, criteria, and rationale explicit so that necessary shifts are quick and precise

These four techniques provide us with specific outcomes.

DCA gives us a model of the context against which to test our understanding. Today’s model is good enough inasmuch as it helps us to rapidly see change. Today’s model is good enough inasmuch as we review it and revise it constantly based on the changes we observe.

The ABCs (Resource Transfers and Messages through the RAFT) gives us a model of human interaction that explains the changes we see in Dividers and Connectors. It also gives us understanding of how to effect change ourselves through our informed actions.

CDM highlights the decision points of an intervention.

Putting these three techniques together provides us with the ability to observe and act in a rapidly changing context in near real time. We see the important factors, we know why they are changing, we know what we can do and where.

Change in a context is inevitable and decisions must be made both in planning an intervention and in response to the social dynamics. Responses must fit reality or they can make a situation worse. Navigating demanding and attention grabbing events is difficult. Do No Harm techniques make it easier.

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Related Topics
From experience to principle to practice
Four Do No Harm Techniques
Using the Do No Harm Frameworks