Using the Six Critical Details

What do we need to know about our intervention in order to understand the impacts we are having? What do we need to know in order to shape the impacts we want to have?

As users of Do No Harm examined their interventions to understand their impacts, they identified six areas where criteria and decisions are crucial. While there are other potential decision points in an intervention, these six areas were the ones where the most mistakes, those causing Dividers to worsen or those undermining Connectors, were made. They deserve special attention.

It should be noted that these six areas have also been the most useful in learning how to correct imbalances and support Connectors.

Criteria Around the Six Critical Details

The criteria used shape the way we make decisions. Our criteria are often shaped by long experience and reflect hard-earned wisdom. An intervention should not simply abandon its criteria. It should, however, be explicit and transparent about them.

Both our staff and the communities with whom we work want to understand the criteria we use to make decisions. Simply saying “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is not enough. Nor is saying, “Headquarters told us to do it this way” or “We’re using criteria the donor gave us”. Interrogate the criteria, no matter where they came from.

The next page provides a basic set of questions for the Six Critical Details.

Red Flags

In following sections, each one of the Six Critical Details is highlighted in more depth.

Each Critical Detail section ends with a list of questions and issues. These questions and issues are red flags. A “yes” answer to a question should alert the user to review the Dividers and Connectors in light of the answer. The intervention has made a potentially hazardous choice. But you cannot know how serious without re-examining the context.

The issues identified in the lists should prompt review as well, no matter the answer, to determine what the impact of decisions around them have been.

It is also possible to use these questions to anticipate where problems may arise. How can an intervention be planned and designed so that the red flags are avoided?

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