The details of an intervention matter. The details are where impacts come from, not the whole. An intervention is a series of choices before it becomes actions and activities. People make these choices and people can change them. People make decisions about what to do and how to do it.

What do we do when we are having Negative Impacts?

Programs or projects that are having a negative impact do not need to be stopped. Do No Harm has found that stopping an intervention also leads to harm.

It is important to remember that it is never a whole project or program that is having a negative impact. A project may itself be doing the good it set out to do, while at the same time some piece of the decision-making is feeding into and worsening the conflict.

Interventions can be adapted. But we can only adapt them if we understand which details need to be changed. We have criteria for who our recipients are, for who are partners are, for who our staff are. These vary from organization to organization and mandate to mandate.

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Related Topics
Critical Detail Mapping with the Seven Elements of Circumstance
Critical Detail Mapping with the Six Critical Details
Lesson 5: The details of interventions matter

In moments of stress people often engage in fight or flight: they grow belligerent or they run away—they aggressively blame others or they simply abandon what they are doing.
 
A third reaction—freeze—has been identified: people under stress dither and fail to make decisions. Often this results in continuing the previous work that resulted in the problem.
 
There is a fourth reaction—follow through. These people keep right on working, but they adapt to the circumstance and are accountable for the way in which they work.