Written by HBCL’s Suzanne Rogers
One of the photos shows muddy paw marks on the counter, an indicator that Marshmallow (in the second photo looking innocent) has been to places she is not meant to have been…
The paw marks could be considered a sign of ‘failure’ in our efforts to help Marsha become an upstanding member of our family, but we need to look at the bigger picture. For example, when we first adopted her, she would chew anything and everything, but now she knows to get approved chews from the dog toy box, and when we first got her, she was scared of men, but now they get a happy greeting.
If we measure many elements of her behaviour, we can get a good picture of how she is getting on. At HBCL, we are often involved in impact assessments and embrace the complexities of measuring progress – to ensure we look further than the equivalent of muddy paws on the counter. This is also very important when it comes to other projects and work we undertake in the field of human behaviour change. We need to continuously monitor and evaluate our progress but not only focusing on what went wrong but also on what went right and why.
If you are interested to learn more about effective monitoring and evaluation, check out our course specifically focused on this topic.
