The quarterly review arrived at the end of the month.<\/p>\n
It was a thick document, prepared by three departments and checked by people whose job titles suggested that every problem could be made presentable.<\/p>\n
The first pages looked encouraging.<\/p>\n
More people had reached the intake stage.<\/p>\n
More referrals had been completed.<\/p>\n
The average time between the first appointment and the next step had decreased.<\/p>\n
I read those pages twice.<\/p>\n
Then I reached the section on unresolved cases.<\/p>\n
The numbers were larger than I expected.<\/p>\n
Some applicants had stopped responding.<\/p>\n
Some had declined the assistance offered.<\/p>\n
Others had completed every step within the program\u2019s control but still lacked housing, medical care, or the documents they needed.<\/p>\n
A few had been referred to services that had no capacity left.<\/p>\n
The report listed each category separately.<\/p>\n
That was new.<\/p>\n
Previously, many of those cases would have disappeared into a general category labeled not completed.<\/p>\n
I called the team responsible for the review.<\/p>\n
When they arrived, I placed the report on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me what these numbers mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
The department head, a careful man named Robert, opened his notebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey show the limits of the current program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can read the heading. I want to know what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
He explained that the team had reviewed a sample of unresolved cases.<\/p>\n
They had found inaccurate referral information, inconsistent follow-up, and gaps between what the program promised and what outside organizations could provide.<\/p>\n
They had also found cases where people simply did not want the assistance available.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we know why they declined?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the others?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert hesitated.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome didn\u2019t answer our calls. Others told us they didn\u2019t want to discuss it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at the report again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen write that. Don\u2019t fill the space with an assumption.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded and made a note.<\/p>\n
I turned to the section about referrals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are we still sending people to organizations that have no capacity?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes their capacity changes between our checks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow often?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t measured it reliably.\u201d<\/p>\n
I felt the old irritation rising.<\/p>\n
It was the familiar feeling that appeared whenever a system failed to deliver the result I expected.<\/p>\n
I wanted to demand a deadline.<\/p>\n
I wanted to name someone responsible.<\/p>\n
I wanted the report to end with a promise that everything would be fixed.<\/p>\n
Instead, I asked Robert what he needed to find out.<\/p>\n
\u201cA consistent record of when we verify capacity, and a way for partner organizations to notify us when they\u2019re full.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we build that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen propose it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked relieved, but not entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s another issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGo ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new reporting makes our completion rate look worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeveral executives have asked whether the pilot is underperforming.\u201d<\/p>\n
I understood the concern.<\/p>\n
People who had approved the program wanted evidence that it was working.<\/p>\n
I wanted that evidence too.<\/p>\n
But a lower completion rate could mean several different things.<\/p>\n
It could mean the program was failing.<\/p>\n
It could also mean the old reports had counted incomplete applications as if they were successful referrals, or had hidden the cases that never reached the final stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to compare the same measures over time,\u201d I said. \u201cBut we also need to be clear about what changed in the measurement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robert nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we shouldn\u2019t pretend that better reporting automatically means better service,\u201d I added. \u201cIt means we can see more of the service we\u2019re providing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote that down.<\/p>\n
When the meeting ended, I kept the report on my desk.<\/p>\n
I did not send it to communications.<\/p>\n
I did not ask anyone to make the charts more attractive.<\/p>\n
I asked for a short explanation of the new categories, including what we could and could not conclude from them.<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I received a message from a senior executive.<\/p>\n
He wanted to know whether the program was ready for a public announcement.<\/p>\n
The draft announcement described a new approach to emergency assistance and included a projected number of people who might benefit.<\/p>\n
The number was based on available funding and estimated demand.<\/p>\n
It was not a count of people already helped.<\/p>\n
I called the communications director.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy does this say we\u2019ve helped this many people?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says the program is expected to reach that number.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt says we\u2019ve already made a difference at that scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
She opened the document on her screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d she said. \u201cThat wording is too strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease correct it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She paused.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want to delay the announcement until we have more results?\u201d<\/p>\n
I considered the question.<\/p>\n
My first reaction was yes.<\/p>\n
I had grown uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating unfinished work.<\/p>\n
But silence could be misleading too.<\/p>\n
The program existed.<\/p>\n
People were using it.<\/p>\n
There were changes worth explaining, provided we described them honestly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cWe can explain what we\u2019ve changed and what we\u2019re still measuring. Don\u2019t make it sound like a finished success story.\u201d<\/p>\n
She agreed.<\/p>\n
The revised announcement described the pilot as an ongoing effort.<\/p>\n
It mentioned the new referral directory, the additional staff training, and the effort to understand why applications stopped progressing.<\/p>\n
It also acknowledged that some people still could not get the help they needed.<\/p>\n
That sentence stayed in the final version.<\/p>\n
I expected someone to object.<\/p>\n
Someone did.<\/p>\n
A board member called me that evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are we advertising our failures?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re describing the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t invest in uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t be asked to believe in certainty we don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrennan, this is a business. Confidence matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we have a responsibility to show that our money is being used effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why emphasize the unresolved cases?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they\u2019re part of the result.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went quiet.<\/p>\n
I knew what he was thinking.<\/p>\n
He thought I had become sentimental.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I had changed.<\/p>\n
But the change was not that I cared more about people than I once had.<\/p>\n
The change was that I had started to see how little my preferred measurements told me about their lives.<\/p>\n
A few days later, the announcement went out.<\/p>\n
It did not produce the response the communications team had hoped for.<\/p>\n
Some people praised the practical changes.<\/p>\n
Others asked why the company had not done more sooner.<\/p>\n
A few dismissed the effort as a public relations exercise.<\/p>\n
I read the comments longer than I should have.<\/p>\n
Then I closed the page.<\/p>\n
There was no way to make every response fair.<\/p>\n
There was also no point in arguing with strangers to make myself feel understood.<\/p>\n
The program needed to work better.<\/p>\n
That was the part I could influence.<\/p>\n
The next morning, Robert sent me an updated referral report.<\/p>\n
It showed which partner organizations had confirmed their capacity, which entries were overdue for verification, and which referrals had failed because information was outdated.<\/p>\n
The report was not flattering.<\/p>\n
It was useful.<\/p>\n
I sent him a short reply.<\/p>\n
This is the right level of detail. Keep it current.<\/p>\n
Then I went to my next meeting.<\/p>\n
For the first time in years, I did not spend the morning trying to turn a complicated result into a simple story.<\/p>\n
The quarterly review arrived at the end of the month. It was a thick document, prepared by three departments and checked by people whose job titles suggested that every problem … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36211,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36191\/revisions\/36211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}