How Would You Define “Effectiveness”?

July 24, 2023 - When I bake cookies or my favorite chocolate cake, the smiles on people’s faces tell me I was effective!!  At a soccer or football match – scoring more goals than your opponent usually means you are an effective team.

According to the dictionary, effectiveness is:

• the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result; success. (Oxford)

• producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect (Merriam-Webster)

But those definitions beg further questions: who determines what the desired result should be? Who defines success?

How does “effectiveness” differ if viewed from the eye of the giver or the receiver?

2021 Haitian Earthquake

Following the 2021 Haitian earthquake, international support was absolutely necessary. No questions asked. It was a natural response, a human moral imperative.

The question is always: how best to help.

People’s natural first response is to send: food, shelter, water, electricity, sanitation, medicine. So aid and humanitarian agencies start shipping food, tents, bottled water, generators, medical supplies, etc.

But is that always effective?

No.

When Aid Does More Harm Than Good

In Haiti, one of the things non one seemed to realize or consider was that the farms growing Haiti’s food were not destroyed by the earthquake. Most of the food supply remained intact. Yes, many perishables in Port-au-Prince were destroyed due to lost power and collapsed warehouses, but much of Haiti’s food supply sits fresh in open markets.

The challenge was not food. 

The challenge was the exchange of food for money that froze.

No electricity meant the ATMs and banks were not operating; the internet was down so no mobile money payments could be made either.

This is a classic mistake aid agencies and well-meaning organizations and individuals make. You are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

And by doing so you are creating a much bigger problem.

Effectiveness is Knowing What the Person on the Ground Really Needs

The farmer who make their living growing food and selling it at the market were devastated much less by the earthquake than by these two facts:

1.    their customers couldn’t access enough cash to buy their product

2.    by the time their customers could access their cash, the market had been flooded with food aid to the point that selling locally grown food for a profit was a futile endeavor

What if instead of shipping lots of food to Haiti, those organizations wanting to help first asked what the Haitians actually need? I know - a novel suggestion!

They would have hopefully realized the error of their plans and pivoted to buying up the food from all the rural communities and bringing it into the city to distribute.

Who Defines “Effective”

Unfortunately, thinking locally often runs counter to the policy and laws of donor countries – particularly government aid agencies.

The USA’s USAID, the UK’s FCDO, Denmark’s DANIDA, and others operate under the auspices of their governments and as they are spending taxpayer money helping people, an “effective” solution for them is one that provides a stimulus to their own economies; in addition to helping countries and people in need.

However, I do find it a bit surprising – and sad – that humanitarian agencies and NGOs don’t appear to define “effective” from the lens of those they are helping.

As a matter of fact, sometimes they can hurt more than they help.

The above thoughts are from my lecture notes for a Masters in Sustainable Development course that I designed entitled “Leadership, Politics & Multiparty Collaboration”. I’d love to share these and other thoughts at your university, ExecEd course or conference. Please reach out to me at drdeannedevries@icloud.com and let’s set a date.  

Photo: my own. Fond memories of coaching my under 8’s soccer (football) team in Greenwich, Connecticut. “Effective” for them was learning the game and having fun doing it!