MEASURING
IMPACT

OASIS is our answer to doing impact measuring in a complex system. It is a multi-functional tool that helps us monitor, evaluate, and learn from what we are doing. Collecting large volumes of stories about people’s real-life experiences gives us an opportunity to see patterns that might otherwise remain unnoticed. Unlike most monitoring and evaluation tools, OASIS doesn’t provide us with answers. Instead, it allows us to ask better questions and design our next wise actions to shift patterns.

Traditional impact measurement is suitable for evaluating closed systems with clear boundaries in time and space. It expects and needs a high level of predictability. This is clearly not the space in which the WE program operates. In our world things are volatile, uncertain, and highly unpredictable. This is why we do our impact measurement in a radically different way.

‘Oasis constantly reminds us to put the stories and the people who tell them at the center of our work’

CONNOR MCMULLEN

To illustrate the necessity: in one of the factories where WE operates, a project was started with a measurable target. The factory wanted to reduce sexual harassment by 10% in a year. And indeed, one year later they had succeeded. There was a clear reduction in the reported cases. But something strange happened simultaneously. All of a sudden, the number of women workers falling down the stairs had increased. Their ‘cases’ of sexual harassment had simply been re-classified.

It’s a well-known phenomenon that as soon as you try to measure something, people will switch to optimising for whatever you’re measuring, rather than putting their best efforts into actually doing the work that needs to be done. We may think that what gets measured gets done, but the actual measuring distorts and corrupts the process it is intended to monitor and can cause serious harm.

SHARE
STORIES WITH
YOUR TEAM

GAIN INSIGHT
THROUGH
REPORTS

DISCOVER,
EXPLORE &
REFLECT

PLAN YOUR
NEXT WISE
ACTION

THE OASIS
PLATFORM

Instead of relying on traditional impact measurement, the WE program works with OASIS, a tool that has specifically been created to see shifts in patterns of behaviour and allows us to ask if we are shifting in the right direction. If you’re interested, you can find more information about OASIS here.