No Feedback? No Impact
Samuel Sifuna
Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, Research and Learning Lead @ KEMRI - Wellcome Trust
“When others are wrong, you point fingers. When you’re wrong, you hide.” (Bunyala saying). The Feedback You Ignore Today Is the Failure You Report Tomorrow. Your dashboards are gorgeous, your pie charts could win awards, and your reports are thick enough to stop a bullet. But here’s the uncomfortable question: does any of it mean the program is actually working—or are you just decorating failure with senseless data?”
Feedback is not a luxury. It’s survival. It’s the blunt voice saying:
“Your intervention missed the point.”
“This training was a waste of our time.”
“We love it. Can we have more?”
Ignore it, and you’re just running expensive experiments on people’s lives.
Here’s the ugly truth: most MEL systems are allergic to feedback. They collect data like magpies collect shiny things — for show, not for use. Teams fear tough conversations. Managers file “critical comments” under irrelevant. And donors? Some don’t want bad news disrupting their success stories.
But feedback is where the magic happens:
It’s what saves you from repeating the same mistakes at scale.
It’s what keeps your “good idea” from becoming an expensive joke.
It’s what turns one-off wins into long-term impact.
Ask yourself today:
Are you building a learning culture or a reporting factory?
When people give you hard truths, do you lean in or shut down?
And most importantly—are you brave enough to ask, “How did we screw up?”
Because feedback isn’t criticism. It’s your mirror. Your compass. Your free course correction before reality slaps you harder
....and that is L in MEL
Listen, Learn and Live!
Signed
Phd Candidate, Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability Learning and Research Specialist
3wI appreciate the point about reporting factories vs. learning cultures. That contrast is real. Until we stop treating feedback as reputational risk instead of strategic intelligence, we’ll keep delivering glossy reports while missing real impact. This is unapologetic, and exactly the kind of truth-telling that the MEL world desperately needs.
TIES Kenya Representative
1moThank you for this truth! No technical research and M&E lingo and terms. Straight to the point. I especially like the point about running expensive "good ideas"
MEL Specialist | Data Analytics- Transforming Data into Actionable Insights! | Driving Impact & Growth | Project Management | Data Science & Strategy | Evidence-Based Decision Making |
1moVery informative reality checks here. Keep doing this Samuel Sifuna
Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Lead
1moVery Informative and great check for the M&Es