Dad, have you always wanted to be fat?

As it goes with little kids, this type of question comes out of the blue. At one moment, they are just babies playing around; the next one, they nonchalantly dig into your deepest insecurities. If you ask me, the assumption that small children are adorable needs further testing.

Anyway, it was a long time ago; he was about four, I think, but the story stayed in the family as a funny anecdote. Of course, today’s teenager is not much interested in tales from his early days, but this one is “sigma,” as he would say it nowadays.

A few days ago, this story crossed my mind while I was sifting through old M&E Basics slide decks and notes. In the last decade, I’ve delivered dozens of trainings, workshops, briefing sessions, and all other sorts of capacity-building activities focused on monitoring and evaluation fundamentals or some specific M&E areas. Regardless of the audience—rural activists, refugee response frontline teams, project managers, or senior leaders—I’ve always been enthusiastic about demystifying M&E and making it as practical as possible. I was aware of that, of course, but going through my notes made me realise that many of the examples I’ve been using are not about projects or social change but rather stories of personal struggles and changes I (or people around me) aimed for. The pattern is clear: my favourite change pathway examples are about weight loss, diets, workouts, and quitting smoking. There was also one draft on procrastination, but it looks like I left it for later.

As far as I can recall, these stories were a pretty successful tool for introducing different M&E-related terms and concepts like outputs, outcomes, indicators, logic models, double counting, dosage, assumptions, sustainability, and others.

I know I am biased in this reflection, but I also know that personal change stories have never let me down. They worked equally well with different audiences—local youth initiatives, development professionals, or policymakers—and were always a good hook for engaging people in the topic. There is something universal about them. Most people have thought of or tried to change something in their lives and know how difficult it can be to, for example, sustainably change your diet, be consistent in the gym, improve posture, quit smoking, or change even some small habit.

Being knowledgeable about various diet and workout plans is not enough to attain desirable results. Knowing that smoking damages your health usually is not sufficient to quit cigarettes. And people can relate to that. It is consistent with their personal experience, which opens space for fruitful discussions on issues like plan vs. reality; doing things vs. making change; supporting vs. hindering factors; or how success looks like and how to measure it.

The great thing about personal change stories is that they are authentic and reusable. There’s no need for long preparation or a script—just a note on when to share them and what aspect of training to cover. Also, you don’t have to be a skilful storyteller to use them. I am not one either, and in my experience, even brief anecdotes work well.

However, personal stories are not enough. They are great for introducing M&E concepts and terms by using some universal stories of change, but the next step is to move the discussion towards work-related examples. This is where “know your audience” comes in handy. While M&E fundamentals are basically the same across sectors and themes, examples used with rural activists should differ from those used with refugee response teams and definitely should not be the same as those for staff involved in cross-border cultural cooperation.

I am not a certified trainer or educator; I’ve learned by doing it. The idea to combine personal change stories and work-related examples came to me intuitively. It was much later that I came across Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory, Knowles’ Adult Learning principles, or constructivist views on learning, which were all helpful in shaping my thinking and practices.

Monitoring and evaluation theory and practice are probably in better shape today than they have ever been before. However, there is still a huge need for capacity building and updating some of the dominant attitudes and approaches. General guides and trainings are useful but often generic and not relevant to specific contexts and learners' needs. People learn best when they can relate new concepts to their own experiences, and when the learning is relevant to their lives and everyday work so they can apply the new knowledge and skills immediately. Personal change stories and work-related examples are essential here as they resonate with trainees' experiences, make the learning more relevant and applicable, and overall, the learning process more effective.

And a final note: it looks like late evening eating (my favourite) is not the best way to lose weight. Don’t ask me how I know it. :)