A spy in the house of love

Keystone’s Chief Executive David Bonbright delivered the talk below at IMPCON 2016 in Atlanta. Despite the striking resemblance, this is not an engraving of Jeremy Nicholls. It is William Blake’s depiction of Isaac Newton. Staying with this theme of artistic perspectives on measurement, I have borrowed from the writer Anais Nin for the title of[…]

Are you really listening to the people you serve?

We believe listening to feedback from the people you serve can help improve outcomes. This feedback is an often overlooked but vital part of performance management. To make things easier for time and cash strapped organizations, Keystone Accountability has developed an online tool to help people collect and benchmark their feedback data. The Feedback Commons[…]

Turning high scores into low scores, or overcoming courtesy bias

Overcoming courtesy bias – the tendency of people to tell you what they think you want to hear – is challenging. Especially in situations with a power imbalance. But for feedback data to be useful it has to be honest. One of our clients came up with various ways to overcome this courtesy bias and[…]

Thou shalt not…only do what you are told

Like it or not, those with the cash set the agenda. They influence where we work and what we focus on. That is not to say they choose the wrong things or that they don’t take others’ views into consideration, but never the less, they choose. And the rest of us respond. It also affects[…]

Development data – what is it good for?

Keystone believes in the power of data and benchmarking to improve how we do development. However, it is not always easy to come by. The International Aid Transparency Initiative is supposed to make information about aid easier to access, use and understand. It is the first (and only) standard for how organizations and governments are[…]