Peter Capozza, President of Khulisa Management Services, co-founded the company 30 years ago in September 1993. In honor of Khulisa’s 30th birthday this month, we asked Peter to look back on his decades of experience in the field and provide an #EvalTuesdayTip for other evaluators.
“Managing work in ME&L [monitoring, evaluation, and learning] requires a constant vigilance over the details of all facets of the work, a focus on the client’s needs, and a good understanding on what’s possible in the field,” says Peter. His most important tip is: Plan ahead and prepare for the unknowns.
“Plan realistically what is accomplishable,” Peter says. “Too often, when one plans fieldwork, we try to accomplish a bit too much and the logistics (roads, weather, vehicle ability to manage the terrain, etc.) don’t always comply with our best-made plans. We have seen this over the decades in our fieldwork.”
Khulisa has conducted evaluations all over the world, in many hard-to-reach areas, and it’s often impossible to know what to expect in advance. “So one should plan for things that we can’t anticipate, adding some extra time in the timeline and budget to prepare for the unknowns.”
Tune in next week for another 30th-anniversary tip from one of our Khulisa directors.
