As part of the work I’m doing on Proving Impact, I’m having lots of conversations with people in lots of organisations about the data they collect.

One thing that pretty much everyone has is a post event evaluation form. The name varies but they are, in almost all cases, a happy sheet.

They collect great data. Data which says how nice we are, how nice the room was, how welcoming we were, how effective our delivery was, how visually appealing the slides were, etc.

Data that we can collect and ‘prove’ something.

They don’t, of course, prove anything. 

Except for the fact we like it when people say nice things about us.