The problem

• An ambitious indicator strategy, no critical review against feasibility, coherence, and practicality.

Context

A broad sustainability vision was built around over a hundred of proposed indicators as derived from a community consultation process. On paper, the ambition was high. In practice, however, the indicator set had not yet been challenged for clarity, duplication, usefulness, measurability, bottlenecks, or implementation burden. The risk was a monitoring model that appeared comprehensive, but would prove unworkable during implementation.

What was needed was not a cosmetic clean-up, but a substantive feasibility review with a closer look at whether the proposed indicators actually made sense, whether their data could be collected realistically, whether their terminology was logical, whether their importance was justifiable, and whether common indicators could be used in their stead.

My role

I reviewed the proposed indicator set as part of a broader advisory assignment on planning and monitoring. My task was not simply to edit wording, but to examine the indicator vision against what each indicator was trying to capture, whether it was conceptually clear, whether it duplicated other measures, whether the data could realistically be collected directly or obtained from alternative sources including stakeholders, whether there are risks in collecting their data and in publishing any results, and whether the overall framework was moving toward something implementable.

What I did

I conducted a substantive diagnostic review of the proposed monitoring concept by:

• reviewing the proposed indicators for conceptual clarity, relevance, duplication, and feasibility, etc.
• identifying where single indicators were overloaded and in fact contained multiple different ideas or measurement demands
• questioning whether certain indicators were meaningful in practice, even where they sounded appealing in principle
• flagging measurement problems, including vague definitions, unclear units of analysis, unrealistic tracking expectations, and likely data-source gaps
• identifying where indicators would be difficult, politically sensitive, or disproportionate to the organisation’s realistic monitoring capacity

As the review progressed, it became increasingly clear that the main issue was not the wording of individual indicators, but the wider monitoring vision itself. The proposed framework was too broad and insufficiently grounded in feasibility to function as intended without significant rethinking.

Outcome

The review helped leadership recognise that the original monitoring vision was not realistically implementable in its proposed form. Rather than producing a finalised indicator set through minor refinement, the exercise served as a feasibility stress test that exposed the need for more fundamental reconsideration of the framework’s scope, logic, and practical demands.

What this case shows

This case demonstrates my ability to diagnose weak framework design before it hardens into an unworkable system. It shows that I do not just help build monitoring structures; I also know how to test whether they are conceptually sound, realistically measurable, and proportionate to institutional capacity. Sometimes the most valuable contribution is not to force into existence a refined framework, but to show clearly why the whole concept needs rethinking first.