Warts-and-all evaluation may beat ‘crabs in a bucket’ mindset

An evaluation report released this week provides some much-needed evidence on the effectiveness of Jawun.

Jawun is an initiative of Noel Pearson and other Cape York leaders, and involves corporate and government partners working with (rather than simply providing services to) Indigenous organisations and businesses through voluntary secondment type arrangements.

Over the years there have been some questions about the value of secondment programs, with some Indigenous leaders arguing the most valuable partnerships occur when organisations have some ‘skin in the game‘ and that it is ‘hard to critique the state of play if no-one is keeping score.’

When it comes to critiquing each other, Paul Keating once famously compared Indigenous people to ‘crabs in a bucket‘:

“If one of you starts climbing out and gets his claws on the rim, about to pull himself over the top to freedom, the other mob will be pulling him back down into the bucket. You all end up cooked.”

Noel Pearson and Cape York Partnerships are perhaps the biggest victims of this ‘crab in a bucket’ mindset, with some people in the Indigenous community actively looking for opportunities to criticise him and the work he is trying to achieve through the Cape York Reform agenda.

Unfortunately — perhaps because they fear being pulled back down into the bottom of the bucket if they admit to any failing — many evaluations of Indigenous programs read like exercises in PR spin rather than an independent and rigorous evaluation report.

To a certain extent, KPMG’s evaluation report falls into this trap, with the use of expressions like ‘the positive uplift’ Indigenous partners had experienced as a result of taking part in Jawun.

However, the report also indicates some people were not completely satisfied with their Jawun experience and that the model could be improved by better assessing organisations capabilities and capacity to host secondees effectively.

The whole purpose of conducting an evaluation is to look at what is and is not working. Trial and error is essential for learning what approaches work and what needs to be tweaked.

Providing a ‘warts-and-all’ evaluation is perhaps the best way for Jawun to silence its critics. Now if only it would release the full evaluation report on its website instead of just the executive summary.