My mistrust of toolkits started long before the project started. I would never use a toolkit unless I was mandated to, or in a workshop setting. The list of things I detest in toolkits is long, so I’ll focus on the big ones.
The sheer inaccessibility of toolkits is the most frustrating. The language, the way the tools are structured and the tone of the content makes it seem cold, aloof, and almost academic. Then the lack of context is borderline criminal. Sure, it broadly works in a few situations, but there will always be exceptions and special cases.
The merit of any toolkit is judged on how often is it used. If no one feels like using the tools then it has failed, no matter how technically resolved it may be. There is a caveat to add here: toolkits are always aimed at a very particular target audience, people who are in specific position at a specific time, doing a specific activity.
I could be completely wrong about this, and statistics will probably prove so, there being enough numbers to prove the success of toolkits. But for me, personally, they simply don’t work and there are better ways of disseminating information. It’s also important to recognise that the method of dissemination should entirely depend on the target user, and not on the nature of the knowledge itself. Of course, in an ideal world every specific problem would have its own bespoke solution, but since that not going to happen anytime soon, we have to do the best we can with general solutions.
In my poorly informed, highly inexperienced opinion, I feel that toolkits shouldn’t teach a fisherman how to fish, because unless you cover every single type of fishing technique, it’s not going to be a very helpful guide to those who aren’t in the same situation as described in the toolkit. What they should do is, to teach the principles and concepts of fishing. So that you can learn and develop your own unique fishing technique. So, teach a fisherman to teach himself how to fish. Everyone is creative in their own way, and will figure out solutions to their own particular problems when taught the basic principles and concepts.
It’s a lot like mathematics. Once you learn the basic formulas, and learn how to derive them, you can then apply it to any problem. Another lesson I learnt from mathematics is that you have to understand the problem very well. Once you understand what the situation needs and requires, you can then use the necessary formula. Of course, real life is nothing like mathematics, there exist many complexities that no toolkit can handle.
I really like reading case studies. Harvard Business Review is a magazine that is full of them and I devour it the moment I can get my hands on a copy. On the face of it, case studies are just another layer of abstraction between the reader and the information. But that layer of abstraction gives the information context and tells the reader how it was relevant in that context. So one can separate the context from the story with the additional understanding of knowing how it was used in that setting, hence giving a better understanding of the information. So I tend to understand concepts a whole lot better when presented to me in case studies. The power of narratives to explain a concept should never be underestimated.
The other alternative is that we look at the other end of the spectrum by making a checklist of sorts, which the user can use as reference to get through the process. This would leave the entire process in the creative control of the said user, and would merely direct them in a particular order of things to do. This is suitable for a limited number of tasks/processes and would compromise on the quality of the process.
At the other extreme, is to individually train people for the task that they’re trying to tackle and give them the knowledge and the ability to execute that know-how. This, of course is highly resource intensive but will guarantee results. Also, highly inefficient when trying to disseminate knowledge to scale up impact. The ideal solution lies somewhere at some multi-cross-section of these methods, and will change according to the broader context.
A toolkit is not the best way to scale impact, and there are better, more customised solutions available. Toolkits have become a buzzword, and are designed around the information rather than the intended recipient of the information. Users cannot connect with it if its not contextually applicable.
So what is the solution to this conundrum?
[insert quotes from QS articles on toolkits]