Humanitarian work was born from human stories, yet too often today it returns only indicators, numbers, and perfect reports. The private sector, meanwhile, once obsessed with numbers, is moving toward storytelling, customer experience, and lean simplicity. Have we in the humanitarian world overcomplicated our basics with buzzwords and toolkits, while losing sight of the people at the heart of it?
Humanitarian work was born from human stories — families seeking safety, children needing education, communities rebuilding after crisis. These stories moved people, shaped policies, and drove funding. They still do. You still find them in the proposals we write and the words we use for reports.
But increasingly, humanitarian and development organizations are coming back not with stories, but with indicators, logframes and perfect donor reports. The language of compassion is being replaced with percentages, outcome tables, and MEAL frameworks.
Don’t get me wrong: quality and accountability are essential. But somewhere along the way, they have become the main story — overshadowing the people humanitarian action was meant to serve.
Meanwhile, the private sector, once obsessed with numbers and profit margins, is moving in the opposite direction — rediscovering the power of stories, customer experience, and lean simplicity.
Different languages, same ideas
When I look at the humanitarian world and the private sector, I often see the same ideas — just said in different ways. Here are some similarities yet different approaches and wordings:
- Project cycle (NGOs) = Product cycle (Business): The Project Cycle in NGOs (assess, design, approve, implement, evaluate) is similar to the Product Cycle in business — except companies often use Agile methods that make the cycle shorter, faster, and more flexible.
- MEAL = Quality management Both ensure work is done properly and delivers results. NGOs just make it heavier, with donor compliance, too many indicators and toolkits that complicate what should be simple learning and accountability.
- Indicators = KPIs Both measure progress. But businesses keep it simple and actionable to drive decision making, while NGOs create long chains of indicators, including standard ones and means of verification to report donor-driven metrics and verification layers.
- Budgets vs. expenditures = Profit & Loss Budgets and expenditures in NGOs are essentially the humanitarian version of a Profit & Loss statement. Both track money in and out. But while businesses can adjust spending if it drives growth, NGOs face stricter compliance: every dollar must match the donor-approved plan, leaving little room for flexibility.
And more and more…
The irony
- The humanitarian sector, which should be about human stories and simple action, is often moving in the opposite direction: adding buzzwords, toolkits and layers of reporting.
- The private sector is moving toward simplification — Lean, Agile, design thinking — all meant to cut out waste and focused on what really matters. It was defined by financials but it is now rediscovering stories, journeys, and experiences as drivers of growth.
We are witnessing a role reversal: the business world is humanizing, while the humanitarian world risks bureaucratizing.
Call for balance
Of course, accountability and quality matter. Donors need assurance. Communities deserve transparency. But when accountability becomes the story itself, we risk losing sight of why humanitarian work exists in the first place.
Numbers, indicators, and reports should support the story — not replace it. They should help us do better, not create walls between us and the people we serve.
Because at the heart of every programme is not a logframe or a percentage. It is a mother keeping her children safe, a family rebuilding after loss, a young person hoping for a future.
If we let indicators speak louder than these voices, we risk losing the very soul of humanitarian action. It is time to bring the human story back to the center.
And you? What do you think? Have we in the humanitarian sector gone too far in turning stories into numbers? How do we find the balance between accountability and humanity?
Dina Hajjar 