I’m Kathryn Lowerre, an internal evaluator for the Environmental Health Epidemiology Bureau (EHEB) at the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH). My background includes work in Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and teaching in the humanities. Environmental Health Epidemiology looks at the connections between the environment and human health (nmhealth.org/about/erd/eheb). Funding for many EHEB programs comes […] Related posts: SCEA Week: Leslie Fierro & Deanna Rossi on Evaluating State Asthma Programs Deepa Valvi on the Strategic Evaluation Planning Process Maureen Wilce on Program Evaluation Basics Webinar Series

Hello, my name is Dan McDonnell and I am a Community Manager for the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Hashtags are an integral part of the Twitter experience. Whether you follow popular hashtags like #eval to keep up on the latest news in evaluation, or you include them in your own Tweets to join larger conversations […] Related posts: Dan McDonnell on Making New Friends and Mastering Lesser-Known Twitter Features Without Third Party Apps Dan McDonnell on Evaluating Your Tweets Dan McDonnell on Using Lists to Become a Twitter Power User

Artist Katie Paterson created a project that won’t be seen for a century. See how this idea is significant to your business’s performance today.   On a flight last week, I opened a left-behind fashion magazine and read an unexpected gem: a short piece about a Scottish artist named Katie Paterson, who has conceived of a fascinating project in Norway: "A thousand trees have been planted in Nordmarka, a forest just outside Oslo, Read More The post Performance Improvement in the Long-Haul: Your Company in 100 Years appeared first on renshicon.com.

The secret to sustained business goal progression this coming year might surprise you I’ll just say it: in their typical format, New Year’s resolutions are stupid. This might be evident to you from personal experience, and if not, rest assured that the numbers speak for themselves: only 8% of people achieve their resolutions each year. I know. I’m the Grinch Who Stole New Year. In that spirit, here are a few reasons the typical New Year’s resolution (NYR) is doomed to fail: Unrealistic - NYRs tend to encompass a scope that’s simply unachievable: Increase productivity by 170%, Read More The post The One Resolution Business Leaders Should Make This New Year appeared first on renshicon.com.

Welcome to the AEA365 Internal Evaluation (IE) week! I’m Boris Volkov, a Co-Chair of IE TIG; also, a Co-Director for Monitoring & Evaluation with the University of Minnesota Clinical and Translational Science Institute and a faculty at the UMN School of Public Health. During this week, our colleagues from evaluation units in different organizations will […] Related posts: Internal Eval Week: Kathleen Norris on the Internal Evaluation Boa Internal Eval Week: Pamela Bishop on Working as a New Internal Evaluator Cultural Competence Week: Asma Ali and Anthony Heard on Beyond the Findings: Reflections on the Culturally Competent Evaluator’s Role

How to Maximize Improvement for Both Acquirer and Target After M&A 50% of acquisitions are unsuccessful. That’s scary for the acquirer who’s taken a financial risk, and perhaps even scarier for the often smaller and less veteran target. Even huge businesses, some of which are serial acquirers, make mistakes. Meanwhile, successful acquisitions can spell out major ROI for the acquirer and fat dividends for investors. That’s why there’s always tons of speculation over which targets powerful companies might acquire. Read More The post 6 Steps for Acquisition Success appeared first on renshicon.com.

My name is Alicia McCoy and I am the Research and Evaluation Manager at Family Life. Family Life is an independent community organization that provides services to families, children and young people in Melbourne, Australia. Engaging staff around evaluation can be challenging at the best of times, especially for internal evaluators who need to facilitate interest and motivation long-term. Over the years I have found that a little bit of humor and creativity goes a long way. Hot Tip: For the most part, don’t take internal evaluation too seriously. The use of humor breaks down barriers between practice and evaluation. Using funny videos, cartoons and anecdotes during presentations is an effective way of getting your evaluation message across and assisting staff to understand and reflect on evaluation in a way that might not have been possible otherwise. Hot Tip: Disrupt expectations about evaluation being "boring." Hold fun activities to help build an evaluation culture. For example, we recently held a competition where teams were invited to write a story or statement about how they have used evaluation or evaluative thinking in practice. The initial promotion of the competition was a cryptic poster that appeared around offices stating "Does your Team like a challenge?" This was followed by a fun, anonymous, and slightly ambiguous poem that fuelled the discussion about what was to come. The full details of the competition were finally advertised a few weeks later. There were prizes for the most creative entry, the most informative, and a peer-awarded prize for most popular. It worked because it broke the pattern people expected from evaluation. Hot Tip: First impressions are everything when it comes to communicating about evaluation internally. Using creative titles and introductions in communication messages about evaluation provide an oft-needed "hook". Recent online communications we used that got staff talking include: The blind men and the elephant: a story told to an Australian, by and Indian-born Englishman, in South Africa, and what it might mean for us at Family Life (a parable was used to promote upcoming internal program planning and evaluation training); How can we learn from road intersections (an analogy of a poorly designed traffic light system was used to encourage staff to reflect on double-loop learning); Feedback: Balinese style! (a personal experience of being asked for customer feedback in Bali was shared to encourage staff to think about how they introduce feedback questionnaires to their clients). These communications appealed to people’s curiosity and they wanted to read on to find out what the message was about. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Internal Evaluation (IE) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our IE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: IE Week: Alicia McCoy on Using an Internal Blog to Support a Research and Evaluation Culture Internal Eval Week: Kathleen Norris on the Internal Evaluation Boa Boris Volkov on Yet Another Role of the Internal Evaluator

Stay away from these leadership presentation gaffes It is abundantly clear that CEOs need to know how to speak publicly in a concise, attention-grabbing, attention-keeping, and inspiring way. It might be the requirement to address a board of directors, an opportunity to tell the company’s story on television, or a spot on a panel at an industry event; whatever form your next public speaking engagement takes, your business’s success is at stake when you take the stage. Read More The post 5 Public Speaking Mistakes CEOs Make appeared first on renshicon.com.

Hello AEA365ers! We are Suzanne Markoe Hayes (Director) and Elaine Donato (Internal Evaluator) from the Evaluation and Research Department at Volunteers of America Greater Los Angeles (VOALA), a large non-profit organization whose mission is to enrich the lives of those in need. One program we support is VOALA’s largest emergency shelter located in South Los Angeles— an area known for having the densest homeless population in Los Angeles County. As an initiative led by United Way Greater Los Angeles to end chronic homelessness by 2016, VOALA’s shelter joined homeless service providers in South L.A. to design and implement a Coordinated Entry System (CES). To develop such a system, participating service providers were required to join forces for the very first time. The collaborative was going to be a challenge due to the extensive history of homeless service providers in South L.A. having scarce resources and competing for the same scraps of funding. Human service organizations are being asked to collaborate strategically to address social issues, and they must do so with their existing limited resources. For majority, this includes having no funding for a third-party evaluator and/or support from an internal evaluation department. Recognizing these limitations, VOALA contributed their Internal Evaluation team to assist with the collective impact of the South L.A. CES collaborative. We implemented a process evaluation to help identify the overarching collaborative goals, the processes that will occur, and to define each organization’s role. As a result, the South L.A. CES team successfully designed a unique system to link chronically homeless individuals in their community with the most appropriate services and housing. Here are hot tips to implement a collaborative process evaluation: Hot Tip #1: Make clear to all participating organizations that the evaluator is here to assist all agencies, not just own agency. Hot Tip #2: Create process maps to help identify each organization’s role in the process. As a key element for continuous quality improvement (CQI), process maps can also be useful in tracking the activities related to achieving desired outcomes. Hot Tip #3: Create a safe, open environment where team members are allowed to share their innovative ideas on how to better serve the target population and strengthen existing processes. Hot Tip #4: Produce dashboard reports and share in biweekly meetings to inform decision-making and track team goals and desired outcomes. Rad Resource: Check out the Center for Urban Community Services for their training CQI methods including process maps. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Internal Evaluation (IE) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our IE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: SCEA Week: Bill Shennum & Kate LaVelle on the Multiple Uses of Multiple Data Sources Systems Week: Aimee Sickels on Collaborative Leadership in Systems Work Internal Evaluation Week: Debbie Cohen on Working with External Evaluators

  Conner Brown wrote a paper on entrepreneurship. Here it is. Philip Uglow and Renshi Consulting Group "It has to be fun or it’s not worth doing."  (Uglow 2015) Philip Uglow is an entrepreneur at heart. Phil has started several successful businesses, branching out on his own in his mid-twenties, leaving behind a lucrative family construction business. His entrepreneurial spark is fuelled by his passion for learning and curiosity with an intense focus on leadership and how to empower others. Read More The post What Makes an Entrepreneur appeared first on renshicon.com.