I was watching a show the other day about the making of The Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and one of the things that struck me about the show was the mention of one of the reasons why The Beatles stopped touring: "We couldn’t hear ourselves onstage."  Ringo mentioned he was just hoping he was playing the right notes as he couldn’t hear the music and was trying to play by reading John and Paul’s lips.  The sound amplification technology of the day just wasn’t good enough to allow The Beatles to keep touring. So they stopped touring and took their creative energies to the studio and revolutionized the concept of a rock album exploiting the existing technology of the day to their advantage.  They took a risk and the result was a masterpiece. The Beatles needed an improvement in technology to keep doing what they were doing - touring and sharing their music to millions of fans - but they were not going to create the new technology.  They were artists, not engineers.  With the technology wall square in front of them, they pivoted in a new direction, and created something the world had never heard. When you hit that wall in your company, whether a startup or corporation, which way do you pivot?  Do you become a technology company and try to create the totally new technology, or maintain your purpose and core skill set to exploit existing technology?  Either answer could be correct (the skill set of your team, available resources, etc. all factor in), but you need to choose wisely. One can only wonder what would have happened if, in late summer 1966, there was a sudden breakthrough in sound amplification technology.  And we can be thankful there wasn’t.    

Thank you Matthew Weiner. Not only for providing 7 seasons of masterful television, but for ending it in a way that leaves the viewer open to creating their own endings, and molding the storylines the way they see fit.  No tidy box with a ribbon on it, with no assembly required; but here are the pieces, there’s the direction we’re heading, put it together so it makes sense for you.  Brilliant! We need more of this in our lives.  Producers crafting stories and letting us think and use our brains to write the story the way we see it, given the parameters set before us.  Too often, in our business world (and when it comes to my passion, Lean), we want it all handed to us in a nice tidy box with a bow.  We want to find out what someone else did, write it down, put it in a box, and then put that box on our shelf.  Guess what.  It doesn’t look right, fit, etc.  So we ignore it, or discard it as something else that "didn’t work here." Admittedly, sometimes it’s nice not to have to think.  To just have someone give us the answer and we don’t have to do anything.  Much of television has been like that for years - a way to escape and not have to think.  The problem is too much of business is becoming that way.  In our quest and zeal for speed and efficiency, we take the easy way out.  We don’t try to fit the methodology and tools to our circumstance, we just want the answer.  No thinking required. Weiner did something that has made many people uncomfortable, and not often done on television - he left it open.  They wanted it "buttoned up" nice and tidy with no loose ends, so they can put it away and not have to think about it anymore.  But that’s not what they got.  They got something that’s a little loose around the edges, needs some pieces put together, and with a little creative thinking they have to, no… get to, wrap it all up We are all writing our story every day.  The story of our personal lives and the story of our work.  Are you just going to take the answer given, or are you going to use what was given and mold it into your own?

The other day, I met a young entrepreneur who is just starting his company with a product that he has a great passion for and thinks will perform very well in the market (due to confidentiality, I won’t mention its name).  He was telling me all about how great it was, how he already had a sales channel set up through a friend, so on and so on…. I listened very enthusiastically, then asked a couple of questions: Have you spoken with any potential customers? Do you understand the issues they have? What problem are you trying to solve? He just looked at me.  Silence.  Then, "No, but that’s a good idea."  I suggested he meet with a few potential customers, get some feedback and see where that takes him. It doesn’t matter if you are a startup, a small company or a Fortune 500 organization - if you are launching a new product or service, you need to make sure you understand what customer problem you are trying to solve. You don’t have to necessarily do an intense amount of customer research or surveys, in fact, doing too much of this could restrict your ability to innovate as customers do not always know what they want; they just know they have a problem. Your objective is not to find out what the customers want, but to understand the customer’s problem.  Your job is then to solve that problem with a product or service that provides a useful value proposition to the customer. It all starts with understanding the problem.  Do you understand your customer’s problem? Until next time…

Kirk Knestis, CEO of Hezel Associates, back again, following up on a previous post about how evaluators’ work in STEM education settings is being influenced by the Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development introduced by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Department of Education. Hezel Associates studies education innovations so regularly supports organizations proposing grant-funded R&D projects in science, technology, engineering, and math education (STEM). Sometimes we’re a research partner (typically providing Design and Development Research, Type #3 in the Guidelines); while in other cases we serve as an external evaluator (more accurately, "program evaluator") assessing the implementation and impact of proposed project activities, including the research. Lessons Learned - Work with a wide variety of clients (more than 70 proposals so far in 2014!) has left me convinced that an evaluator—or research partner, if your job is framed that way—can do a few specific things that can add substantial value to development of a client’s proposal. Someone in an external evaluator/researcher role can do more than simply "write the evaluation section," potentially improving the likelihood for proposal success. Hot Tips - 1. Help designers explicate the theory of action of their innovation (intervention, program, technology, etc.) being tested and developed. Any research study aligned with the Guidelines (for example, many if not most NSF projects) will be expected to build on a clearly defined theoretical basis. Evaluators ought to be well equipped to facilitate development of a logic model to serve that purpose, illustrating connections between elements or features of the innovation and its intended outcomes. Define the appropriate "type" of research . The Common Guidelines provide a typology of six purposes for research, ranging from Foundational Research contributing to basic understandings of teaching and learning; to Scale-up Research, examining if the innovation retains its effectiveness for a variety of stakeholders, when implemented in different settings "out in the wild" without substantial developer support. A skilled evaluator can help the client select the appropriate kind of research given the level of maturity of the innovation and other factors. Help clarify distinctions between "research" and "evaluation" purposes, roles, and functions. Clarity on the type of research required will inform study design, data-collection, analysis, and reporting decisions. A good evaluator should be able to help determine the expertise required for the research, requirements for external evaluation of that work, and the narrative explaining roles, responsibilities, and work plans required for a proposal. Rad Resource - If you work with education clients, become familiar with the Common Guidelines for Education Research and Development. Some complex conversations loom but they will be an important consideration in conversations about research and evaluation in education in the coming years. 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: Kirk Knestis on Innovation Research and Development (R&D) vs. Program Evaluation Leslie Goodyear on Serving as a Reviewer for the National Science Foundation Lily Zandniapour and Nicole Vicinanza on The Social Innovation Fund Evaluation Plan Guidance Document: A Tool for Building Shared Understanding of Rigorous Impact Evaluation Designs

Hello fellow evaluators! I’m Sheila B Robinson, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor, and I have to admit, I get lonely sometimes. After all, I’m the only program evaluator in my organization. Sure, there are other people who collect and analyze data, but no one who can sit down with me over lunch and discuss logic models, debate the merits of using a goal-based or goal-free  approach, prattle on about program theory, or compare favorite theorists on the Evaluation Theory Tree. Where’s the eHarmony or Match.com for evaluators? Thankfully, I have several options for going virtual to enjoy some good evaluation camaraderie. Strictly platonic, of course. Rad Resources: EvalTalk is the discussion list of the American Evaluation Association. It’s a listserv that has been going since 1995! There are many active members and many, many more readers. Discussions can get quite heavy and theoretical at times, and many contributors write lengthy responses to questions engaging in spirited debates. On the other hand, many people use the group to pose simpler questions, such as requests for recommendations of instruments, products or services. AEA’s LinkedIn group also hosts a number of interesting discussions on various evaluation-related topics. And while you’re on LinkedIn, look for other groups as well. I belong to a number of additional evaluation-related groups: The Evaluators’ Institute, The European Evaluation Society, Monitoring and Evaluation Professionals, Evaluators Group, RealWorld Evaluation, and Research, Methodologies, and Statistics in the Social Sciences. Some AEA Topical Interest Groups (TIGS) also have LinkedIn groups. And of course, some group discussions are more active than others. All of these discussion groups have featured conversations around topics such as systems thinking, definitions of terms (e.g. outputs, outcomes, indicators, metrics, measures, etc.), how to deal with different types of data (e.g. Likert scales), statistical analysis software, RFPs, research design, capacity building, evaluation approaches, job openings, and much, much more. Don’t forget to look for AEA, AEA TIGs, and AEA Affiliates on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter for even more evaluation conversation! 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: Susan Kistler on Getting Engaged in Environmental Evaluation Susan Kistler on Linking in to LinkedIn Poster Week: Anna Douglas on Using Asynchronous Discussion Groups for Evaluation

My name is Bonnie Richards, an analyst from Foresee and Chair of the Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building TIG. Welcome to the OL-ECB sponsored AEA365 week! This week our blog posts will cover a range of experiences discussing challenges and successes we have had sustaining learning or evaluation in our work with organizations or programs. Across our members’ varied experiences, you will learn more about their strategies and methods for facilitating learning and the challenges they have encountered. In my own role working with clients, one of my main goals is to help them understand where to prioritize improvements for their stakeholders. One of the challenges in doing this is navigating the different environments of organizations, companies, and government agencies. Each group is unique. For example, among government agencies, while there are some similar requirements or processes that consistently govern each, the mix of involved stakeholders who serve as the primary point of contact actually vary significantly. A primary contact could be a program analyst, or a director of the agency’s strategic planning and evaluation office, or technical director, or even a third party vendor. Understanding and acclimating to each client, meeting them at their "level" and working within their context is key because it helps you to learn the best ways for interacting with different stakeholder groups. This sets the stage for a successful relationship. Lessons learned: Ask questions. So, how does one get to the point of successfully meeting stakeholders in the appropriate context? Ask questions: Why are they beginning this process? Were they instrumental in initiating it, or are they tasked it as part of a directive from a director or committee? How do they intend to use the information? What are their goals? What information will be most useful? Take some time to ask questions. Stakeholders will appreciate your interest and the opportunity, and it exposes you to the thoughts, concerns, and values that are top of mind to the people you will be working closely with. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our OL-ECB 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: Michelle Baron on Gaining Support for Evaluations in the Military GOVT Week: David Bernstein on Top 10 Indicators of Performance Measurement Quality GOV TIG Week: Caroline DeWitt on Valuing Stakeholders in the Evaluation Process

Hi, I’m Joe Bauer, the Director of Survey Research & Evaluation in the Statistics & Evaluation Center (SEC) at the American Cancer Society (ACS) in Atlanta, Georgia. I have been working as an internal evaluator at the ACS for almost nine years, in a very challenging, but very rewarding position. Lesson Learned: Evaluation is always political and you must be aware of those cultural dynamics that are part of every environment. I came to the American Cancer Society to have an impact at a national level. I had envisioned evaluation (and still do) as a means to systematically improve programs to improve the lives of cancer patients. In the beginning, many were not ‘believers’ in evaluation. The perception was that evaluation could only lead to finding things that were wrong or that were not working - and that this might lead to politically problematic situations. We needed to navigate the cultural mine fields, even as we were acting as change agents. Over time, our Center worked hard to build a sense of trust. As internal evaluators, one must always be aware that we are being judged, as to how nice you are playing in the sandbox, even as we strive and push for higher quality, better data, and better study designs. Evaluators ask the tough questions - which at times cause ‘friction’. However, an internal evaluator must have a comfort level and the confidence with taking that role of asking the tough questions, which can be lonely. Hot Tips: As an internal evaluator, one must be willing to ‘stay the course’ and ‘weather the storms’ and to never compromise on your values. This is crucially important - because you always need to do the right thing. This does not mean you end up winning all these ‘battles’, because ultimately, you can and are over-ruled on many issues. However, you must keep your integrity - because that is something you need to own throughout your career. That is also what builds trust and credibility. Rad Resources: The American Evaluation Association’s Guiding Principles for Evaluators http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=51 - which are intended to guide the professional practice for evaluators and inform evaluation clients and the general public about the principles they can expect to be upheld by professional evaluators. The Official Dilbert Website with Scott Adams http://www.dilbert.com/ - where there are many ‘real world’ examples of the cultural dynamics that occur in the world of work and the often absurd scenarios and dynamics that play themselves out. As an evaluator - you will not only need to have a good skill set and work hard at keeping your values and integrity - you will need to have a sense of humor and keep your perspective. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our OL-ECB 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: Internal Evaluation Week: Debbie Cohen on Working with External Evaluators Susan Kistler on Humor and Cartoons for Evaluators Internal Eval Week: Kathleen Norris on the Internal Evaluation Boa

My name is Lisa Richardson and I am the internal Improvement Advisor/Evaluator for the UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress (NCCTS), which in addition to coordinating the collaborative activities of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), provides leadership in many aspects of child trauma policy, practice, and training. Online surveys are a […] Related posts: Jessica Foster on Maximizing Survey Response Rates Scribing: Summer Jackson on Insights Into Foundation Evaluation IE Week: Hilary Loeb and Kelly Bay on Enhancing the Quality and Quantity of Survey Responses at Program Events

Hi, we are Tom Archibald (Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech) and Guy Sharrock (Senior Technical Advisor for Learning with Catholic Relief Services). We believe one way to integrate and sustain learning in an organization is by intentionally promoting "evaluative thinking." Evaluative thinking (ET) is an […] Related posts: Jeff Sheldon on the Readiness for Organizational Learning and Evaluation instrument Tom Archibald and Jane Buckley on Evaluative Thinking: The ‘Je Ne Sais Quoi’ of Evaluation Capacity Building and Evaluation Practice OL-ECB Week: Jeff Sheldon on using ROLE to Determine an Organization’s Support of Evaluative Inquiry

Hello! My name is Michele Tarsilla, an independent evaluation advisor and evaluation capacity development (ECD) specialist with experience in over thirty countries. I have served as Chair of the International and Cross-Cultural Evaluation TIG at AEA and am currently in transition to become the new OL-ECB TIG Co-Chair. The idea for this blog sprang from the […] Related posts: PD Presenters: Michele Tarsilla on a new Framework for Evaluation Capacity Development Shar McLean and Esteban Colon on Tools for Organizational Assessment CPE Week: José M. Díaz-Puente on the Empowerment Evaluator’s Role

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.

Improve employee engagement, productivity, and retention through criticism that’s actually effective Finding the right way to offer commentary to your employees is vital. Get it right, and you can fix any number of problems in your business. Get it wrong, and you risk losing money, losing your employees, and losing your mind.   A Fable Susan was a bright girl with a powerful intrinsic curiosity. In high school, Read More The post How to Kill With Criticism (It’s Easier Than You Think!) appeared first on renshicon.com.

Hello evaluation colleagues! We’re Rachel Albert, Vice President of Learning and Impact, and Laura Beals, Director of Evaluation, from Jewish Family and Children’s Service (Boston, MA). Our department is responsible for the internal evaluation of 44 programs, collectively serving over 17,000 people a year. At JF&CS, we face two challenges in evaluation management. First, we have multiple external and internal stakeholders - including foundations, federal and state grantors, individual donors, agency leadership, program managers, and staff - each of whom has a different perspective on what sorts of data they need. Second, instead of grants dictating the evaluation resources available to each program, our department is funded by overhead. This means it’s up to us to apportion our department’s evaluation resources thoughtfully across all 44 programs for maximum benefit. Lessons Learned: To meet this challenge, we developed a tool we call TIERS ("Tool for Intra-agency Evaluation Resource Sharing"). TIERS helps us leverage our resources on each program to answer the questions most relevant to its stakeholders. As you go higher in the pyramid, you are looking for stronger and stronger evidence that your program is achieving its intended impact. The pyramid is intended to be both cumulative and sequential: a program should not go up a tier until it has a robust implementation of the previous tier in place.  Hot Tips: This is not a race: It’s ok to stop at whatever the right tier is for a given program based on its evaluation needs and staff resources. Higher tiers require more resources from both the internal evaluator and program staff. Do not underestimate the difficulty of establishing even just a rigorous Tier 1 across a large agency! We presented this tool in a demonstration session at Eval 14; check out the AEA e-library for our slides and handout. Rad Resources: If you are looking for additional information about resource allocation for evaluation, here are a few places to start: This TIERS framework was inspired by the evaluation theories and frameworks of others, including Michael Q. Patton’s Mountain of Accountability and Idealware’s "The Reality of Measuring Human Service Programs: Results of a Survey." The Innovation Network’s "State of Evaluation 2012: Evaluation practice and capacity in the nonprofit sector," which includes their recommendation that "organizations should budget from 5% to 10% of the organization budget for evaluation costs" (p. 5). State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey, by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which includes data points on how often funders cover the costs of impact measurement (hint: 71% said "rarely" or "never"). A recent Markets for Good article by Laura Quinn on the cost of collecting data in nonprofit settings entitled "Forcing Nonprofits To Lie About Data." 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: Laura Beals on How Nonprofits can Support Academic Research Requests Internal Eval Week: Kathleen Norris on the Internal Evaluation Boa Internal Eval Week: Debbie Cohen on Electronic Health Records Data Tips

My name is Stanley Capela, currently Vice President for Quality Management and Corporate Compliance Officer for HeartShare Human Services of New York, a 140 million dollar multi-service organization. As with most government funded organizations, we have to show we are compliant with regulations and at same time meet certain performance metrics. As a result, I am confronted with how to create a system that focuses on quality assurance that meets performance metrics and incorporates quality improvement process. Using graphs we identified a series of deficiencies and sites that had poor performance. Then we drilled down further identifying areas that were cited as repeat deficiencies by state auditors. With this information, we developed a series of trainings focused on those deficiencies. As a result, we reduced repeat deficiencies in developmental disabilities. The key was to graphically present the data in a way that we were able to pinpoint specific sites that had the problem and developed a plan to improve performance. Hot Tip: When setting up an internal monitoring system, we focus and prioritize areas that require the program to be compliant with government agencies. We select five to ten items and develop performance metrics. For our child welfare programs we focused on a number of areas such as adoption finalizations, AWOLs, client contacts, service plan timeliness and length of stay. Next, we set up a dashboard with appropriate charts; convene leadership team; review reports; identify challenges; develop interventions; and review progress after three months. After reviewing data we pinpoint which sites fail to meet targets. Over time, program sees improvement and realizes data utilization can lead to positive change. Lessons Learned: One major problem when using this approach is when you focus on too many areas you get bogged down and accomplish little or no improvement. Make sure everyone has clear understanding that we are a team and that we are not out to get you. Often program directors focus on placing blame as opposed to dealing with problem. The key is focusing on program staff owning the data and realizing there are successes as well as challenges. In other words, perceptions can make a difference on how you approach quality assurance and performance measurements as you create a quality improvement culture. The other major issue is making sure the facilitator and the individual preparing data is independent and separate from program. Rad Resources: Quality Evaluation Template: How to Develop a Utilization Focused Evaluation System Incorporating QI and QA Systems by Stan Capela. Council on Accreditation - look at the Performance Quality Improvement (PQI) standard. Council on Quality Leadership and their method Personal Outcome Measures (POMS) 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: Stan Capela on Tips from the Trenches: Building Your Brand as an Internal Evaluator GOVT Week: David Bernstein on Top 10 Indicators of Performance Measurement Quality OPEN Week: Elizabeth O’Neill on When not to evaluate

Improvisational comedy provides a framework for new horizons in corporate leadership Improv is a form of live entertainment wherein the material is generated and riffed on live, in the moment. Sufficiently hilarious improv performers have gone from starring in the famed improv theatre scenes of Chicaco (Second City) and New York (Upright Citizens Brigade) to producing their own successful improv-based sketch television shows (Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock). Improv is devised on the spot, Read More The post 4 Rules of Improv Every Business Leader Should Follow appeared first on renshicon.com.