The ABCs of Evaluation - Boulmetis & Dutwin

I've rediscovered another older book (2005) on the bookshelf. I was browsing round the home library searching for inspiration in developing an evaluation for a leadership development program. I remembered what I liked about this book the first time round.

The authors have produced a book which is set out logically. It covers the choices you have and steps to take to carry out an evaluation. I found the section describing different evaluation models and which one to choose was just what I was looking for:
1. Discrepancy Model: use when the program is so interwoven within the organisational context it is difficult to discover freestanding changes
2. The Goal Free model focuses on the participants needs and is independent of the organisation's needs.
3. The transactional model is similar to the goal free model with the exception that the evaluator plays a more active role in the evaluation process.
4. The decision makingg model focuses less on the success of the program and more on the longer term sustainability
5. The most popular model is the goal-based where the outcomes are assessed against the organisation's objectives (or program objectives)
The authors do also list other evaluation models and I would be interested in using systems analysis with my healthcare programs. The version using art criticism where you bring in an expert in the field to review progress is an interesting one I had never thought of. The adversary model where participants present their views and a "jury" hears their evidence might be useful for the rapid assessments we sometimes need to make.

The evaluator's role is covered as a continuum from the start of the program through to the end as well as the level of active participation in the evaluation process.

I was interested in what an evaluation is supposed to measure. Having got used to most healthcare evaluations answering "has the program delivered its objectives" it was good to see that "was the program efficient in terms of cost and staff time - was the expense worthwhile?". What we often mean when we say sustainability, the authors use impact. I like this as it covers not just the sustainability of the results but also the magnitude of the results as contributing to the organisation's long term objectives.

The book also includes the types of data, how to present it and the process of writing up your report.

I'd recommend this book if you're starting out in evaluation or need a refresher. If you're a seasoned program evaluator I suspect you will find other books go to more depth.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787979023.html

(Book Cover image from Wiley)

Rapid Transformation; A 90 Day Plan for Fast & Effective Change - Tabrizi

The change, improvement and OD fashion at the moment seems to be about speeding up the process. Part of me is a bit suspect about this because I believe change is a very personal and behaviour driven thing. However, another part of me believes that getting some momentum and steam behind an initiative is incredibly important.

Rapid Transformation was an easy read and I found many of the exhortations obvious, reasonable and at times felt like nothing new. What is new, however, is the exhortation to get your skates on and do stuff in 30 days that you might previously have taken 12 - 36 months to do. Another underpinning theme of the book is that incremental change is not enough. To survive and thrive organisations need to transform their businesses - and do so continuously and quickly. (Leaves me breathless just thinking about it...)

According to this book - and also in my experience - planning is everything.

Pre-planning stage: this is about ensuring you've fully diagnosed what the problem is that you're trying to solve. There seems to be no clear timeline on this and maybe this is where the devil lies. Maybe all change takes a long time to figure this out. SO if this preplanning stage takes months and years then the "rapid" is lost.

1st 30 days: Do the assessment; gather data and information and look to turn it into knowledge. This is a key stage and one which may at times be left out. Trick here is you get a max of 30 days to do this activity. Now that is new.

2nd 30 days: Get your future vision sorted, make sure all the goals are linked together and get this vision out to the organisation. You get 30 days to do this. In my experience the method of creating the vision and the method of communication is important. Somehow the author leaves me feeling this is an easy task to be done in 30 days.

3rd 30 days: Develop your plan. This is where you sort out the schedule for change etc.

So where is the implementation?

Ah, implementation begins on day 91.

I can see how for organisational transformation which is quite complex, that the implementation will take a long time (well, more than 90 days). However, with the preplanning stage and the implementation stage taken out of the way, this book focuses on just the getting started phase. While it does provide some useful ideas and methods for getting the right wax on the snowboard so you get a good combination of grip and slide, I do feel it is only part of the transformation story.

You can get more information about the book, the method and the author here:
http://www.rapidtransformation.com/index.html

Spiritual Capital; wealth we can live by. Zohar, Marshall

You know about IQ. Along came EQ. And now we have SQ - Spiritual Capital.

Published in 2004, this book languished on my bookshelf filed somewhere between management books, self-help and fiction. Having read it I will now file it permanently under management texts. Although it is written for an individual to read and contemplate their own SQ, it is framed for wider thinking covering society and organisations.

The authors provide explanation of the different type of Capital:
IQ: Material Capital, rational intelligence - What I think
EQ: Social Capital, emotional intelligence - What I feel
SQ: Spiritual Capital, spiritual intelligence - What I am

SQ is defined at what a community or organisation exists for, aspires to, takes responsibility for. These combine to provide a moral and motivation framework for existing. "Spiritual" is described as human beings asking why we are doing what we are doing and suggest we seek a better way of doing it. It is not, as the authors state, about shrines in hallways or calling employees to prayer.

SQ links to corporate social responsibility (CSR). When I read this I wondered how much public sector organisations monitored their CSR - being funded byt he taxpayer does not automatically create CSR.

The authors spend a few chapters unpicking various theories of motivation. Nothing new in here if you've covered this before, however, I liked the way they framed their discussion and the use of their motivation scale.

They suggest twelve principles of transformation. These alone are worth the read. So much of the change management and improvement work I am involved in is focused on transformation. These authors provide a thought-provoking, simple yet rich framework for conceiving of and applying transformation.

The book ends with a chapter on corporate spiritualism and asking the question "Is it still capitalism".

If you are trying to figure out your own meaning at work, leading others through change processes or concerned about your organisation's "soul", then this book will provide you with some language and structure to frame your thoughts.

(book cover photo from Amazon.com)

Sustaining lean healthcare programme; a practical survival guide - Eaton & Phillip

Different book styles appeal differently, to different people. This one appealed to me because it is relatively short (94 pages plus appendices), well organised, uses bullet points and lists, checklists, diagrams and has some short examples to illustrate points.

Contents include:

1. Where are you on your journey
2. Why do only 24% succeed?
3. Going Lean
4. The top ten signs of a failing programme
5. Creating a lean healthcare organisation
6. Four key checklists
7. The next eight things to do...

So do only 25% succeed? The authors suggest there are 8 critical success categories Communications. resources, involvement, training, implementation, compass, achievement and leadership (yes, these do spell "critical"). If you like wordplay then read the book and discover PRISM, CAD, VSE, RIE, RPE, FIT, FMEA etc. Not as bad as it looks in a list here. I found them a good description, and sometimes reminder, of basic principles.

The chapter on the top 10 signs of a failing program is easily read. For each reason there is an explanation of what you may experience, why it happens and then what you can do about it.

The four checklists you need? One each on people, success, tools and culture. Nothing really new to me, just nicely organised.

I particularly liked the Appendices which included key lean phrases and concepts (worth the price of the book for its organisation and simplicity), audit form, guide to common saying (fabulous!), and then a number of "how to" guides.

I know Mark Eaton has actually implemented lean in healthcare. This book is a demonstration that when written by someone who has got their hands dirty it turns into valuable desktop reference.

You can't order change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing - Peter Cohan

I was attracted to this book because the title said what I have always thought yet doesn't seem to be what I get involved with doing! I spend a lot of time on Boeings so I felt I had an interest in knowing what they doing and how they are doing it.

A while back Boeing was in a mess - stockprice was down, staff were complaining, revenue was not as anticipated, key people were leaving, lawsuits abounded and generally everything was on a downward trend. Enter CEO Jim McNerney who gained a reputation of requiring results to speak for themselves rather than putting himself on a pedestal.

This book takes you through the CEO perspective and actions in turning around a self-destructing monolith. The view I got form the book was the importance of people stuff, relationships and leadership in times of trouble. Sounds obvious but in my experience I see organisations go down the route of more rules, process redesign and the like when the crunch hits.

Cohan interprets McNerney's approach as expressing what is required from leaders in the organisation, working with people so they jointly own these leadership attributes and encouraging communication at all levels. He also got rid of the people who didn't make the grade while investing in those who were growing into leadership roles with the right skills and capabilities. After people, the big message is the importance of the person who manages the finances. Then there is also the piece about customer involvement.

Written in summary here all this looks like the standard stuff of management and leadership texts. However, Cohan does explain all these actions in the context of Boeing. Still - to me, much of the diagnosis ended up a bit samey. Maybe that is more a reflection of my expectations - was I looking for something unique? Maybe the answer to large scale change in large organisations really is simple - the difficulty is in applying the tactics.

Overall - nothing new in here and maybe that is what is new.

Sway; the irresistable pull of irrational behaviour by Brafman & Brafman

Irrational behavour? Me? Never!

The Brafman brothers write a compelling story of how irrational our behaviour is in a variety of circumstances. While most of the book is well evidenced they bring each of the issues alive with stories that make sense - perhaps too much sense.

I'm getting a bit tired of the constant use of the airline industry as a safety example. So it was with interest I read through the case study on the crash at Tenerife which was one of the largest loss of life incidents. The authors demonstrate how the perception of loss played an important part in the creation of the incident.

Next up is a football team in the US which managed to beat all the major players but relinquishing their commitment to the predominant method of play. The story here is about how our commitment to a certain way limits our opportunities for growth and advancement. The authors show how loss and commitment add together to become a powerful irrational pull.

The chapter on value attribution is quite scary. They use a number of examples. One is of a famous violin player dressed casually playing complex tunes in an underground station during rush hour. hardly anyone paid him any notice at all. Yet some would pay large sums of money to hear him play on stage dressed in his dinner suit. The book is worth the read in this chapter about the discovery of a human fossil and how scientists of the day were not prepared to give it credence because the discoverer wasn't "one of them".

If you are currently either interviewing people for a job or going for interviews yourself, then the next chapter which looks at how initial diagnoses or decisions sway our long term responses to individuals.

Perceptions, beliefs and context come under scrutiny in the next chapter. If you want to understand why the USA has a Bipolar epidemic then read about it here. If you are involved in training and developing individuals then the examples of belief are important to understand.

So what is fairness? Read on to discover the importance of context.If you think monetary incentives are a motivation to change behaviour then the next chapter provides some examples which may rattle your thoughts. By now I was beginning to understand just how irrational we are as human beings. And just when I've grasped a bit of my own irrationality, the authors move onto the irrationality of groups, particularly looking at blockers and dissenters.

If you are wondering why no-one is following your instructions, why it is too difficult to plan something, why you always seem right and no-one else wrong... etc. then I thoroughly recommend this very readable book. It is an easy and relatively quick read (once - I had to reread to make sure I grasped what was being said).

Go to the book's website for the author's blog, a preview and other information (great videos):

http://www.swaybook.com/index.html

Tribes: we need you to lead us; by Seth Godin

All of Seth Godin's books are amongst my favourites - sometimes you just resonate with an author. I like the way he speaks his mind and is unafraid to test out new thoughts and ideas.

He explains a tribe is nothing ore than a group of people connected to an idea, a leader and one another. His point is that with the web as it is developing we have more ways to find people of similar ilk and to join the "tribe". However, not all of these groups are fruitful and they need leaders and facilitation in order for them to be productive and constructive. This leadership angle is important.

Seth Godin's thoughts as I connected to them in this book is that being a leader of a tribe is tough and demanding. Often tribal leaders are accused of being outside the norm - a bit of a heretic. He believes that the leaders who are perceived as such and who stick to their views will win out in the end.

What does the author suggest we do to grow these tribal social movements?
1. Publish a manifesto; state who you are and what you are about
2. Others need to find and connect to you - make this as easy as possible
3. Keep the financial stuff in the background
4. Publicly track your movement's momentum and growth
mmm easy on paper though I wonder just how easy it is to do these things.


As good as his books, I also recommend Seth's Blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ and you can find out more about him and his books at http://www.sethgodin.com

The 29% Solution by Misner & Donovan

How can you improve your networking skills so you become one of the 29% of people who are separated from the rest of the world by six degrees? After explaining that we are not all connected to everyone by six degrees and that it takes some work to be in that position, this books provides a 52 week guide to achieving this.

Here are the week by week headings (it is worth reading the book to understand the detail underlying each one):
1. Set networking goals
2. Make time to network
3. Profile your preferred client
4. Recruit your word-of-mouth marketing team
5. Give to others first
6. Create a network relationship database
7. Master the top 10 traits of an effective networker (these include positive attitude, trustworthiness, good listening skills, helpfulness, timely response etc)
8. Diversify your contacts
9. Meet the right people
10. Reconnect with people from the past
11. Talk to your family
12. Break out of your "cave-like" routine
13. Participate in a web networking group
14. Become a centre of influence (develop magnetism)
15. Go the extra mile; be value-added
16. Become a catalyst who makes things happen
17. Find a networking partner to help accountability
18. Volunteer visibly
19. Send thank you cards
20. Follow up today
21. Be available 24/7
22. Create catalyst events beyond the workplace
23. Have purposeful meetings
24. Make first impressions count
25. Seek out a referral networking group
26. Join a Chamber of Commerce
27. Sponsor events
28. Host a purposeful event
29. Ask questions of others
30. Talk about benefits not features
31. Comunicate your business succinctly
32. Speak about your business
33. Leverage your business card
34. Give high-value presentations
35. Create an informative newsletter
36. Write press releases
37. Write your own identity
38. Ask for written testimonials
39. Share your success stories
40. Write your own personal introduction
41. Blow your own trumpet (or toot your own horn if you're in the USA!)
42. Ask for feedback
43. Adopt a host mentality at functions
44. Use the law of reciprocity
45. Write a letter of support
46. Ask for referrals
47. Read the paper with the intent to discover referrals
48. Conquer your public speaking fear
49. Become the hub of a power team
50. Become a networking mentor
51. Recruit an advisory board for your business
52. Commit to lifelong learning

(I've tweaked the wordings on the list a bit to suit my own understanding.)