Rose, Jara and Mary, you are all highlighting important points that are upcoming themes of this blog. Cost effective evaluation is the topic for the week of October 28th. And the your concerns about timing are next week’s theme.  Please add your thoughts to those conversations as well.

Mary, I love that metaphor of looking for your lost keys under the street lamp because the lighting is better there.

Jessica, thanks for reminding us of the importance of making this conversation accessible to all of the individuals and organizations who can make the most use of  meaningful measures.

Joe, best of luck with your evolving approach.  Being both employee-centered as well as customer-centered are hallmarks of good leadership. Starting with people is a great place to be– and be sure to keep those people in mind as you bring in your business and technology lenses in order to make informed decisions.

Julian, thanks for your thoughtful comments and the link. I particularly like the analogy you made to the way pilots navigate uncertainty– continuous course correction.

Good point about the values of the evaluator, Jdeancoffey. One’s personal values can be both advantageous (shaped by personal experience) and disadvantageous in terms of introducing bias. This is an important link to this weeks conversation on leveraging informed intuition.

jdeancoffey, thanks for the shout out to the evaluative inquiry lens.  Stay tuned for more from Hallie Preskill next week on the topic of taking the systemic view. 

Rosey, thanks for highlighting the pitfalls that come with evaluation for the sake of pleasing a funder.  I agree with your stance that measurement activities should always offer some value to the organization being evaluated (in the form of learning!).

Thanks for the thoughtful response Sara,  You’ve amazingly tied many of the themes of the blog conversation together in one concise statement. I particularly appreciate the way you frame the role of evaluation as providing meaning to the work that we do.

Thanks for the nice metaphors SaraJoy– really driving home the experience of what blind evaluation feels likes.

Rose, Jara and Mary, you are all highlighting important points that are upcoming themes of this blog. Cost effective evaluation is the topic for the week of October 28th. And the your concerns about timing are next week’s theme.  Please add your thoughts to those conversations as well.

Mary, I love that metaphor of looking for your lost keys under the street lamp because the lighting is better there.

Jessica, thanks for reminding us of the importance of making this conversation accessible to all of the individuals and organizations who can make the most use of  meaningful measures.

Joe, best of luck with your evolving approach.  Being both employee-centered as well as customer-centered are hallmarks of good leadership. Starting with people is a great place to be– and be sure to keep those people in mind as you bring in your business and technology lenses in order to make informed decisions.

Julian, thanks for your thoughtful comments and the link. I particularly like the analogy you made to the way pilots navigate uncertainty– continuous course correction.

Good point about the values of the evaluator, Jdeancoffey. One’s personal values can be both advantageous (shaped by personal experience) and disadvantageous in terms of introducing bias. This is an important link to this weeks conversation on leveraging informed intuition.

jdeancoffey, thanks for the shout out to the evaluative inquiry lens.  Stay tuned for more from Hallie Preskill next week on the topic of taking the systemic view. 

Rosey, thanks for highlighting the pitfalls that come with evaluation for the sake of pleasing a funder.  I agree with your stance that measurement activities should always offer some value to the organization being evaluated (in the form of learning!).

Thanks for the thoughtful response Sara,  You’ve amazingly tied many of the themes of the blog conversation together in one concise statement. I particularly appreciate the way you frame the role of evaluation as providing meaning to the work that we do.

Thanks for the nice metaphors SaraJoy– really driving home the experience of what blind evaluation feels likes.

Kara, thanks for this thoughtful reply. I’m really excited about your point about providing structure during uncertainty.  That is actually a great way to frame the role of evaluation and I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it as title for the week’s theme.

It’s an interesting observation you make about personality.  Some people (and organizations) are more comfortable with uncertainty while some prefer the comforts of knowing before they act. For each of us, it’s important to acknowledge our own personality type (and that of our organizations we work with) and to be prepared to seek the right structures to compensate/support ourselves through the uncertainty zone. Finding tools that work for you is a great approach (like you have done with the toolkit)– another avenue is choosing partners to balance out your capabilities/mindset. 

I also appreciate your thoughts on how loaded the word “evaluation” can become for people. It can be either the heavy hand of judgment or the valued input along the way.  The intention of this blog series is to empower people to realize that any approach to evaluation is a choice that we make, and that we can make that choice in a way that benefits the goals of our initiative.  As you so rightly point out, evaluation can become a powerful opportunity leadership.

Amen Lauren! I think you nailed it with the 0 or 100% commitment scenarios. I’ve had the same observations that social enterprises tend to get stuck in one of those mindsets and miss out on a lot of learning in order to avoid the risk of uncertainty; You’re also making a great link between last week’s theme on the value of learning and this week’s theme of using that uncertainty zone as an opportunity to learn.