Capturing System Effects
We can learn about effects — what is generated from our services and products – by studying a banana stuck to a wall. Here’s how. #evaluation #ideas #innovation
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Getting Out of Our Heads
Too much change psychology focuses on the way we think. Sometimes creating change requires we get out of our heads. Norman Vincent Peale is believed to have once stated: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” Norman Vincent Peale It’s hard to deny that a change of mind can quite literally change the way you perceive the …
Three Lessons From Summer Vacation
This year I took a summer holiday — something I’ve not done in years — and was reminded what literally stepping away from your everyday life and journeying to other spaces and places does for the mind, the heart and the soul. As kids (and adults) all over head back to school and tell their stories …
The Literacy of Change
It has been said that change is the only constant, yet for something so pervasive change is a remarkably thorny and poorly understood concept. One reason is that change is often approached as a set of facts about a static state of affairs instead of as a literacy, which at change in a far more dynamic context that reflects human systems more accurately.
The Developmental Evaluation and Design Imperative
Developmental evaluation is an approach to evaluating programs that takes account of complexity and changing conditions, supports innovation, and serves as a vehicle for adaptation for leaders seeking feedback on how to adapt to these evolving forces. It is not simply about improving programs, but developing them. From a technical point of view, this means …
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The Art of Complexity and Public Health
In public health we use focus groups — which were initially designed to focus a research question, not serve as a means of research unto itself — to generalize from a group-think scenario to an entire community and then claim that we know them. Really? Is this beholding? Is this the kind of contemplative inquiry that makes sense for public health. Could we learn more from artists? Our methods certainly could (see art of public health), but perhaps the way of the artist is also something we could learn more from
Visualizing Evaluation and Feedback
Evaluation relies heavily on feedback and data; providing more visual ways of sharing this data might provide better options for explaining complex phenomena.