Two Evaluation Questions We Should Be Asking

We need to measure lasting impact/change, not just immediate satisfaction and awareness.  Doing so makes anyone planning meetings and conferences a greater strategic asset to their organization.  Here are two simple questions to ask in a post-event evaluation that love you in the right direction.

Please complete the following blank fields.  

Be as specific as possible. 

As a result of attending XYZ conference, I:

Shared the following ideas with colleagues:

Implemented the following:

Achieved these improved results:


The idea(s) and/or presenter(s) that have had the most 
staying power with me are … because they ...


Note that by changing the wording slightly, these same questions could be asked about an association member's overall affinity for the organization and the value it offers.

12 Volunteer Management Practices to Adopt for 2011

Yesterday's Twitter chat for associations (#assnchat) focused on volunteer recognition and appreciation.  It was encouraging to see all the great ideas participants had for this important topic, but somewhat discouraging to realize how few organizations seem to have a comprehensive, systematic approach to volunteer development.

Answer me this:  would any credible, successful HR professional manage paid staff the way volunteers are managed in your organization?

If the answer is yes, congratulations.  You can probably stop reading.  If the answer is no, you've just identified where your New Year's resolutions should focus.  It's time to get resolute and do the following:

1. Develop a comprehensive strategic plan for the recruitment, development, and recognition of volunteers throughout the organization.
2. Appropriately incorporate volunteer development responsibilities in the job descriptions of every staff member and volunteer, and train them appropriately.
3. Create dashboard metrics that assess the success of your volunteer development efforts: # of volunteers recruited, # of hours contributed, # of individual efforts recognized, etc.
4. Ensure that volunteer contributions are tracked in your membership management systems, be that a sophisticated AMS, a few fields in another type of database, or index cards with handwritten notations.
5. Remember what we learned in ASAE & The Center's Decision to Volunteer: some of what members consider volunteering (writing for newsletters, speaking at conferences, etc.) often isn't on the radar screen of organizations that focus almost exclusively on "positional" volunteering.
6. Implement multiple "touch points" throughout the year, times when volunteer efforts are given recognition and appreciation beyond the real-time feedback and thanks that should be ongoing. Consider a covert thank-a-thon involving a multi-faceted week-long volunteer appreciation effort that is unannounced and unexpected.
7. Develop mechanisms for volunteers to notice what their peers are doing and share information about those contributions/accomplishments with the organization for recognition. Think of hotels who give guests a card to note when an employee has done something above and beyond.
8. Ensure that the more significant the volunteer's contributions, the more personal the recognition.  A simple thank-you is just fine for stuffing binders for the annual leadership conference, but concluding a term of service as board chair merits something more than a generic plaque.
9. Make it possible for people to begin volunteering at any time and create and/or highlight multiple volunteer pathways that reflect the varied motivations people might have for getting involved: developing their professional network, sharing their talents or expertise, bring a particular program or project to reality, generating leads or growing their business, deepening their connections to the community and the profession/industry, getting recognized in front of their peers, or advancing through the leadership ranks.
10. Gather more information about the prospective volunteers.  At minimum learn what they would consider to be a meaningful volunteer experience, but also inquire more about their time availability and talents.  Here's a PDF of what an expanded volunteer interest form could look like, but this same info could easily be gathered in an online electronic submission.
11. For volunteer training segments that are how-to or fact-based, create short video clips or synced slides and audio that individuals can watch on their own time.  Use in-person volunteer development efforts to engage people in strategic thinking and more interactive discussions.
12. Help volunteers who have held significant leadership positions remain a part of the organization and the community in meaningful ways, but let newcomers move into formal leadership positions.  We want them to "let go" of their leadership positions, not let go of their connection.  Don't cut the knot; tie a new string.

I've long held a belief that many association executives consider heresy: I want as many volunteers as possible making as many contributions as possible year-round.  Yes, it initially could be a logistical and management challenge until you develop appropriate systems, but here's the payoff for this approach: it gets people connected.  Our organizations are communities of people—not just catalogs of programs and services—something we too often forget.  When we make it easy for more people to care and to act on their caring in ways that they find meaningful (and that advance the community and the profession or industry), great things happen.  And guess what?  People want to join organizations where the community is strong and great things are happening.  So getting better at volunteer management might just mean getting better results at membership recruitment and retention.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow in the United States, it's appropriate to reflect on our attitude of gratitude for the thousands of contributions volunteers make to our organizations each year.  But let's make 2011 the year when more volunteers say they are grateful because the organizations they belong to embrace and respect their time, talents, and interests and use them to achieve meaningful results for their professions/industries and the stakeholders that they serve and affect.

The Power of the Strip Search

No. No. No. NO. No.
Maybe. No. No. No. No.
No. No. Nada.  Yes. Non
No. NO. Never. No. Maybe.

That's probably a routine list of responses from Marissa Mayer, formerly Google's vice president of search projects and user experience, to ideas about how to improve the Google home page.

It's also a response more meeting planners, product developers, task forces and many others should be offering.  but instead they keep adding in features, thinking that more options—more stuff—means more value.

It usually doesn't.

The end product or event often does very few things well, but overwhelms you with its bloated add-ons, new features, and options.  It's a mess of mediocrity that is marketed as new and improved.

In his wonderful book, In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, author Matthew May asserts that:

"The point of elegance is to achieve the maximum impact with the minimum input. It’s a thoughtful, artful subtractive process focused on doing more and better with less."

May notes that organizations successful with elegance design possess both discrimination and discipline: the ability to discriminate about what matters most and the discipline to reject everything else.  One side benefit of Twitter is that it forces us to do exactly that in order to communicate meaning in 140 characters or less.

The next time you start to design or improve a product or service see if you can muster up a little D&D and apply the power of the strip search.  Add usability by stripping out unnecessary features or options.  Edit, edit, edit until what remains is elegant in its simplicity and robust in its value.

For more on this topic, read this great essay by the folks at Frog Design.

The Value of Scanning: My Regular Reads

Someone recently asked me what media I consume on a monthly basis, so  I thought you might find the list interesting.  The following are just the print publications to which I either subscribe or which I read at the library timed with their publication frequency.  Online reading would be an even longer list.

Architectural Digest
Architectural Record
Associations Now (ASAE)
Black Enterprise
Bloomberg Businessweek
Budget Travel
Convene (PCMA)
Dwell
Elle Decor
Fast Company
Financial Times
Food and Wine
GOOD
Harvard Business Review
Inc
Martha Stewart Living
Metropolis
n+1
New York Times
OUT
Paris Review
Rotman Magazine
strategy + business
The Atlantic
The Economist
The Week
Time
Travel and Leisure
Urban Latino
USA Today
Utne Reader
Vanity Fair
Vegetarian Times
Wall Street Journal

Each year a few new publications get added and one or two are rotated off.

Facilitation: What would make the connections more concrete?

Too often meetings—be they department or all-staff—and workshops or conferences are simply crammed with content.  We raise a lot of awareness when we cover a lot of material … the what. But we aren't connecting the content and making it sufficiently concrete and actionable because we fail to answer the next two critical questions:  So what?  Now what?  

Converting increased awareness into increased action requires that we more explicitly connect the content of our conversations to how those participating can use the new information in their respective efforts.  Here are a few tips for making the connections more concrete:

Strengthen the visual recording of key information.

Infographics are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, offering innovative designs that are both visually appealing and content-rich.  Content connections can be strengthened and reinforced when more effectively recorded visually.  Resources like the Grove Graphic Guide Templates, mindmapping, and books such as The Back of a Napkin offer support for developing your capacity as a visual recorder. 

Divide participants into like-minded clusters and have them identify how to apply the information being discussed.

Staff from the same department might best support each other in connecting content to the work to be done.  Workshop participants with similar job responsibilities or from similar organizational profiles might benefit most from working with their peers to apply a presentation's ideas to their own roles and responsibilities.  If you are presenting to a very large group you could denote certain seating areas for different affinity groups, so that individuals can easily engage with others like them from the onset of your program.  After a general session speaker, conference planners should consider offering a track of application breakouts, each targeted for a specific affinity group.

Play it forward.

One of the easiest ways to make content more concrete is to imagine an idea or concept being introduced into the workplace and then brainstorm with all participants the micro and macro effects of that introduction, almost as if you could play it forward in a freeze-frame preview on a DVD player. Make this a group exercise by inviting individuals to note effects/next actions on post-It's and then working with others to form a cohesive timeline of implications/applications.

Three-steps analysis worksheet

Use a simple worksheet to enhance application of material.  Offer the following paragraph for each of the major ideas/concepts being considered:

1. What (list the idea or concept here)
2. So what?
3. Now what?

Having this structure for note-taking and discussion helps remind participants of the need to drill down into the application of material being covered.

Before and after comparisons or stories

Particularly for more analytical thinkers, identifying tangible ways that their normal routines could change as a result of what is being discussed can make the information more real and understandable.  Create a two-column worksheet and have individuals list key habits/routines currently a part of their work, and then lead them in identifying the corresponding shift in behaviors that would result from what has been discussed.  Sharing stories of "the way it was" and "the way it will be" can be another simple way to help participants see the adjustments that will be required of them.

Use case studies and simulations to maximize hands-on engagement and application.

These two learning formats are among the best ways to engage individuals in roles and decision-making that closely parallel their real workplace situations.  The more specific the case study or simulation can be, the more participants can connect their insights and learning to their actual work efforts.

Share analogies or metaphors that will enhance retention and recall.

New ways of thinking can often be cemented in individuals' memory when their meaning is summarized and captured in an analogy or metaphor.  This condensed version acts as concentrated content that can be recalled easily and unbundled for application.

Coach external speakers on the specifics of your audience and the desired learning experience.

This last tip is obviously a post in and of itself.  But here's a PDF of the information I request from the event organizers who ask me to speak so that I can help make the best connections for their conference attendees. 

Note:  Facilitation Friday is a periodic feature offering an in-depth exploration of a core issue related to designing great meetings and conferences (with an emphasis on meetings).  This is the seventh in the series.  Previous posts can be found here:

Meeting and Workshop Management: 15 Timeless Questions
What would make the conversation more compelling?
What would make the community more connected?
What would make the intention more worthy of investment?
What would make the process/pace more productive? 
What would make the environment more inviting?
What would make the presentations more powerful?

An Inconsistent Proof

Here's the unfair reality.

The more you align your efforts with …

a clear intention,
a stated set of values, and
an articulated brand

… the more we'll notice any inconsistencies and the more we'll wonder just what you were thinking.  When you've got almost everything right, what's not wrong just seems exceptionally out of place: Can you believe they didn't ___________?

So when you stake out your identity—as an individual, as an organization, or for a product or service—you've got to go "all in."

Because just as the plastic service trays at Teaism in DC are completely wrong for the organic, handcrafted experience they offer to guests, so will any detail you leave unattended cry out to be corrected.

Let's Not Make a Big Deal

I waited tables in high school. The person who trained me was excellent and offered numerous small tips I have found valuable in just about every professional role I have held ever since.

One of the gems he stressed has been on my mind lately. Hal insisted that servers should do nothing that would unnecessarily draw guests' attention to the work we were doing. One of the points he drilled into our heads is that even when the restaurant was busting at the seems and operating at full volume, we should never move too hurriedly or appear frantic in front of customers. Doing so would only cause them to be distracted by our state of being and to more likely become concerned about how busy it was and how that would affect their food and service.

It was wise advice and it worked miracles in lots of settings since I first heard it at the age of 16. Think of your own experiences in busy venues. When servers or sales reps treat us in an efficient yet unhurried manner, the pace and potential stress of the activity that surrounds us seems to melt away. In contrast recall a time when a frantic server spread his anxiety to your dining party so that you, too, felt rushed and harried. Not the ideal eating experience.

It's been on my mind lately because I'm involved in a few efforts with some different organizations whose leaders see the new projects they are taking on as being risky, challenging to their members, or fraught with potential pitfalls. All of which is probably true for all I know, but the more they talk about their efforts that way the more I sense them becoming concerned about risk and failure. What they are growing distant from is the excitement they have for these new ideas and they very real value they believe they can provide to their members.

The danger here is that letting their anxieties take too great a hold on them might cause them to overreact to some of the decisions they need to make or to spread their own anxiousness out into the membership, inflaming those who might already be viewing the new ventures with skepticism or cynicism.

It's one thing to be pragmatic and acknowledge that "whoa, we're taking on some pretty risky ideas here." It is another thing to make that a central part of the public conversation you have with your target audience or to constantly drop back to that thinking even among the leadership. Think about it initially, acknowledge the realities, plan for them, but for heaven's sake quit talking so much about it. Don't make it something that it might not be for a large number of the people who are approaching your new ideas with a neutral perspective.

In fact, the real act of leadership might be presenting a sea of normality to those who seem to be most challenged by the changes being pursued. The way we view the work in which we are engaged is very likely the way we will cause others to view our efforts.

Act as if something is a big deal and it most certainly will become one.

Facilitation: What would make the presentations more powerful?

In the dozen or so presentational skills training sessions I've led this year, I've posed this question to the hundreds of participants, discerning the ingredients they associate with powerful presentations.  Four factors have emerged.


1.  Relevant content

Content still rules.  While make indicated a great presenter could partially compensate for weaker content, the general consensus was that the satisfaction with that presentation would be short-lived once it was fully realized that the learning had been short-changed.   Identifying what's relevant means the presenter has thoughtfully considered the specific audience being addressed … be it 5 people in a staff meeting or 500 people in a keynote address.

What do these people care about?  What are the current issues and trends affecting them?  What examples will resonate most deeply and provide clarity?  What knowledge or understanding do they already possess and what new insights and information can I add to that?  Great presenters over-prepare on content so that they can modify the information they share based on the participants' response and questions.  And no matter how much detail they dive into, they always reiterate a clear and compelling message that tells a simple story, one that is memorable and meaningful and often using metaphors to anchor the new information in simple examples.

2.  Engaging formats

Engaging means different things based on your learning styles, so presenters need to offer a mix of learning formats to appeal to both introverted extroverted learners while also being appropriate for the content being covered and the timeframe available for the presentation.  It's probably safe to say though that all-lecture is rarely going to be found engaging unless the presentation is very brief,  you are a genius and participants will be hanging on your every word, or you are a great entertainer who will enthrall an audience.  Even if any of those are true, you should still look for ways to engage the participants in making sense of what you are saying through conversation with themselves, each other, and you.

Examine every segment of your content and identify several possibilities for bringing them to life through more interactive teaching and learning techniques.  Then select the ones that offer variety in your presentation, that are appropriate for the participants, and that create an appropriate mix of energy throughout your presentation.  Think like a DJ who combines songs for a great set, appropriately mixing styles and rhythms for a great dance.

3.  Effective visuals

Whatever you use (and it doesn't just have to be slides), you should offer visuals that are artfully designed with content and images carefully selected.  Less text that can inspire more talk is a good general rule of thumb.  Ruthless editing generally serves you well, both in terms of the overall number of visuals and the content on any individual slide.  Look to magazines, web sites, and slide decks on sits like Slideshare for inspiration.  Turn to great books like Presentation Zen and Resonate for more detailed instruction on visuals and presentation design.

Remember, visuals require particpants' energy and attention, so include only those that merit such an investment.  I've seen great talks that used 100 slides in 20 minutes and poor presentations that used five slides in one hour.  It's not the quantity that matters; It's the quality and the appropriateness.   Effective visuals inspire, support, and enhance learning.


4.  A thoughtful and interesting presenter

Yep, it really is about you somewhat.  Lots of books and workshops are available to help you with presentation techniques, and here's a short article I wrote for Association Forum of Chicagoland on the topic.

Technique matters, but finding your own voice may be most critical.  Noted educator Parker Palmer once said that "Good teaching comes not from technique, but from the identity and integrity of the teacher."  You need to use technique to bring who you are and what you believe into the presentation, not let the technique try to replace your voice.  There is no auto-tune in presentations, so you're going to sound the way you sound.

Spend time discovering the presentation style in which you feel most comfortable, the one that feels almost effortless, the one that leverages your strengths.  We tend to engage with presenters who clearly care about their craft and are passionate about their pursuits … even if they say um a few too many times or roam about the stage a bit too much.  Yes, by all means, work on not doing those things, but work most on being you.

So, the bottom line on what makes presentations more powerful?  Interesting and authentic presenters  using engaging formats and valuable visuals to bring relevant content to life.

Note:  Facilitation Friday is a periodic feature offering an in-depth exploration of a core issue related to designing great meetings and conferences (with an emphasis on meetings).  This is the sixth in the series.  Previous posts can be found here:

Meeting and Workshop Management: 15 Timeless Questions
What would make the conversation more compelling?
What would make the community more connected?
What would make the intention more worthy of investment?
What would make the process/pace more productive? 
What would make the environment more inviting?

A Prescription for Better Visions

Most vision statements suck.  There I said it.  They are too bland or too basic to inspire change and commitment.  Here's one I recently stumbled across that gets it right and how it reflects the characteristics of a vision that can actually influence an organization's strategy:

To create a building that contributes back to the health of the planet.
—David Hertz, Architect

It's challenging
Right now we see buildings as consumers, not contributors of resources from our planet.  Changing this relationship will require fresh thinking and significant innovation over a long period of time.

It's compelling
Interest in renewable resources, sustainability and social responsibility is growing rapidly.  The compelling nature of this vision will engage people from diverse professions and industries in applying their best thinking toward a worthy result.

It's inspiring
This vision passes the "wouldn't it be great if .... ?" test.  Regardless of people's position on climate change or sustainability, a building that positively enhances the health of the planet would probably be seen as desirable and worth pursuing as a goal.  Knowing you're helping make this vision a reality is likely to be a source of pride.


It's sufficiently specific, yet appropriately broad
The vision is specific enough to help shape individual decisions—Which choices would most ensure this building contributes to a healthy planet?—while remaining appropriate broad in the strategies or tactics for realizing it.  In short, the means are open and flexible to achieve a sufficiently specific end.


It benefits other while still serving self
A healthier planet is a gain for everyone, but it clearly is of interest to architects, builders, and other related professions who have a vested interest in achieving it.  By contributing to a greater good, the people involved also will benefit.

Contrast this to the typical association vision "We want to be indispensable to our members."  Or, "We will be the globally leader in ______"   Huh?  So the most inspiring future you can envision is one in which your members are tethered to you in a dependent relationship or you're king of the hill? 

What would members be capable of doing if the association was delivering indispensable value?  How would the world be better off if the association was that indispensable?  What's more desirable results would your association's indispensability enable that otherwise would not be possible?

Associations have to start dreaming bigger and beyond their internal value when it comes to the visions that drive their strategy. Ootherwise, their indispensability will remain nothing but a big dream, or some might even say, a hallucination.

For some great resources related to visions and BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals) see Jim Collins.