How's It Going
By Peter Block
We spend a lot of
effort in meetings, conferences and training sessions designed to
initiate or sustain changes.
--This is the final of three columns
intended to shift our thinking about what is essential in the conduct of
these gatherings. Most of our traditional planning is about the actions
of the presenters, what we want to
 present and how we want to present
it.
--We think power is the point. We seem
to ignore that it is people's active experience in the room that will
affect their emotional response to change, and ultimately the quality of
action.
--Three elements of experience that we
undervalue are
-- (1) the questions we ask of
participants,
-- (2) the design and structure of the
room and
-- (3) the evaluation of the event.
--Our business here is evaluation.
Nowhere is Mechanical Age more deeply honored than in our love of
evaluation, and this is not an argument against it. The argument is
about how we think about evaluation. What we evaluate and when we
evaluate it. As an example, every conference I have ever attended has an
evaluation form and they are all alike. They each imply a relationship
between how well the material was presented and the value received by
participants.
--One set of questions is about the
presenter; were they dynamic, well organized, did they present what was
promised, did they know their stuff, how good were the audio-visuals,
were the handouts useful?
--The second set of questions is about
value received. What did you learn, was it useful, what will you do
differently tomorrow? These measures are based on the belief that cause
is in the front of the room and effect is in the audience. If the front
of the room is clear and on target, the meeting will be a success.
--It is our elitist, leadership
compulsion reinforced by an entertainment and spectator culture that
leads us in this direction. If we seek accountable employee action, we
need to move the spotlight from the stage and into the audience.
--O'Henry begins a book of his short
stories with the statement: "Not very long ago some one invented the
assertion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York City
who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen-the census
taker-and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in
marking out the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million'."
--He understood that the character of
a city was better defined by the story of its citizens than simply the
story of its leaders. Same with our meetings, training events,
conferences and change efforts; the character of the event is better
defined by the story of the participants than the excellence of the
presenter.
Why It Matters
How we evaluate has a power that we need to appreciate:
-- 1. Evaluation is not a benign
event. It carries as clear a message of our intentions as anything else
we do. It says more by the way questions are composed than by the
answers it provides.
-- 2. The message the evaluation
carries takes a stance on who is responsible for learning and outcomes,
even for culture. Is it the leader/trainer, or is it the
citizen/participant? If a meeting or training event does not go well the
evaluation questions imply that the leaders may have to do it
differently next time. Our questions rarely indicate that next time the
participants will have to change the nature of their participation.
-- 3. Evaluation also takes a stance
on how engineerable or predictable the world can be. It most often
re-enforces the illusion that change is predictable and knowable in
advance, and the ones who know are the leaders and trainers. If we find
out that the event was characterized by surprise, chaos, or confusion,
we consider that a failure of leadership.
-- Maybe surprise and confusion are
the essential ingredients to learning and change. Maybe if everything
goes as planned, the meeting failed.
-- 4. Evaluation is not a neutral,
"objective" inquiry. It is an active element in learning and changes
what it touches.
-- Tim Gallwey, author of the Inner
Game series of books, commented recently that we are always ready to
evaluate the effects of training, but we never measure the effects of
the evaluation.
High Accountability
Evaluation
Here are some ways to treat evaluation as powerful, invasive, means to
confront participant accountability.
--As a start, we might design our
evaluation around the following questions:
-- -What was your purpose in attending
this event. What are you doing here? Even if you were sent, you decided
to come and brought expectations that were solely yours? In asking this,
we start with the belief that each of us is creating our own experience,
even if we did not ask to be born.
-- -How well are you achieving what
you came for? Raises the question of whose conference, or change process
is this. Are we active in seeking our outcomes or are we waiting for
room service?
-- -Where in the room did you place
yourself? Where we sit is a physical fact and an expression of the
initial nature of our engagement, commitment, willingness to be present.
We each rationalize our seating by ease of entry, need to make a call,
not wanting to be called on, that was the only open seat. All
rationalizations, so why not use the evaluation form to push back on our
passivity.
-- -When during the day, have you been
bored or disappointed and how are you dealing with this? Confronts the
question of energy and relevance. Whose job is to maintain interest, be
relevant. When energy drains, where does it go. Why is it the leader's
job to keep the power plant running. This does not let the leader go
free, but it reduces them to one player, not the only player.
-- -What change on your part, in this
event, might give you different results? The idea that we are constantly
co-creating our world is implied in this question as in the others. This
takes the questions we ask ourselves as leaders and trainers and places
them equally on the shoulders of the audience.
-- The particular questions are not
really the point, they will change with the purpose of the event. What
is key is that evaluation can be a means of real time reflection, done
for the purpose of creating accountable communities and used to carry
the message that self-evaluation is at the essence of change and
learning.
Now is the Hour
In addition to what we evaluate, the timing of our evaluation also is
critical. We typically evaluate an event after it is over, filling out
the forms on the way out of the room. Or we send in evaluations a month
after the event. Implied is that the feedback will help us do better
next time.
-- Well, in fact there won't be a next
time. Even if we hold another event, the same people will not be in the
room, the purpose will be changed, the reality of the world will have
shifted somewhat. Evaluating an event at the end has us care only about
the past, and misses the opportunity to confront how we are doing while
there is still time to do something about it.
-- To complete an evaluation as we
leave the room also makes it too easy for people to express their
frustration as a parting shot, avoiding any engagement or
responsibility. We also abandon the leader/trainer when we evaluate at
the end. In my own case, I usually get participant reactions after the
event. Some thought I exaggerated, that my humor and cynicism was
distracting, and that I consistently finished other people's sentences
for them.
--Well, where were these people when I
needed them? When did I lose them? Why did they believe the situation
was unsalvageable. There is truth in what they said, but now the
opportunity to respond is forever lost. If evaluation is intended to
improve our performance and not just judge it (big if!), it has to occur
in the middle of things. Kathie Dannemiller, goddess of large group
methodology, understands this and takes a "pulse" reading at key points
along the way, and then makes it public information. Smart strategy.
--We shouldn't wait until the end of
our life to evaluate it, same with our meetings, trainings, and
conferences. Place the evaluation early, in the middle, and often.
--One more point: Evaluation is not
about ratings, it is about learning. It should be a conversation among
participants. Get it in writing first, but then make it the beginning of
a conversation, make it public, invite people to own their response to
the event. It gives everyone information they can act on, engages the
people who are drifting away and thus reinforces the belief that we can
shape our destiny not just observe and remember it.
--And, by the way, Happy New Year.
This
article appeared in
News for a Change published by AQP in January 2000
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