Where I work, we have a standard rule that just about everything gets evaluated. When we huddle as a staff on Monday, we evaluate that weekend’s activities (the service, the sermon, the surrounding aspects, the facility’s readiness, etc.). After a program ends or a one-off event happens, we evaluate how it went. Even over the summer for an all-week event, we had the staff member overseeing it stand in front of the volunteers at the end of every day and answer evaluative questions—I’m proud to say she did so without suffering a panic attack.
We use the Four Helpful Lists framework:
What went right?
What went wrong?
What was confusing?
What was missing?
Hearing the answers to those questions exposes a lot about our emotions. For one, we have to hear people tell us what didn’t work right—and something always didn’t work right. Additionally, you’ll likely realize that a glaring aspect of success got overlooked. In those moments, you really can feel exposed.
I remember doing one evaluation over a year ago where we realized we crashed and burned on how to appropriately support the young families in attendance. One staff member froze. He felt like all we were saying was, “This event was an absolute disaster.” That isn’t what we said. What we said was, “We really screwed this one part of the event up. How can we avoid that in the future?”
But we so often fear hearing bad news that we shift the target to feel better about ourselves.
The Evaluation is Only as Good as the Target
The key to a good evaluation is knowing precisely what you were aiming at. This change alone solves most of the issue. The only problem? We rarely start with this step: “What did we say success looked like?”
Thus, success becomes largely defined as, “Did people participate?” or, “Did I feel like it went well?”
I’ve been guilty of the same strategy. I’ve led events or entire semesters of activities where the goal was simply, “Have the activity and then see how it goes.” Then we just pat ourselves on the back when it didn’t entirely stink.
However, if we take the extra step to understand what a “win” actually is, we spend less time worried about how many people showed up or how well we feel it went. We have a clear understanding of if we did what we aimed to do.
If I want to host dinner for my neighbors, then I have one clear metric: did my neighbors come to the dinner I hosted? If I hosted dinner and a bunch of my co-workers attended, then I didn’t hit my goal. I might’ve still had a great dinner, but I didn’t actually do what I set out to do.
Clarity Frees the Evaluation
Once we get clear about what the win is, we are free to run after it. I had this conversation with one of our staff a while back. He was re-structuring something he oversees and was excited about the idea, but he wasn’t sure how to evaluate it.
“How will you know this new idea worked?”
“Umm. I’m not sure. One new person attends.” (I don’t remember the exact number.)
“Just one? Really? You can do that without trying.”
“Okay. Ten new people attend. That makes me nervous even saying. What if I don’t hit it?”
“Then you don’t hit it and we’ll figure out why. But how will you know if someone is new?"
“I’ll find a way when they check in to confirm if this is their first time.”
“Great.”
Good news is, he hit his goal. You can say success should’ve been defined differently—and that’s fine. Once the target is defined, hold it and build off of it. Don’t change it. At least now we know what we are measuring from and can adjust in future iterations. All the other little aspects (right/wrong/confusing/missing) still get covered, but you know the main goal.
Failure Forces Curiosity
I actually love when we don’t hit our target. That area is fertile soil for self-discovery. “Why didn’t it work?” is such a great question. Whatever the reason it didn’t work, don’t flee from it, but get curious about it.
Were we unclear to begin with?
Did we actually define success the wrong way?
Did we measure the wrong items to find success?
Were our plates too full?
Was our timing off?
Did we not care about it as much as we thought, so we did other things instead?
I’ll tell you one of the constant themes in our initial evaluations on almost anything. We kept asking some iteration of, “Why the heck was this so hard to pull off?” or “Why did so many of us overlook what seemed so simple?” A significant reason for this problem: we didn’t actually know who was in charge of success.
All hands on deck is great, unless you’re trying to get a specific thing accomplished, then it is REALLY nice to know who is supposed to accomplish any one thing at any given time. We’ve instilled a couple of strategies to address this problem, which I’ll write about later—they’re a couple of my favorite issues.
The key here, as my friend talks about at his workplace, is you can’t be punitive. Cultures where failure results in any sort of organizational demerit means you’ll work too hard to play it safe. If you want a workplace where failure is okay, you can’t ding people for messing up or missing their target. You need to encourage it, even celebrate it, so that continued learning becomes woven into everything you do.
So try this: before your next meeting, take one minute beforehand and define success for it. Then, tell everyone what you’re going for. Finally, when it is over, ask them if you hit it.
Whether you knocked it out of the park or failed miserably, be glad. Why? Because you’re taking your own growth seriously and setting a new measure of success for you and those around you—ongoing development to better serve others.
Author’s Commentary: Here some of the story behind the post as we go through it together.