Archive for the ‘Assessment: Learning Leads to Excellence’ Category

 

What do a CNN Anchor, a Rabbi, and a Museum CEO have in common?

Posted on: May 11th, 2012 by Hayim Herring
Little River Baptist Church Sign. Prayer - Wireless Access to God Without Roaming Fees.

From searunner.sv-timemachine.net

You’re probably waiting for a punchline, but this is not a joke. Rather, it was a panel discussion topic of a continuing education program for rabbis in which I was involved last week. (You can read more about the program in Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor Arnie Eisen’s most recent blog post.) The issue underlying the program was the challenge of engaging younger generations, weaned on social media, in Jewish learning that is spiritually relevant and authentic. Other professions, like broadcast and print media, have had to migrate to multiple channels to reach out to and cultivate younger audiences. And that’s also true of the museum world.

For religious communities, which are conservative by nature, the challenge of engagement is even greater. No matter what the religion or denomination, religions are in the business of preservation, transmission, adaptation and trying to remain faithful to an inherited tradition.  Yet, America is the land of hyper-innovation. So, Ali Velshi,  CNN anchor and chief business correspondent, and Michael Rosenzweig, President and CEO of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, gave us their respective perspectives on this challenge.

What’s the common thread that unites these three different professions? (more…)

New Beginnings for Your Organization

Posted on: October 17th, 2011 by Hayim Herring
Pomegranate

From Here's Kate on flickr

The piercing cry of the shofar from the final moments of Yom Kippur has all but faded. Leaves have turned from green to bright reds and yellows, and the air is getting crisper. In fact, in Minneapolis where I live, I’ve even watched snowflakes fall on my sukkah in some years! As we embark on the year 5772, now is the perfect time to reflect and ask ourselves as leaders, “What can we do to make our work have even greater impact?”

Here is an organizational assessment tool from The Society for Nonprofit Organizations to help you focus your energies in responding to this question. While the tool is not targeted specifically to Jewish organizations or synagogues, you’ll see several areas of organizational development that are worth reviewing as a team with volunteer leaders and professional staff.

In particular, you might want to begin with any of the following sections: Strategic Planning (pp. 2-6), Board Development (pp. 12-15), Marketing (pp. 19-21) and Volunteer Involvement (pp. 35-39). Start by tackling the section where you believe your organization has the most room for improvement.

After you complete your chosen assessment(s), you will have identified some specific indicators of organizational development that you will want to work on in the new year. If you would like help reviewing the results and creating a plan for moving forward, please contact us for a free initial consultation.

The fall holidays are ending…let a new and exciting year for your organization begin!

Hag Sameach,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

What’s the Best Assessment Tool? Part II – Interviews

Posted on: November 16th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

The last Tools for Shuls post on assessment examined using questionnaires to gather information about the perceived success of a project, process or event.  This post focuses on another common tool that synagogues and other organizations can use with relative ease: interviewing.  Questionnaires are great for quickly gathering information from many people.  The trade-off is you only receive top-line, superficial information.  For greater depth, use interviews as a method of gathering information.  To get the most useful results, you’ll often find that a mix of both is the best choice.

For example, let’s say that you’ve surveyed a group of adults who have just attended a spirituality retreat.  The retreat was designed to offer participants an introduction to a range of spiritual practices including yoga, meditation, study and cooking.  You can use a questionnaire to get a general sense of how people responded to the various activities.  But, given the complex nature of the experience you were trying to create, you’ll probably want to interview participants so you can really understand why certain experiences resonated for some and not for others.

While interviewing is a formal process, we interview people informally on a regular basis.  After all, interviewing is simply asking someone for a restatement, clarification or explanation of an experience or idea.  There are several characteristics that turn those questions into an interview.

Interviews are a series of questions that are purposeful, systematic and structured.  “Structured” means that all of those interviewed will answer a core set of questions, with the interviewer probing more deeply for items of special note.  By using a core set of questions, you can be assured that you are comparing similar information.  Interviewing also requires trained listening (knowing when and when not to probe further,) and objectivity (recording the views of the interviewee without coloring them with your interpretation).

In addition to carefully determining the questions, there are several important choices you’ll have to make if you interview congregants. Who will do the interviewing?  Will you train fellow congregants or use an outside person or organization?  How many people do you need to interview to get reliable information?  Will you record the interview or take hand written notes?  At a minimum, you should consult with a congregant who is an expert at conducting interviews to help guide you with these choices.

Now, it’s my turn to “interview” you: do you have experience in your organization in interviewing members?  What triggered the use of interviewing?  Did you use members or non-members as interviewers?  What made the process work—or not?  Please share your own experiences.

Thanks,
Rabbi Hayim Herring

image from flickr.com smiling_da_vinci

What’s the Best Assessment Tool? It Depends…

Posted on: October 9th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

I confess that I don’t know very much about tools. However, I do know enough to recognize that the question, “What tool should I use?” must be asked in some context. Just as you wouldn’t use an Allen wrench to pound in a nail, you wouldn’t want to use a survey instrument that was mismatched for the information that you desire.

There are three assessment tools which lend themselves nicely to congregations and non-profit organizations: questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. These three methods work well because they are simple, easy to learn and enable you to use volunteers who have expertise in these areas. This post is going to review some basics about questionnaires.

If you are looking for more in-depth information about an issue, a questionnaire is not the tool to use. However, questionnaires are a good tool for efficiently gathering basic information from a large number of people at low cost. Today, through the use of inexpensive or free electronic questionnaire services, this method of gathering information has been made incredibly easy. But, there is a science to constructing questionnaires so that the data you get back actually answer the questions about which you want to learn.

Take a moment now to reflect on this question: when you speak with someone either in person or by telephone, how often are you misunderstood? Misunderstandings are frequent but can be corrected when you are in direct conversation with someone. However, when you have distributed a questionnaire to congregants, they will not have the benefit of asking for clarification. That is why it is critical to have someone with experience and expertise help you develop your questions.

Additionally, before you add a question to your questionnaire, ask yourself, “Do I really need to include it—is it germane to the issue?” There is an understandable temptation to ask questions which are not directly related to the assessment topic because you have people’s attention. But, if that temptation gets the better of you, you’ll limit the number of people who respond either because they will start to question your motives or because your have included too many questions.

Another good practice is to test questionnaires before you distribute them. By doing so, you’ll detect any unclear questions and get feedback on the length of the questionnaire. Typically, most volunteers will be willing to spend no more than about 15 minutes on a questionnaire. If they see a questionnaire which has over 20 to 25 questions, you will likely lose them. (This observation is based on my experience.) Aim for a greater response rate by limiting the number of questions. Those who are more invested in your organization, like board members, may be willing to spend more time as they better understand the importance of the effort. Still, you need to explain to people why you are asking for their help in supplying this information, how you hope it will be used and how you will inform them once it is used. In this way, they will be more likely to help you now and in the future. If you guarantee that responses will be confidential, which will increase the number of people who respond, then you must honor that confidentiality!

If you are using an electronic service, make sure that all of the potential respondents have access to a computer and know how to complete an online questionnaire. (Commonly used services are www.zoomerang.com and www.surveymonkey.com. You’ll also find that some newsletters, like Constant Contact, have a questionnaire feature.) Have you accounted for people with special needs? How about the elderly who may not like to use a computer but would respond to a telephone call?

With the right team of professionals and volunteers, you will be gratified by incorporating questionnaires as a part of program planning and congregational engagement into your activities. So—now it’s your turn to ask questions. Please fire away or share your experience with using electronic questionnaires.

Thanks,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

How Much Assessment is Enough?

Posted on: September 25th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

This is the second post on the topic of assessment. In my first post, my main points were:

  1. Healthy individuals take regular stock of their lives: where they’ve been, where they are presently, and where they hope to be in the future. The same is true of organizations.
  2. Assessment is another word for organizational learning. Its essential purpose is to help organizations measure whether they’re fulfilling their mission of changing lives and changing their communities.
  3. Assessment doesn’t just drive excellence; it drives the purpose of Jewish existence as expressed in the synagogue.

Many synagogues are hyper-active so it’s simply impossible to assess all activities. Conducting a comprehensive assessment of some aspect of the synagogue is a resource-intensive undertaking. It takes staff and volunteer time, funding and a commitment to go where the recommendations lead—even if that means sun-setting a program. Realistically, you should be able to thoroughly focus on one vital synagogue activity within about 18 months and generate a detailed action report with recommendations and modifications. At the same time, there are ways in which you can easily collect data on some discrete programs or processes in order to acquire quick, helpful feedback on other aspects of synagogue life.

For example, you might decide it’s time to assess the supplementary (now called, “complementary”) education program for children in kindergarten through sixth grades. But, just because your synagogue is engaged in this large effort, you can still be learning about the impact of other programs or processes in a more general way.

To drill down further, let’s say that a core group of 15 adults attend a four-part lecture series on Kabbalah and Jewish spirituality. As a part of each session, you ask participants to answer the same five questions at the end of class. You also leave room for them to add anything else that they would like to about the program and, on the last session, you also ask for their feedback about the entire series. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how much you will learn about what aspects of the series work well and what aspects need modification. And—you’ll be able to get all of that information with little effort on your part and the part of the participants.

Another illustration: a group of parents are leaving with their pre-school age children from a family education program. Five members of the pre-school committee are stationed at the synagogue exit. They are charged with asking two questions to as many parents as they can: “what did you like about the program,” and “what do you wish was different?” You haven’t systematically evaluated the program, but you are able to get useful feedback without much effort.

Creating a culture of assessment requires balance. You don’t want to drop assessment of every other activity during an assessment of a major area of synagogue life, while you also don’t want to drive people insane because you’re always asking them assessment-type questions. So here’s how I’d like us to help each other enrich one another with creative ideas about assessment:

  1. What areas of synagogue life lend themselves to a simple, quick assessment?
  2. How would go about getting it?

Share your ideas and I’ll be happy to compile a list.

Thank you,

Rabbi Herring

Image from Flickr, canonsnapper

Assess All Year ‘Round!

Posted on: September 4th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

It’s hard to believe it, but Rosh ha-Shanah is closing in already! In the weeks leading up to the yamim noraim, the Jewish High Holy Days, we’re supposed to be especially introspective. We’re to take stock of the year and measure ourselves not against someone else—but against the better selves we can be. (Actually, according to Jewish tradition, we’re supposed to conduct a spiritual check-up at the end of each day!) And, as we get older, we don’t only take stock of the single year that has passed. We use the time to do a more complete assessment of our lives.

I didn’t intentionally plan to be writing about assessment during this season, but I’m glad that this topic will be the focus of my postings during this time when many of us are engaged in personal self-reflection. For as it’s supposed to go for the individual person—self-examination in small and large increments—so, too, should it go for an organization. Organizations which don’t regularly practice assessment are unlikely to make it into the future. Assessment, which is another form of organizational learning, is essential to growth.

Yet, in the many years in which I’ve worked work with synagogues, I don’t recall ever being contacted about a question relating to assessment.  It simply hasn’t made it onto the list of critical capacities that synagogues should possess.

Why should assessment stand at the heart of congregational life? Because synagogue leaders, who work hard to secure resources that make congregations vital, can learn whether these resources are having their intended impact. Applying an essential insight of Peter Drucker, the founding father of non-profit management, assessment can tell synagogues if they’re changing Jewish lives and changing the Jewish community in ways which are consistent with their mission. Assessment doesn’t only drive excellence; it drives the very purpose and meaning of Jewish existence.

Here’s where I can use your help in providing information:
1. If you have an experience involving assessment, please share it.
2. What would make you want to learn more about making ongoing assessment a part of your congregational culture?

Thanks and a shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Hayim Herring