Evaluation as self-care for your program
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July 24 is International Self Care Day – who knew that was a day, right? But I think we can all use a reminder to focus on taking care of ourselves, in whatever way is best for us.
The same is true for our work. We’re often so caught up in the day-to-day that we don’t seem to have the time to pause and focus on making our work feel better. My job at Three Hive Consulting is to help people (like program managers and executive directors) to do just that – pause, reflect, and treat their work to a little self-improvement.
If you run programs, or you are an evaluator working with program teams, you can think of evaluation as a way to give those programs some self-care. Just like ourselves, programs might seem to be getting along just fine – but a little reflection and pampering might be in order. Here are a few ways I think evaluation offers your program the opportunity to recharge.
Taking stock of strengths and weaknesses: Have you ever tried the Wheel of Life tool, or a similar self-assessment? The Wheel of Life helps people to explore different aspects of their personal life, like career, money, health, and relationships, and decide what they want in the future for each of those domains. People who try these tests often come out of the process with a clearer articulation of existing hunches – for example, they can see that they’re feeling great about friends & family, but perhaps their personal growth could use more attention. Evaluation serves the same function, but for your program or project rather than your life – it helps to identify where the program is doing well, and what areas need some adjustments.
Checking in on progress toward goals: Just like you might be aiming for a retirement savings target or eating 30 different plants each week, your program likely has some goals it aims to achieve. Evaluation offers your program a means to measure the extent to which the program is meeting those goals – and remember, what gets measured gets improved.
Ongoing improvement is top of mind: When you are regularly evaluating or monitoring your program, you’re more likely to be thinking about improvement as part of ongoing operations. This regular practice of evaluation is similar to establishing strong personal habits – ever find that once you implement a regular physical activity, you also start to think about your eating habits?
Knowing where to put your efforts: When thinking about self-care, the options can become overwhelming. Do you go for a run, or visit with a friend for dinner? Should you make time for a massage, or read a book in a sunny spot? We can sometimes get to the point where there are so many options, we’re paralyzed with indecision and end up just scrolling instead. The same can be true for your program – you might be thinking about reallocating staff, changing a registration form, redefining your mission and values, promoting a new offering, and finding budget efficiencies all within the same minute. Evaluation helps you understand where your efforts are most urgently needed, and which actions land in that sweet spot of feasibility and impact.
Reducing stress: Stress can often occur when we feel like things are slipping away from us – we don’t have a good enough handle on our finances, that shoulder twinge could probably use some physio, and the kids’ rooms are out of control. Just like implementing planned contributions to your emergency fund, an annual family doctor visit, or a weekly cleaning schedule, implementing ongoing program evaluation helps make sure you can identify risks and weaknesses as you go, rather than letting all those issues pile up and keep you from sleeping. Building an evaluation into a program from the start, rather than force fitting it at the end, means fewer surprises and less stress trying to figure out what went wrong where.
Skill-building: Learning something new is a really important part of self-care —it always feels great to learn a new skill, whether it’s a language, a new knitting stitch, or some shortcuts in Excel. Working with an evaluator can help you build skills in evaluation and learning, even when it’s not your job.
Future-proofing: Just like self-care helps you build resilience and prepare for whatever your day might throw at you, evaluation helps you think about what your program needs to be sustainable in the future. For example, an evaluation might help you to build in some contingency plans, or supply you with strong evidence to support future grant applications.
So what self-care do you give your program? We’ve got lots of other resources here on Eval Academy to help you scope your evaluation project, write great evaluation questions, choose the right types of survey questions, analyze qualitative data, visualize quantitative data, and turn data into insights. We also offer a course specifically for program managers to learn about evaluation and build their own feasible, relevant, and actionable evaluation plan.