Working Differently
  • Home
  • Working Differently Blog
  • Learning Ovations
  • Book Reviews
  • Presentations & Testimonials
  • Bio and Links
  • Contact Jay

How You Analyze Your Community Can Effect Whether You Achieve Transformative Outcomes

4/14/2013

5 Comments

 
Picture
I’m often asked: what is the most surprising aspect of your work with over 75 communities in their efforts to achieve better outcomes?

Whether it is a city, town, school, or district, what has surprised me most is that I have never had to talk a community down from too high an aspiration.  I have never felt the need to pull back the reigns because a community was getting their expectations too far ahead of their potential grasp.

Now this isn’t to ignore the sorry reality that communities often fail to achieve suboptimal results, but, as I have seen time and time again, that is a function of implementation and not of aspiration.  In fact, in my experience, those communities that tend to stretch the limits of expectation also tend to apply more rigor to their implementation, understand the need to reach across the community, and emphasize measurement planning because they intuitively know that this transcendent goal requires them, as a community, to get out of the “same ol’ same ol’” mindset of most past “community betterment” endeavors. 

We’ve talked about some of the potential speed bumps before (see my blog posting on “Traps”), and avoiding them is at the center of what I have called “Working Differently.”  Here is one simple suggestion to get your analysis off to a better chance to get to the “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” that Jim Collins underscored as a fundamental driver in those organizations moving from “Good to Great.”

SWOT v. SOART

Most of us, who have ever participated in or facilitated a strategic planning session, are very familiar with the warhorse of organizational analysis – SWOT.  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  The group would take several hours to fill several pages of flipchart paper with their assessment of community characteristics that fit under each of these headings.  I used the process for years.  It engendered a lively discussion and helped to get people with vastly different perspectives, biases or sector experience closer to being on the same page.

So far so good.   But over the years, I began to suspect that this very process was effectively lowering the horizon.  In the same way that a gun sight can be bent forward, SWOT tended to create a context where the ultimate shot was low.  Under achieving became self-fulfilling.

I think there are two dynamics at play here.  First, a community usually only opens itself for a “strategic” review when it already knows that it has problems.  An intuitive sense of community weakness is at the heart of the “call to action.”   This is anecdotally born out by the fact that usually the newsprint sheets labeled “weakness” often had significantly more entries and more unanimity than any of the other headings.  Second, “weaknesses” tend to give permission to the problem.  How many times have we heard something “outside our control” as the reason we have the problem – the why we can’t succeed.  Poor parenting: school outcomes.  Fast food: obesity health care.  Economic deterioration: pollution.  Media: teen pregnancy.  All of which, serves to confirm why we have the problem without serving to sufficiently guide us to the transformative solution. Even the 180-degree different strengths-emphasis of asset maps tends to fail in this development of a clear guide, because these asset maps are most often framed as activity resources from the problem perspective rather than from the solution point of view.  (Is it an asset to have more slots for early childhood, if the number of children who become k-ready doesn’t change?)

What I saw was needed was more intentionality about the aspiration and then more rigor regarding the characteristics of achieving that aspiration – that transformative outcome.  We all have weaknesses; it is those of us who focus on the change state that soar above those weaknesses.

That is why, several year ago, I switched to SOART.  Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Resources, and Threats.  In many ways, it is very much the same flipchart process, but by re-defining the headings (i.e., the sight line of the participants) and encouraging iteration across the sheets I witnessed significantly enhanced  discussions. The results have been eye opening.  Not only are the collective sights raised but also the ultimate time to result has shrunk.    

Don’t be naive about your weaknesses, but also, don’t let them limit your expectations. 

To be tweeted links to my new posts -- blog, book reviews (both nonfiction and fiction), data or other recommended tools -- either go to Twitter.com and follow me @jcrubicon, or just go to my Home page and click on the Twitter button on the right, just above the tweet stream, and follow me @jcrubicon.
5 Comments
Vincent Siciliano
4/18/2013 05:13:19 am

I like the idea but what happens to the topic of weaknesses in this discussion?

Reply
Jay Connor link
4/21/2013 06:50:39 am

Hi Vincent:

Weaknesses don't magically disappear, we are rather talking of "voice." In the SWOT context weakenesses tend to surface in the passive voice -- i.e., barriers and impediments or rationales for not moving forward. In the aspiration context, they tend to surface in the active voice -- i.e, if we want to achieve X then we will need to address this or that "weakness." Central is that without the galvanizing pull of a goal (aspiration), the ability to distinguish the truly actionable weakness is clouded by all the past scar tissue of failure to move.

Reply
GraemeStuart link
4/18/2013 08:38:04 am

I'm not a fan of SWOT and think SOART sounds better. I find that strengths-based approaches seem to work better (e.g., appreciative inquiry, asset-based community-driven development).

I might give SOART a go some time. Thanks

Reply
Jay Connor link
4/21/2013 06:53:16 am

Thanks, Graeme:

The central value of SOART is framing the conversation on where we want to go (aspiration) as opposed to the why we are where we are (weakness).

Reply
kittycatxo webcam link
9/30/2013 07:52:44 am

I had no idea it was so easy to create a free blog here at Weebly, thanks.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Jay Connor.  In working with over 75 communities in North America, I came to a growing recognition of the need to develop evidence-based tools in order to achieve transformative outcomes in our community systems – most notably education.  This is a driving consideration in my work and in this blog. 

    Connor Bio

    Archives

    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    A2i PreK 12 Education Outcomes
    A2i - PreK-12 Education Outcomes
    Community Outcomes
    Educational Outcomes
    Tools

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.