Break for Innovation

We're only days away from moving back into our renovated administration offices, and as much as I've enjoyed being temporarily relocated to one of our recreation centers, I don't think that my current takeover of the pool cashier's office will be very welcome come May.  With our agency's additional efforts to spur innovation underway, I was tasked with turning our small conference room into a space to help support that goal.  Do a web search for "innovation spaces" and you'll find some beautiful rooms, none of which will fit within the size of our room or the size of our budget.

An alternate approach was to decorate the space to inspire innovation, and while I'm all about a good quote on a wall, I don't think that just trying to inspire innovation and hope that it happens is enough.  A lot of people struggle with how to turn these abstract concepts like innovation, creativity, etc. into reality, but it really doesn't have to be that complicated.  It really comes down to the fact that if you want innovation (concept), you need to give people the space and resources to innovate (verb).  You can't have outcomes without action.  So what tools help people innovate?

• Time.  People always think about those lengthy brainstorming sessions when innovation is brought up.  And if done correctly (I would argue that most managers are severely lacking in group facilitation skills), they can actually be productive, but people also need the flexibility to step away from their day-to-day tasks for 5-10 minutes to recharge. And most importantly, they need the time to follow-up and actually put any good ideas in action.
• Space. Areas for collaboration can help team innovate.  They should be flexible to fit different group activities and should be stocked with tools to spur, capture, and narrow down good ideas.  Also helpful is just a change of scenery - working in a new space or even taking a quick walk can work.  Why do we always get our best ideas in the shower or while driving to work? It's because we have the time and space to let our mind wander a bit.
• Support.  Ultimately, if organizational leadership doesn't actively and consistently encourage employees to take advantage of time and spaces for innovating, it won't happen.

View fullsize

My attempt to help create a distraction-free zone when needed.

How did we decide to roll this out?  Well, like the renovations to our facility, it's still a little in progress, but we've settled on a few things.

• We're using magnetic paint and white board paint to turn an entire wall of the conference room into a giant magnetic white board. 
• We're stocking the room with a supply of dry erase markers, post-it notes, and other brainstorming tools so that its ready whenever inspiration strikes.
• We've mounted a TV on the wall and are incorporating technology that will allow anyone with a laptop, iPhone, or iPad to mirror their screen for everyone to see.
• We've bought some wall-mounted flip up tables to install in the building where gathering spots seem to naturally occur.  Come up with a good idea while chatting with a co-worker and flip the table up to take a few extra minutes to start fleshing it out.

One of the things that I'm a little excited about though are the "innovation stations" that I've come up with.  I wanted to provide tools to help staff take some breaks from work to recharge and get refocused.  Unfortunately, our conference room is too small to store many additional supplies, and I wasn't entirely confident that if someone needed a break, a conference room would be the first place that they would head.  Instead, I'm putting them out in key spots throughout the building, so that they're readily available when and where they're needed.  And they're packaged easily enough so that someone can grab them to bring them into a meeting whenever needed.  From initial reactions and my own internal testing (admittedly one of the more fun projects I've been tasked with), the Spirograph will be the biggest hit.

View fullsize

Giving staff the tools to recharge throughout the day and spur creativity at meetings.  

Why are these "toys" important?  Well, besides the fact that I work for a park & recreation agency which understands the value of play, there are actually scientific reasons why taking a 5 minute break is good for business.  These breaks don't distract us, they actually help us refocus, help us retain information, and help us make sure that we're working towards the right things in the right way.

Okay, I will admit that while I'm pretty excited about all of this (partially because I'm also getting a white board wall in my office for my own projects), nothing we're doing is anything groundbreaking.  It might be considered a little creative for local government, but that's about it.  So why do I think it will actually make a difference?  Because we're got the most important of the big three needed for innovation - support from leadership and my own dogged persistence to keep the momentum going.

Has your organization done anything to incorporate employee innovation into the design of your work spaces? (And has it done any good?)  What's your favorite way to "break for innovation?"

Five Rules for Growing Data at your Organization

Despite the 5 inches of snow that just fell on the Chicago area, spring is technically here, which means that warmer weather is hopefully just around the corner.  And with that comes my annual gardening dilemma.   To grow or not to grow - that is the annual question.  

It all started one summer when I decided to grow a garden.  I only had one problem - no space to actually grow a garden.  Too much of our backyard was covered in shade and there was too little backyard to start with.  However, any of you that know me know that a tiny issue like that isn't going to be enough to deter me.

So for my first attempt (yes, this a multi-year gardening saga), I decided to be reasonable and start with some large pots that could sit on a concrete patch that gets plenty of sun.  I planted a few smaller items like strawberries, herbs, and tomatoes.  I was excited when they started to grow.  Apparently so was the local wildlife who ate the majority of the plants.  Not to be outdone, I decided to try to save what was left and move the plants on top of a table.  That seemed to be working really well andI even had a few strawberries that started to grow and was looking forward to my minuscule harvest.  Unfortunately so was a squirrel (my best guess) and I ended up with nothing but some pots full of soil.

Fast forward to summer #2.  This year, I was getting serious.  I built some cages made out of PVC pipe and bird netting that would keep rabbits, squirrels, birds, etc. out.  I upgraded to self-watering planter boxes that were on wheels so that I could better take advantage of a some sunny days and move them out of the way when I actually wanted to use the patio.  And since I was going so full-force, I decided to expand my plant selection and added lettuce, melons, and other fruits and vegetables.  I definitely had better success than the year before.  All of my plants started to grow and were safe from the animals.  I lost some in expected ways (bugs) and some in unexpected ways (my dog's enthusiasm to be near me when we're outside lead to some heartbreaking moments when many of my melons were crushed under the weight of his paws).  I was able to pick a few items here or there, but admittedly was not nearly as attentive as I should have been since I was also in the process of training for my first marathon along with a full-time job.  And the worst part is that I was out of town when some of my best chances for a decent harvest happened.  So, I beat the wildlife this year, but in the end, really didn't come out much better than the year before.

On to summer #3...  I still had all of my pots, boxes, cages, and contraptions from the previous of two years of gardening warfare.  So what did I do?  I took one planter box and one cage and planted one plant - cilantro.  It was easy to tend to and grew well.  And it wasn't susceptible to squirrels or bugs or my dog's enormous paws.  I tended to it much more frequently, which wasn't really too much work since it was only one plant.  So what was the result?  Fresh cilantro all summer and fall long.  My tacos have never tasted so good.

So you may be asking what the heck this has to do with data and this website?  Well, a lot as it turns out. Here are my Top 5 rules for growing the use of data at your organization as it relates to gardening.

1.  Expect challenges.  Each time I overcame one challenge in gardening, it seemed like another one popped up.  Working with data is a little like that, but just like gardening, the more that I've worked with it, the more that I've learned to refine my techniques. Data, just like plants, might seem to be easier to deal with than people, but both have a life of their own.  Just because numbers can't talk back doesn't mean that they will tell you what you want to hear.  
2. The animals can drive you crazy.  So maybe it's not smart to call your co-workers "animals," but it's accurate with this analogy.  Just like you might think that gardening is about plants and data is all about numbers, neither live in a vacuum.   People will be scared, angry, confused, doubtful, defensive, and even apathetic in regards to any form of measurement - all of which puts the use of data in danger.  It's important to be aware of this and account for it if you want to have a successful data program.
3. Cool tools help, but only so much.  Those planter boxes helped me grow more varieties of plants and also led to a better harvest, but ultimately, if you're not there to tend to the plants (or the data) and make time to use it when it becomes available to you, it really does you no good.  There are some great tools to help make data collection, viewing, and analysis easier, but if you're not going to put yourself in a place to use it, you shouldn't waste the time and effort.   
4. More varieties = more results (and more work).  If you want to get a fuller view of what is going on at your organization, it's important to have a well-rounded and well-thought out approach to data collection.  But with every piece of data that you collect (just like with every plant you decide to grow), you have work to do in monitoring, gathering, preparing, viewing, analyzing, and using.  It's easy to get excited at the beginning of the process and bite off a bit more than you can chew (like I did in summer #2).  If you want a full garden, it's possible, but just realize that you can't plant it and let it grow on its own and hope it turns into something usable.  You'll need to do a lot of work along the way, but the rewards are definitely worth it.
5. Sometimes you only need to do one thing really well.  Normally, I'm all about getting that overall view of an organization through a well-rounded set of data.  However, sometimes it's better just to measure one thing and go all out.  Like in summer #3, when I planted only cilantro, but had some great cilantro to use all year long, tracking only one thing could be best.  One real-life example of this was the time that I took over a set of summer camps at a new job.  There were a lot of improvements that I wanted to make, but instead of focusing on everything with staff, I picked one thing and drove it home through training, with constant emphasis throughout the summer, and by sharing the results from parent evaluations with staff.  The end result?  Not only did we make the improvements we were going for, but we also saw our registration numbers increase, staff satisfaction increase, and return rate increase.   Sometimes, when you really focus on fixing or improving one thing (or growing one plant), you end up being more successful than you would have if you had tried to do too many.

Whether you're growing data or vegetable, it's sure to be a bit of a messy process, but hope you agree that it's worth it in the end.  And, if anything, at least you've got a new person to laugh with about it all when it doesn't go exactly your way. :-)

This One's for the "People Persons"

Over the past two weeks, I've had the opportunity to present a session entitled "Counting What Counts: Using Data to Drive Real Change" at two park & recreation conferences.  I was thrilled with the participation at both, but noticed that after each session, I had several people make a comment to me along the lines of:

"I'm more of a people person, and I actually really enjoyed your session."

While I'm excited that A) people enjoyed the sessions, and B) people who wouldn't typically gravitate towards numbers and data decided to spend over an hour learning about it with me, I think that it shows that there's still a real misconception that data is only for "numbers people."  Now I know that I'm (proudly) a little geekier than the average population when it comes to this stuff, but I promise that data doesn't have to be intimidating or boring.  And when presented thoughtfully, data doesn't even have to include numbers.

Have I completely confused you?  Stay with me while I prove it with the following equation.  

So people result in some sort of interaction, which results in data.  Easy, right?  And I didn't even need to use numbers!

Well, if the above equation is true, Algebra 101 tells us that the following equation is also true (and you thought you'd never use algebra again...).

What's this mean?  Well, if we want to, we can use data to affect interactions, which will in turn affect people.  Sound too simple?  Well....math, data, and all that stuff that sometimes seems confusing really doesn't have to be hard.  But if you need some proof, here's a recent real-life example.

One of the performance indicators that we track at my agency is the percent of households in our community that complete a transaction with us each year.  This includes any household that registers for a program, buys a pass, rents a facility, donates to our scholarship fund, etc.  We had no idea what to expect from this metric, so in 2013, we let our customers take the lead.  In this case, people interacted with our park district, which resulted in data that told us that 26% of households in our community completed a transaction with us in 2013.

Or in other words, PEOPLE = INTERACTIONS = DATA.

Since we really haven't found any other park & recreation agencies tracking these same metrics, we really had no idea whether or not this was a typical result.  But regardless, we decided to work on improving this number in 2014.  Using our newfound data, we focused the entire year on our interactions with our customers, which went something like this:

As an agency, we worked together to attract new customers to our park district.  These efforts led to the highest number of program registrations since we started tracking this number in 2007 and also the highest number of pass sales in recent years.  We had set the lofty goal to increase that household participation though and so when mid-December came around and we still hadn't reached it, we came up with an plan.

We reviewed all of our customers that had participated with us in 2013, but hadn't returned in 2014 for some reason.  We learned that this amounted to 1,400 households, which seemed like a large amount, but dug a little deeper and found out that this meant that our household retention rate was 75%, which didn't seem so bad afterall. (Side note, this is why it's so important to dig deeper when you have questions about your data, instead of just going back to making assumptions about the initial results.)  We then contacted those 1,400 households to let them know that we missed them and offered them a coupon to come back by the end of the year.  We should have given ourselves more time to get this effort out to make it more convenient for customers to take advantage of it, but it was a our first time and we decided that trying something is better than nothing.

The result of that coupon? Ten households took advantage of the offer. Sounds like a terrible response, doesn't it?  Well, even though we would have loved to see a higher number, because of other available data, we know that our average customers spend $630/year with us.  This means that for a $250 goodwill investment ($25 coupon X 10), we were able to serve 10 more households.  And if they enjoy their program/pass and continue as a customer in 2015 with us, we could earn an estimated $6,300 return, which in turn allows us to provide even more services to our community.  One of those 10 people even wrote a letter to our Board president expressing that she was excited about our park district's new fitness options and that she appreciated our offer and was going to sign up for an on-going membership with the park district.  Suddenly not so shabby of a result, huh?

So how did it all end?  Well, with less than 48 hours left in the year, we met our target and increased our overall household participation to 30% or 816 additional households.

Or in other words, DATA = INTERACTIONS = PEOPLE.  See how that works?

That means that because of our focus on data, we were able to positively affect people in the following ways:

• our staff rallied around a common goal,
• we learned new data about our agency that will help us better understand how well we are serving our community,
• our staff initiated a new marketing effort that they want to repeat and improve upon for next year, and
• we increased the number of people served and were able to offer more recreation opportunities to our community than even before.

The simple fact is that when you really think about it, those "numbers" are people, so when you care about the right numbers, you're really caring about people.  And this means that anything you do to positively affect those numbers is also positively affecting the community that you serve.  

In fact, the more I think about it, maybe when it comes down to it, those "people persons" might have the potential to be the biggest "numbers persons" of us all?

Park & Rec's Perception Problem

"These people are members of the community that care about where they live. So what I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring loudly at me." - Leslie Knope, Parks & Recreation

It seems like anytime that someone working in the field of parks & recreation talks about the state of our industy, inevitably the conversation turns to the fact that despite all of our best efforts, we haven't made much traction in educating the public about the value of what we do.  As an industry, we have spent a lot of time, money, and resources towards promoting the benefits of parks & recreation.  We've adopted sort of a vague mantra - "Parks and Recreation - the benefits are endless!" We even have a television show (albeit fiction, and a little far-fetched at times) featuring the most passionate parks & recreation professional on earth, but haven't seemed to budge too much in recent years.  It doesn't help that our own marketing messages to our communities describe how "we're all about fun!"

The data and research that's been done in the name of better understanding and promoting parks & recreation as a public neccessity is actually incredibly interesting and valuable.  And in Illinois, the fact that hundreds of communities accross the state have voted to form separate park & recreation districts goes to show that the public does value these services on some level.  But when push comes to shove, as an industry, we still seem to feel a bit inferior to other government services like police, fire, health, education, sanitation, etc.   So despite our best efforts, it continues to be a hot topic and even ended up as part of the conversation at the keynote of the 2014 National Park & Recreation Association conference.  In fact, the question (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Why can't we seem to influence the public on the value of parks and recreation?" was posed.

Earlier this week I was asked to lead a StrengthsFinder workshop at a local park & recreation agency.  I have been a huge proponent of StrengthsFinder since I first read the book and took the assessment 8 years ago and have it to thank for putting me on the path towards my current position which is geared specifically to my strengths.  Without going into too much detail, StrengthsFinder consists of an assessment to inform a person of their natural talents and then explains why we will be happier, more productive, and more successful if we focus on improving our strengths instead of trying to fix our weaknesses. Each person is given their top 5 talent themes out of a possible 34.  Each of the 34 talent themes falls into one of four categories:

• Executing:  People with talents in this area are those who you turn to to implement a solution.  They work tirelessly to get something done with speed and precision.
• Influencing: People with talents in this area are innately good at influencing are always selling big ideas inside and outside of the organization.  When you need someone to take charge, speak up, and make sure your group is heard, look to someone with strengths in this area.
• Relationship-Building: People with talents in this area have an innate ability to take the human component into the equation.  They look at how individuals fit into the big picture, make strong connections, and are the glue that holds groups together.
• Strategic: People with talents in this area are constantly thinking about the future and help keep people focused on what "could be."  They absorb and analyze information to help make better decisions.

After compiling the results of professionals across the country, including park & recreation staff, special recreation staff, and board members, a pretty significant trend has surfaced.  Although not scientific in any stretch of the imagination, no matter where I go or who I work with, the overall results are the same - the talents of park & recreation professionals fall pretty consistently in the folowing order:

1. Relationship-Building: 35% of our talents are in this area
2. Executing: 31% of our talents are in this area
3. Strategic: 21% of our talents are in this area
4. Influencing: only 13% of our talents fall in this area

If we were perfectly balanced overall, our talents would all fall squarely at 25% in each area.  However, it's pretty clear that people who have chosen parks & recreation as their career are not as balanced as you might assume they'd be.  If you think about it, it actually makes total sense.  I think we'd all agree that to be drawn to work in parks & recreation, most professionals probably are concerned with relationships and care about the connections to their community and to the environment and nature.  And I don't know anyone that wouldn't say park & recreation professionals aren't hard workers.  Our entire field literally revolves around working while everyone else in playing.  So does that mean when it comes to influencing the public about our value that we're completely hopeless?  Is the only way to accomplish this goal to completely change the make-up of those working in our field?

Thankfully, while the StrengthsFinder results pose the question, I think the StrengthsFinder teachings also present the answer.  While it's important to be aware of our weaknesses and how they may be holding us back, the key to being successful is to find a way to use our strengths to solve the problem.  As one of the few "influencers" at my agency and in the field, I think that we need to change the way we appeal to our own members.

Ironically, Gallup, the group that conducted the research that led to StrengthsFinder, also found that people who live in close proximity to parks have fewer headaches, lower obesity rates and even as many as 25 percent fewer heart attacks in their Well-Being Index.  Just like the graphic above and other research that's been conducted, it's all incredibly valuable information.  So why isn't the message getting through?

The StrengthsFinder results show that being influencers in a more traditional way isn't natural to the majority of our professionals.  But, if we know that our professionals care deeply about personal connections and building relationships, maybe it's time to change the message to our members about promoting parks & recreation.  Instead of encouraging professionals to do it because we need to fight for funding and increased stature among other social services, we need to appeal to our professionals in the area that matters most to them.  The message to our professionals should revolve around how it will help us build better connections in our community and serve more people.  We need to convince our professionals that spreading this message is priority number one and then challenge them to use their "executing" skills to making it happen on a local level, across the country. It might seem like an impossible sell, but it's exactly the route that I've had to take at my own agency to reinforce why focusing on data and numbers is one of the best ways to help our customers.

It may only seem like a slight change in semantics, but having coached others on using their own strengths for years and seeing the impact that these small tweeks can have, I think that it's an important distinction to think about.  And of course, the cliche is that "it's easier said than done."  But remember, according to my StrengthsFinder results, we're really good at the "getting things done" part.

What do you think?  Have you or your agency taken the StrengthsFinder assessment?  What were your results?  Would you agree that a change in strategy is needed?

Launching Innovation

It shouldn't come as any surprise that government agencies aren't exactly known for being the most innovative organizations out there.  There are many reasons for this, including the public's lack of tolerance for risk-taking and mistake-making with public dollars, even if that is an essential part of the innovation process.  However, during a recent branding study, our district learned that the one area where we have disconnect between what our community wants in an ideal park district and how they actually see us is innovation.  And, during our last strategic planning process, innovation was also identified as a value and one area staff really wanted to improve on.  

The consultant who was hired to lead us through our strategic planning process emphasized that a lot of organizations talk about innovation, but really never do anything actionable to make it happen.  I'm pleased to say that our district has made some pretty incredible advances in this area over the past few years, at least internally, which has definitely helped us serve our customers better externally.  However, this past summer, our management team felt that there was still more than could be done.  Some of the ideas that surfaces during the brainstorming session included:

• identifying an innovation champion/innovation team for the district
• developing some sort of idea folder to collect good ideas for reference later
• offer more opportunities to share ideas accross departments
• dedicating resources to good ideas that need some help to get started
• recognizing when staff take a risk to try something new, even if it doesn't work out as planned and sharing the successes so that other staff can copy the good idea
• rewarding staff for being innovative or coming up with good ideas

I was (happily) charged with leading this initiative and formed an innovation committee to get started.  Reading through lots of reports on how to have a successful innovation team, some common themes started to develop.

1. Pick the right people for your innovation team.  They shouldn't just be the creative, big idea people, they need to be the ones that have demonstrated the ability to take an idea and make things happen.  Staff with diverse backgrounds and those who have big networks will be especially valuable because they have more experiences, places, and people to pull ideas from.  It seems ridiculous to say, but many organizations will put "tried and true veterans" on their teams, sometimes to keep the big-thinkers in check.  
2. Pick a leader, give him/her the authority and resources to meet the team's goals, and get out of the way.  Although one person should be in charge, everyone on the team should be able to step up and lead initiatives when it makes sense.
3. Set goals and measure progress.  The innovation team should have a shared vision. And just like any other initiative, it's important that the team and the people outside of the team know where they're going, how well they are doing, and when they get there.

We had a great kick-off brainstorming session to identify what we wanted to accomplish over the next three years, and put a major focus on the work for our first year, which was to develop some program that would incorporate staff's requests.  We developed a charter, which was approved by the director, that gave our group the authority to move quickly when needed and make decisions without needing constant approval from district leadership.

Fast-forward a few months to last week.  After an insane amount of searching, we found a website services that we could actually afford that allows staff to post ideas, comment on other's ideas, vote for ideas that they like and also allows the innovation team to update staff on which of the ideas have been selected for development.  The team came up with an awesome name for the program and we unvieled it at our all-staff meeting.  We've decided to call it Launch Pad, because it's all about "helping get good ideas off the ground."  I also really like the analogy to launching a space shuttle because it takes a ton of work to get to lift-off, a lot of effort and focus to make sure the mission succeeds, and just as much effort to bring it back home safely and evaluate how it went.  

To kick it off, we had all of the staff come up with one quick idea, write it on a piece of paper that I designed with a space shuttle-themed pattern and "launch" it.  

View fullsize

Staff "launched" their ideas and closest to the Milky Way bar won a prize.  The good news is that our staff had a ton of great ideas to get us started.  The bad news is that our staff is severally lacking in paper airplane making skills. 

One week later and almost half of our staff have signed in to Launch Pad and we've had 12 ideas, 15 comments, and 18 votes.  Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the initial participation, but am already trying to figure out how to keep the momentum going.  

Does your organization have an innovation program like ours?  Any advice on what did or did not work and how to keep it going?