[Ailist] Capturing impact and raising visibility of 'unseen' work

['Marvin Faure']

Dear Kate,

In response to your post:

“The management question is: We have invested significantly in catalysis,
how do we measure the impact? The question asks how we can clearly
demonstrate to the rest of the organisation the value and impact of having
dedicated teams of catalysts within the functions.

We are looking at an appreciative framework for this purpose, including a
full 4D Inquiry later this year, and in the shorter terms, setting up
some dialogue mapping. Additionally, I am very interested in hearing
thoughts from the Ai community on this topic.”

My thoughts are that it may be helpful to have some quantitative data to
complement the qualitative data you plan to collect through the AI and
dialogue processes. Once organizations start asking OD to “prove” the value
they are adding, there’s really no alternative to gathering hard data to
complement the soft. We have found this approach helpful for our clients, on
two distinct levels:

1) Providing quantitative measures of the value provided by development
interventions provides a direct answer to the question “how much value are
we providing?” and should satisfy senior management’s request for “hard”
data.

2) Equally importantly, we believe that measuring the value actually
increases it, since it obliges people to think about what they learned and
what they are doing differently (thus encouraging them to do more of it).

We use a proprietary on-line system to measure the value of various OD
interventions including coaching, training, team events and change
management projects for our clients.

We also use the system to measure the value added by internal functions (HR,
IT, Finance
) in support of the organisation’s strategic initiatives.

As always, the key to success is as much in the questions asked as in the
overall system design. Doing this right can substantially increase the
profile and reputation of OD/Training and/or HR within the parent
organization.

I’d be happy to explore further if the idea seems interesting – let me know!

Kind regards,

Marvin FAURE
MINDSTORE
Chemin du Canal 5
CH-1260 Nyon
Switzerland
Tél. +41 22 363 9286
Mob. +41 786 826 926	
www.mindstore.ch