1. Start with the plain language results that people
agree are important.
2. Explain the results thinking process like a business, and results are the equivalent of profit.
Advice from:
Organizational Resources
References
The Short Answer
1. Start with ends and work backward to means.
2. Use data to drive decisions, not just measure success
or failure after the fact.
3. Results are desired conditions of well-being, the ends we want, for children, adults families
and communities
4. Improving results means getting from talk to action. And
getting from talk to action means
following a disciplined thinking process:
Results: What conditions of well-being
(results) do we want for children, adults families and communities, stated in
plain language? Experience: How do we experience these results in our everyday lives? Indicators: How could we recognize these conditions in measurable
terms? Baselines: Where have we been and where are we headed on the
indicators? Story behind the Baselines: Why do these the indicator baselines look
the way they do? What are the causes? Partners: Who are the potential partners who have a role to play in
doing better?
What works strategy: What works? What do we think it will take to do
better? Action Plan and Budget: What do we propose to actually do?
Full Answer
Results based decision-making
starts with the end conditions of well-being (results) we want for children,
adults families and communities, and works backward to the means to get there.
There is in fact a simple progression of thought at the heart of this process:
(1)What do we want? (2)How will we recognize
it? (3)What will it take to
get there?
WHAT
DO WE WANT?
Population:
Results-Based Accountability starts with a whole population. This can be all
children in a state, county or city; all elders in a state, county or city. Or
it can be a population in a smaller geographic area (all children in the
Fairfield neighborhood). Or it can be a subpopulation (e.g. all children 0 to
5; or all disabled children in the county). (Note Prop 10 population is all
children, prenatal to age 5 who live in the county. It also includes, by
extension, all the families in which these children live, or are about to be
born. This is important because many of the things which will work to improve
the health and school readiness of children involve helping their families,
and in particular, their parents, be successful. So Prop 10 is about the
well-being of the population of all children and their families. )
Results:
Results are conditions of well-being we would like to say exist for this
population. These conditions are stated in plain English (plain Spanish, plain
Vietnamese, plain Farsi...) not bureaucratic jargon. Examples of results
statements include: “all children born healthy; all children healthy and
ready for school (Prop 10); all children succeeding in school; all youth
making smart choices; all youth becoming happy productive contributing adults;stable and self sufficient families; self sufficient elders living in
setting of their own choice.” There are many possible results statements for
any given population.(The Prop 10 legislation includes the results: Achildren
enter school in good health, ready and able to learn, and emotionally well
developed.@[1]
This is a statement that the public can understand, that can be used to
communicate the basic purpose of Prop 10 and anchor this work. There are of
course many other results for children and families which are important, e.g.all children safe, all children succeeding in school, strong and self
sufficient families. Prop10, if successful, will also make a contribution to
these other results.)
HOW
WOULD WE RECOGNIZE IT?
The next two questions have to do with how we would recognize these conditions
if we fell over them, first in terms of experience and then in terms of data.
Experience:
How would we recognize these results in our day to day lives in the community?
What would we see, hear, feel, observe? e.g. We would see children playing
outside. We would hear young children with good communication skills. We would
feel that children were respected and loved in our community.
Indicators:
How would we recognize these conditions in measurable terms. Here we are
looking for pieces of data that tell us whether these conditions exist or not.
If the condition is child health, we might look at the rate of low
birth-weight babies, or the rate of emergency room accidents. If the result is
Achildren
succeeding in school@
we might look at the percent of children reading at grade level or graduating
from high school. Some of this data we currently have and can use today in the
planning process. Other data, which we would like to have, becomes part of our
data development agenda.
Baselines:
For each indicator, we present a picture of where we've been and where we're
headed if we stay on our current course. These pictures are called baselines.
They allow us to define success as doing better than the baseline.
WHAT
WILL IT TAKE TO GET THERE?
Story behind the baselines: Why do these baseline pictures look the way they do? What are the
causes and forces at work? This is the epidemiology part of the work. Digging
behind the pictures helps us get a handle on what=s
going on in our community and whatmight
work to do better. As we do this work we bump up against things we wish we
knew more about. This becomes part of our information/research agenda. We=ll gather this information as best we can between meetings.
Partners: Who
are the potential partners (people and agencies, public and private) who have
a role to play in doing better?
What works:
What do we think would work? What would it take to do better
than the baselines in this community? What has worked in other places
outside our community? What does the research tell us? Just importantly, what
does our own personal experience tell us about what would work here? The
answers should draw on the possible contributions of partners; and should
involve no-cost and low-cost ideas.
Criteria: If
we come up with a long list of things that might work, how do we choose what
to actually do? What criteria should guide this selection process? Some
criteria to think about include: specificity (Is the idea about
specific action not rhetoric?), leverage (Will it make a big or little
difference?), values (Is it consistent with our personal and community
values?), and reach (Is it feasible to do it this year, next year or 3
to 10 years?).
Action plan and budget: What do we propose to actually do? This should take the form of a
multi-year action plan laying out what is to be accomplished by when (goals
and objectives). We can then assign responsibilities and get started. Once you
decide on things to be done, projects, programs, no-cost and low-cost actions
etc. you can use performance measures to track their progress.
This does not have to take
forever. You can take a pass at this thinking process in an hour or so. And
then go through it again each time you get together. Every time you iterate
this process, your action plan gets better.
The Results-Based Accountability section of this paper is organized around this
thinking process.
