How might we...
- How might we track our impact?
Hypothesis
We’re doing better than we think we are
Design
Start an internal blog where we log success stories related to the DIY Strategy / Culture toolkits.
Import data we already have.
Commit to logging new stories regularly.
Metrics
Number of stories (imported + new).
Make meaning together of the data.
Learnings
I imported 24 posts.
Within the experiment time frame, I posted 4 posts, Amy posted one.
Afterward (through August 2019), I posted 20 posts, Amy posted one.
Both of Amy’s posts were at my urging; she told me those stories during meetings, and I asked her to write them up.
Simply having the shared accountability motivated me to track more. But I already had at least some muscles for tracking, which helped. Amy didn’t have this foundation, she didn’t track on her own, and she didn’t read my posts. That made me lose motivation to track here, and it’s a higher bar for me to record here than it was on Bear. So I’m switching back to Bear.
As far as the original hypothesis, however, I think this definitely supported it. Tracking really helps you see the impact that you’re having much more than if you just hear the stories. It’s its own muscle, but it’s worth it.
Decisions
Migrate these records back into Bear, and keep tracking.
Questions
Comments
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This is the automatically generated tag cloud and archives list from the internal blog:
First, +1 to me for doing a good job of tracking in 2018! There’s actually quite a bit of good data in there already (which is why it took a while to migrate). It’s a testament to: 1. prioritizing it (after several years of saying I was going to do it); 2. having a good tool and system for tracking (Bear has been a godsend); and 3. really, truly, prioritizing it (you can see the numbers spike around last June, when I decided to double-down on all this).
Second, as well as I did last year, there’s actually quite a bit of stuff that I didn’t track. So there’s lots of room for improvement.
Third, the tag cloud data is interesting / valuable, because it tells us where the activity has been. I prioritized Success Spectrum last year, so it’s natural that that’s the biggest tag. Danny Spitzberg has been the most proactive, emergent supporter of the toolkits. I think we knew this already, but we should continue to prioritize engaging with him. It’s also telling whose names aren’t here — the gaps give us some hints as to where to focus this year.
Questions:
Will having a shared blog increase our tracking? In my case, having the shared accountability may improve my blogging, but having to do it on WordPress (vs Bear) also takes more time, which may hamper my blogging. In your case, this will be a new habit.
Will we actually follow the blog?
Will we make sense of the data? What will we learn when we do? How might that impact our direction?
Another thing that came up while I was importing data: I actually have a lot of design thoughts in my internal journal. I’d love to share those too. Should I have shared them in this blog? For the sake of keeping the initial experiment focused, I decided not to. It also occurred to me that the right place for sharing is my personal blog (or even the public Faster Than 20 blog), not something private. This would be consistent with one of my priorities this year, which is to Think Out Loud more.
A simple example of where it would be valuable to have a more public place for this: One of the things I recently did was figure out how to mathematically fix the discrepancy we found between the scales in the mindset spectrum worksheets versus the survey. When I had some space to think it through, I was able to resolve it pretty quickly, but how do I share it? A Google Doc seems to be an imperfect place (although perhaps the best solution).
Finally, I was curious as to how self-conscious I would be about sharing private journal entries. It turned out I did essentially zero editing of the text. (I removed some stuff that wasn’t directly relevant to the toolkits, and I added context and fixed links here and there.) That was nice to see. However, I noticed that in my design entries, there was more sensitive content — both about other people’s work and my candid thinking in general. Lots to reflect on there in terms of how I might change what I say if I were blogging those more in public.