Bye Bye Boring Data Discussions
Getting people to learn (intentionally) together during a pandemic has been a challenge to say the least. But let me tell you…there is hope! Some of the best feedback I’ve gotten from a data discussion came during a virtual data workshop last month with our program team:
“This was incredibly interactive and engaging! LOVED the structure of this meeting!”
The data discussion was so effective and so uplifting that I need to share what we did and how we did it.
One of my go-to team learning activities is a data gallery. It orients many people to a lot of data quickly. Information is organized ahead of time, yet people can digest it at their own pace — spending more time with slides that are most interesting or relevant to them and skimming past others.
Slide decks have dominated data discussions since we shifted to remote work. The problem with slide decks are that they are linear and they don’t do much to invite curiosity and ideation.
The purpose of our meeting was to develop a shared understanding of the data we had collected during our programming this Fall. This information came from surveys and interviews with students, caregivers, and teachers. The conversation would inform a strategy session later that week to discuss changes to improve the effectiveness of our programs.
Our challenge was that we had a lot of data!
We had data from surveys of over 500 students, 100 caregivers and 30 school partners; interviews with more than 50 caregivers; and program attendance and education records from more than 1,700 students. Data reflected sites serving elementary students only to sites serving K-12 students from a variety of schools. It included information about virtual programs, as well as our in-person Community Learning Hubs.
So what did we do? We created a Digital Data Gallery and used it as the centerpiece of our data-heavy meeting.
Preparing for the Digital Data Gallery
Any excellent meeting requires good prep. We analyzed data, created slides, and developed the facilitation plan. We used Excel and SPSS to analyze the data. SPSS helped us analyze large survey data more quickly and identify differences across several dimensions — sites, grades, virtual vs. in-person, program attendance. Looking at differences across subgroups informed how we organized and presented the data in slides.
After reviewing all the data, we organized the information using our Success Measures framework. This bucketed information into 3 main categories:
- Students Served
- Program Quality
- School Engagement
We shared data against targets in these categories. For example, under Program Quality we displayed the target (goal) and result (actual). If there were differences or outliers (positive or negative) we indicated this in the chart or a call out box on the slide.
We created a comprehensive slide deck with about 30 slides. Then we chose 18 of the most relevant and action-oriented slides to put on a Google Jamboard for the meeting. The full slide deck was included in the agenda so people could review it after the meeting if they wanted additional details.
Don’t forget the agenda!
We revised the meeting agenda a few times. We started by confirming the purpose and meeting goals with the Program Strategy team. Once confirmed, we had a first draft. We developed the meeting materials. Then after reviewing the meeting materials, we revised the agenda further.
Our final agenda opened with community norms and an appreciative (strengths-based) connector. After that was the meat of the meeting: a digital data gallery activity. The 3-part activity started with a quick review to get “clarifying” questions, then moved into pre-organized breakout groups, and wrapped up with a shareout and large group discussion.
The agenda we used is linked here.
Facilitating the Meeting
Core to the success of this meeting was:
- Reviewing community norms
- Utilizing individual, small group, and large group discussion
- Flexible timing
Our Community Norms
Norms seem to follow Murphy’s Law: you don’t need them until the time that you don’t discuss them and wish you had. Community norms promote trust and psychological safety — the underpinnings of sound strategic conversation.
Our norms have evolved over time. At the moment they are:
- Stay engaged
- Speak your truth
- Pay attention to patterns of participation
- Expect and accept non closure
- Go to the source (48-hour rule)
- Be curious and candid
Each person is typically asked to select a norm that they will focus on for the meeting and to share it with the group (using the chat). This promotes thoughtful reflection and accountability.
Varying Conversational Modalities
We spent a mix of time doing independent thinking, small group breakouts, and large group discussion. This pleases both the introverts and extroverts on your team and helped us get the most out of our staff.
We structured the Digital Data Gallery activity with 15 minutes of independent thinking time — in hindsight: this could have been 20–25 min. Which was followed by small group discussions. The independent thinking time allowed people to contribute ideas on data slides that they would not be focused on during the small group breakouts. Each breakout was assigned one of the 3 categories of the Success Measures Framework to dig into in more detail.
Small groups were provided a template to jot down their responses to a few guiding questions:
- What stands out or surprises you?
- What is affirming or validating of what you have experienced or observed?
In addition to those primary questions, we seeded three additional questions that were forward-looking. These would inform the next meeting to discuss changes to the program strategy. The questions were:
What does the data suggest we stick with, start, and stop?
Simple.
Follow Up with Strategic Decisions
“Team I&E this was awesome. And super helpful! Purposeful, digestible data, engaging, and in direct alignment with our goal for Friday-this is setting us up for a solid conversation/brainstorming session.”
Lastly, the data is simply a tool for decision-making and action. Don’t let the digital data gallery be the end, when it should be the start of a strategic planning conversation.
Within 24 hours, summarize the key points from your digital data gallery discussion and send it to everyone who was at the meeting. Don’t forget the next steps.
We had a 3-hour Planning Retreat a few days later facilitated by our very talented Dr. José González, head of Program Strategy and Staff Development. For that meeting, we summarized hundreds of data points and two hours of conversation into a single slide with 5–6 bullet points around key themes and related ideas for action coming out of the Digital Data Gallery meeting. While that might seem over-simplified, the information was right-sized for the purpose. Because of the quick recap slide we jumped quickly into a brainstorm to surface opportunities to enhance our programs to better meet the needs of our students and school partners.
During the Planning Retreat, José facilitated a brainstorm and prioritization activity using the Open, Narrow, Close protocol. Basically, we started with a brainstorm to generate ideas around two topics: strengthening academic support and social and emotional wellness. Once all the ideas were captured, we worked in two teams to organize the ideas.
Then we were given a limited number of “votes” to prioritize among the ideas.
This was a great way to follow-up on the Digital Data Gallery. More importantly, it led to concrete changes to strengthen our organization’s effectiveness.
We held staff training a few weeks later to implement the changes, and we updated the Success Measures Framework and evaluation plans to capture information on the results of our new programming.
Now, the rest is history.
