The Development of XFN — Part 6: Put your feet on the ground

We are now in May 2018 and the Policy Community Partnership Office welcomed some new members to the team. This was good news for me, as I was looking for help with figuring out how to run the prototype of XFN as a ‘proper’ experiment. This was definitely not my area of expertise and I wanted to measure our outcomes, have an impact, and produce data to use for iteration.

It just so happens that I got even more then what I bargained for when I met one of our new team members, Mr. Pierre Lecours. Not only did he have an extensive background in experimentation and design, but he had an idea that would change the future of XFN forever.

Developmental Mindset

If you have met Pierre before then you know how extremely generous he is when sharing his knowledge and expertise. I think it is safe to say I was a bit overwhelmed (in the best possible way) with information in our initial meeting.

We had technically met to discuss the experimentation side of things (which we did and I will get to that), but first he raised another possibility that could shift and add extreme value to the program design. The idea came from a book written by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey.

Specifically, Pierre suggested that we use the developmental mindset as a frame to test accelerated learning. We would do this by bringing in the concepts of edge, home and groove from Robert and Lisa’s work.

You may be wondering, what does that mean? I wondered the same thing!

He proposed that participants:

• Find their edge: developmental aspirations oriented towards moments and experiences that get you to run into useful trouble.
• Build a home: developmental relationships and communities that provoke and hold your vulnerability while you grow.
• Stay in the groove: immersive and seamless practices by which you engage your growing edge, to learn and stretch.

After some thought I was sold that adding this element to the program was the way to go, and we did! Talk about an unexpected positive curve ball.

NOTE: it is SO important to be open to other peoples ideas no matter what area you are working in as their perspective is different than yours and can shine light on new things.

Assumptions

Now for the experimentation side of things. The first thing that Pierre suggested I do was to spell out my assumptions for the program. This was new to me and Pierre generously gave me a frame to work within. Specifically he said to focus on,

• The big ones, a.k.a what was the impact on individuals, the system and Canadians.
• For each aspect of the program, what we believed it would accomplish; how we would know it was successful; and, how we would measure it (including questions we would ask).

The following is an example of the assumptions developed for our self-assessment questionnaire:

In the end, we had 12 single space pages of assumptions (if you would like to see them all feel free to e-mail me at amanda.bloom@canada.ca). Each assumption was challenged by Pierre/our colleague Amy and iterated on (usually more than once) before reaching the final version.

Now without getting too ahead of myself, I am happy to report that since implementation of our prototype in November 2018 we have been gathering data to validate these assumptions and are using that information to inform our iteration of the various elements of XFN.

Measurement Tools

Something else we decided right away was that we wanted to use multiple tools to measure our outcomes against our assumptions.

Specifically,

• Surveys
• One-on-one interviews
• Observational learning

Value-add

To me, it goes without saying the value that is added to testing/prototyping a solution that is grounded in assumptions/hypotheses that you can measure against.

Despite how painful creating assumptions can be it forces you to drill down to the essentials of what you want to accomplish/why/how.

I think I will leave it there for this week.

Would like to wish a happy weekend to all and to those who have been following these posts, thank you! Don’t be shy to provide feedback or ask questions! :)