Month: August 2020

By Lindsay Lamb

One tool I have in my evaluator’s tool box might surprise you – it is the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). What is the SWOT analysis? It is a method you can use to walk through a recent project, proposal, report, or any problem that could use some collaborative processing and innovation. It is helpful to conduct this analysis before, during or after the culmination of the project. Honestly, SWOT analyses can be used at any decision point, it just depends on the project, and the project timeline.

The quadrants below can help you think through each component of the analysis:

• What were the Strengths of your recent project/proposal/report? What was something internal to you/your organization that helped in this project/proposal/report? If you achieved your goal, why do you think you achieved your goal? If you did not achieve your goal, take the time to identify some strengths of your process. Find those kernels of positivity, trust me, they are there! Maybe it was setting strong meeting agendas, redesigning your report template, collaborating with project managers, or trusting your gut.

• What were some Weaknesses internal to you/your organization you faced while working on this project/proposal/report? If you did not achieve your goal, what were some things that may have contributed this result? If you did achieve your goal, what were some obstacles you had to overcome in order to achieve them? Could communication between you and program staff and/or other collaborators been better? Perhaps the project didn’t quite align with your strengths and overall vision, or maybe the timeline was unreasonable.

• What were the Opportunities you found in your recent project/proposal/report – even if you did not achieve your goal? What was something external to you/your organization that helped you in this project/proposal/report? Maybe you made a new connection with someone while working on this project. Can you leverage this project/report into new opportunities?

• What were the Threats associated with this project/proposal/report? What was something external to you/your organization that threatened your project/proposal/report? Perhaps funding got cut, or there program staff experienced turnover, or the organization you were working with pivoted their goals midstream.

I have used this analysis to collect my thoughts after applying for a grants (both that we received and those we have not received), responding to RFPs (again for those that we did and did not receive), after a large data collection procedure, and after working on a large comprehensive report for a client involving multiple consultants. In all of these cases, engaging in a SWOT analysis has helped us recognize the strengths of our work, so we can remember to draw on these skills in future endeavors.

If you are truly reflective about your work, SWOT analyses can you help identify aspects of your work where you can grow. Doing so will help you learn from these experiences because chances are they will likely come up again. Maybe you realize that you need to be better about scheduling regular meetings with clients and/or other consultants, take the lead on a project when others fall short – even if you are not the most experienced person on the job, or take a class in a new statistical method.

SWOT analyses also provide you with an opportunity to celebrate your hard work and remember what helped you achieve our goals. When was the last time you celebrated an accomplishment? Take the time to do so now, you deserve it!

However you decide to use a SWOT analysis, I have always found this process to be helpful, regardless of the topic or the project outcome. Setting aside time to reflect on our work is always a good thing.

How can we expand on the SWOT analysis? Something I have not done yet but think would be excellent to do is to conduct a SWOT analysis with a client after the project is complete, or data have been collected, or the report has been finalized. The SWOT analysis process is a great way to foster conversation and reflect together. Who knows, you might even discover a new opportunity through this process!

By Lindsay Lamb

Recently, I was in a meeting with a client presenting data from a quick survey check in. We were reviewing the data visualizations I made based on some earlier feedback. Sometimes when I share survey data, I collapse categories to show an overall level of agreement, or to indicate the overall percentage of favorable responses.

Since we were examining responses from students who were engaging in a virtual internship in the middle of a pandemic, we figured most responses would generate a negatively skewed distribution (see graph below, and if you’re interested in learning more about skewness, read this!).

Indeed, preliminary examinations of the data suggested that students’ responses were skewed such that there were few responses at the low end of the scale on our various survey questions (e.g., disagree, strongly disagree, not at all likely, etc.). We decided to examine movement in students’ responses at the top end of the distribution (e.g., strongly agree, agree, extremely likely). Based on this decision, I crated a visualization only showing the most favorable responses (presenting only the percentage of strongly agree or extremely likely responses, for example).

So, back tot the meeting.

All was going well. We were having a lively discussion of the data I presented in my one-pager when the client made a casual comment about being bummed about some of the responses. They had spent so much time pivoting their instructional material to be engaging in this new virtual environment, and only a third of responses indicated students felt the lessons were extremely interesting.

Ugh. My heart sank.

Fortunately, I knew there was more to the data. I pivoted. I had the data up in an interactive dashboard and shared my screen with our client. I recomputed responses to include extremely interesting and interesting.

“Actually, nearly all of your participants were interested in the lessons and found them relevant!”

Sure, a little over a third found the lessons extremely interesting, but the bigger story is that most students were engaged and found the content relevant to their lives. This was huge! Our client had pivoted their entire learning platform to a virtual environment, and students were engaged.

What did I learn?

• Sometimes it makes sense to have a plan, but you need to adapt. We are program evaluators and there isn’t something that we love more than a good evaluation plan (except maybe a logic model!). Sometimes we can get rigid and only want to look at the data in a specific way, thinking that we will know what the data will tell us. Sometimes, however, we need to let the data tell its own story.

• Don’t be afraid to pivot. Recomputing the data not only showed our agility as researchers and consultants, but also helped our client see their data in a new way. It helped our client see the value of their work and trust us in our services.

• The power of one-pagers. Having a one-pager with data visualizations and short text explanations helped our client easily see the data and understand the story. It also helped us recognize where we needed to go in our analysis. Having the data in a digestible way facilitated our conversation and helped us see where we needed to go. It was empowering for me and empowering for our client.

• Have your data handy. In addition to having a user-friendly one-pager, having the data accessible in a sharable format helped us see where we needed to go in our analyses. It was empowering for me and empowering for our client.