Senior Evaluation Associate CCNY, Inc., United States
Abstract Information: In this Ignite, I’ll examine what letting go really means, why it’s so hard, and how your evaluation practice will improve by letting go of things you can’t control. In the beginning of my career, I assumed that the way to be an evaluator is fixed, not fluid, as I subconsciously cross-referenced my actions and behaviors against a perceived holy grail of do’s and don’t’s as it relates to evaluation and data management. But as I ventured through my career, I begin to identify the limitations of this view as consequences of allowing the books I read, the courses I took, and seminars I attended to tell me how I should be and think. Letting go doesn’t mean that you stop caring or stop holding onto general rules of thumb to assist us through the unknown. It means getting out of your own way, releasing the tension and unease, and allowing your mind to open. This is no easy feat. It goes against every bone in our body, as when we care about the outcome, the tendency is to try to control every aspect of the problem, process, and solution. In addition, we micromanage and look over the shoulder of our clients and peers to make sure they are doing it right. But often, all this leads to is more tension – and tension leads to mistakes. It shifts our motivation from being intrinsically driven to a sharp focus on an outcome. And if there’s anything we can learn from decades of research on motivation, it’s that intrinsic motivation is much more powerful over the long haul. As an evaluator, it might seem strange to let go of outcomes or to stop trying so hard, but if we can learn to let go, we may free ourselves up and function with a greater sense of creativity.
Relevance Statement: We usually think of evaluations as helping to determine what works well and what could be improved in a program or initiative. We also think of evaluation as providing a systematic method to study the program, practice of the initiative and to understand how well it achieved its goals. However, organizations, institutions, and policy-makers operate in unpredictable and dynamic surroundings of continually growing complexity – and the needs and values of society change very rapidly. What if our evaluation practices are actually hindering organizations from progress because they enforce the continuation of the same behaviors, and thus, organizations continuing to practice behaviors that are no longer adequate to meet new challenges? In orthodox evaluation, participatory or not, knowledge is controlled by the evaluator who decides what sorts of knowledge will be presented to the organization, in what ways and to what audiences. This is why, when it comes to improving our own evaluation practices, the act of letting go of control may be a foreign concept, as not all evaluators, or other professionals for that matter, are willing or eager to give up such control. An evaluator can be the external change agent that promotes the learning that concerns these perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors. However, evaluators are often led by the false idea that the very act of studying a policy or an organization will alert people to question their action and that the process of examination by itself will cause change in behavior. Such misconceptions lead to unread and unused reports resting on the shelves (1). If evaluators want to help build an organization that learns from evaluation, and thus promote the changing of perceptions, thoughts and behaviors which encourage progress, then the evaluator must learn to “let go” and allow for the organization and its members to control knowledge. Thus, the main criteria for creating a learning organization rests in the locus of control, or in the very act of letting go of the control. This ignite will look at what evaluators can depart from to free ourselves, function with a greater sense of creativity, and focus on the process of meeting new challenges, rather than focusing on outcomes. (1) Levin-Rozalis, M., & Rosenstein, B. (2005). The changing role of the evaluator in the process of organizational learning. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 20(1), 81.
