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What's driving you nuts about your data right now?

We all love to complain sometimes. 

C’mon, you know a venting session feels pretty good. 

But thinking through the things we’re always complaining about can actually give us good information.

So when I work with child- and family-serving organizations, I invite them to complain. Seriously. 

Until you uncover the things that are truly the problems a team is facing, you can’t address them effectively. 

So it’s super important to identify what pain points they’re experiencing.

Last week, I talked about how we have to take stock of all of the data points an organization is collecting or has access to and which of them are actually useful. 

1) Discover What You've Got: Think of this as a needs assessment for your organization. Together, we’ll take stock of what types of information you collect, store, and use (or don’t!). 2) Assess What You Need: Then, we can identify your pain points. We’ll brainstorm what you need to report on, what has been hard to track, and what would help you do your work better. 3) Plan How to Tell Your Story: We’ll work to get you the data you need when you need it. We’ll optimize how you collect, manage, and report on your data so you can share your story broadly and effectively. 4) Activate Long-Term Growth: Finally, we’ll make sure you can keep this up in the future. Through trainings, coaching, and strategic planning, we’ll enhance your capacity to keep engaging with your data for years to come.

The next step in my process is to figure out why – if they have all that data – they’re still struggling to tell their story, meet reporting requirements, or prove how much they help families. 

There’s so many reasons for this – not having capacity on the team (in terms of time or skillset) to manage the data, onerous reporting requirements from funders or clients, or even not understanding why using data regularly in your work is so important.

We dig into all the data a team might need, asking questions such as:

– What does your funder require you to track? (And here’s where we allow the grumping to commence.)

– What information do you need to know to actually offer your services? 

– What do you wish you could demonstrate with your data? (Is it the number of clients you’ve served since you opened? Or which clients have achieved the short-term goals of your program? Or, even better, how many have had positive long-term outcomes?)

We also see if there is data you’re collecting that is really not useful or just sitting on a shelf … are you having your clients complete tons of brief surveys but never looking at them? 

Once we have these answers and have vented enough to feel better, then we’re ready to take it to the next step: creating a system or process for your team to start collecting the right data to tell your story.

More about that next week. 

If you work for a child- or family-serving organization and you’re trying to work through your data-related frustrations, I’d love to talk. Use the form below to send me an email about your PAIN POINTS, and I’ll send you a link to book an intro call.