About 15 years ago, I discovered an innovation from Australia called Photolanguage, a set of black and white image cards depicting various slices of Australian...
Kinesthetic Enhancers
What’s on your desk right now that you’ve fiddled with today? It’s okay, we all do it. And our experience suggests that all those paper clips, squeeze balls and clicking pens could be helping us to pay attention to our work.
Facilitate to Innovate, Part 2: Focused Conversation and ORID
A few weeks ago we discussed the importance of question design in my role as a facilitator hired to swiftly—yet very effectively—guide groups through various...
Facilitate to Innovate, Part 1: Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is one model that can help structure these questions, tapping into each participant’s potential to innovate toward successful outcomes. It grounds participants in the best of what has been, in order to envision the best possible future.
Getting There
Our voice in the national conversations about Logic Models and Virtual Meeting Spaces The American Evaluation Association (AEA), the premier organization for evaluators in...
Feeling Cornered?
So you’ve just been tasked with gaining engagement and input from community stakeholders throughout the state for a strategic planning process. You have six months....
Remember those heady days of taking on Big Tobacco?
The news clip below is from a defining moment early in my career in 1993, when I was at the Contra Costa County Public Health...
My top accomplishment of 2014? I learned I’m good at handling elephants.
No, I didn’t run off and join the circus—but I’ve learned how to use some familiar tools in new ways. Planning and evaluation are often...
“Falling in Love with Our Work”
Fellow consultant Laurin Mayeno published the following post on her website, www.mayenoconsulting.com, on September 27, 2013. It resonated with our work interests so much that...
Participatory Assessment, Evaluation and Planning Methods
Ellis Planning Associates draws from various community engagement and participatory planning approaches. A few of these methods are described here. Consensus Workshop Method/Modified Delphi...