 an evaluation consultant at an evaluation firm called First Person Consulting and today I'm going to be taking you through a bit of a practical exploration of some of the benefits of failure. So I've got a little bit of a introductory skill and a little bit of a practical exercise a bit later on as well. What we're going to be doing today is really centering in on this idea that failure is a good thing. Before I do any of that though and already I have started off on the wrong foot. First I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land upon which we are all joining from today. By all means I would encourage you to leave in the chat where you're joining us from. I'd like to pay my respects to elders past and present and to welcome you all here today as well. As I said we're talking about the benefits of failure today as a part of this learning sprint that we're delivering this week so there was a session on yesterday which I know some of you attended and then there's another session on tomorrow addressing some of the conversations that were started yesterday around power and then there's a final session on Thursday led by the excellent Nick and Cam who are both here today keeping an eye on me I'm sure. So again thank you all for coming hope to see you at some of the other events later during the week. For today though I'm in control and we're going to go through things in my usual chaotic and furious fashion. I've got you for another 56 minutes so I'm just going to dive right into my my introductory spiel but like I said you will have to actually engage in an activity a little bit later on as well so just be prepared because you will be required to do stuff otherwise this whole experiment will fail but at the least I'll have learned something. So yesterday for those of you that were there this will be a bit of a repeat but just to I guess contextualize what I'm talking about a little bit for people that weren't. Yesterday I was addressing this sort of point around the fear of failure that we sometimes have in evaluation and I mean that's for good reasons but in the context of innovation and design processes there's usually this idea that there's a willingness to fail because it helps you sort of propel your thinking or your ideas or your interventions forward. I mean obviously failure by itself is not a good thing it can cause damage you know team morale cause harm to people that you're trying to work with or serve it can waste money so it's not inherently a good thing. The key thing really is that you want to do it well or what I called yesterday failing the plan intelligent failure essentially where you're trying to sort of fail with intent so that you can progress forward. My sort of provocation yesterday was that evaluation is not really good with what I've called internal failure so it's a risk to be mitigated usually because it means disappointing people. I think we are particularly good at supporting others to sort of go through their own intelligent failure process but my sort of argument yesterday was that sometimes looking in the mirror can be a bit intimidating but also that idea of sharing failure or our experiences with failure and what we've learned from it is far less common. There is this book by Kylie Hutchinson which does talk about evaluation failures which is quite interesting just as a side note to that. So yesterday I was kind of arguing that one of the reasons I think we don't share far and wide what we've experienced or what we've learned from our failures is that you know this fear of judgment by our peers for me for instance I think of this in terms of consulting and the idea that maybe potential clients will hear about some of the blunders that I've made in my practice and judge me for my mistakes because of what I've shared hopefully that is not the case but that's one assumption that I kind of made and so I think we really need to support the idea that to share is to be vulnerable we need to kind of support that and that sharing your experiences of mistakes that you've made or failures that have occurred isn't inherently as an indicator that you're a bad evaluator or a bad consultant or a bad person or anything like that. So what we really need is you know a kind of architecture or space that facilitates this sharing the conference is a great example of that sort of process obviously we didn't necessarily get a conference but there have been other opportunities for that. My sort of tagline yesterday was the idea that yes there are risks that we need to manage but really we should be trying to embrace these mistakes or these failures that occur these is this is now new content for those that were there yesterday partially the reason for that is because it allows the sector to reflect on itself I think like good evaluators it also means that we can kind of question why things have happened in the way that they have could things be done differently why are things being done the way they are we strengthen our own practice by reflecting on those values and trying to identify what the learning was we can avoid repeating failures that should have been avoided we can seek support from others you know I made this mistake I feel terrible about it you know let me share my experiences and what I learned from it I think that's particularly important if you're not part of a team or you're part of a small team but then also I think there's this inherent benefit for others new to evaluation where they hear these experiences from you know potentially quite experienced evaluators and it can be I think for me a bit of a reassurance that you know everyone makes mistakes but then also by showing that learning you're helping to circling back to the first point sorry circling back to the yeah the first point and second point we're strengthening our own practice and capabilities as well through that process so the purpose of today really is to turn a bit of a mirror not onto me but onto yourselves and so the process that we're going to go through after I finish this little introductory spiel builds off a process that I ran at the 2018 evaluation conference so from that experience I got some good feedback and so I've kind of changed it up a little bit but then obviously had to adapt it for this virtual process which hopefully kind of works as intended but we'll see so some of the rules of engagement that I'd like you to think about or keep in mind is that you know I'm going to be asking people through this process to kind of share some of their experiences and so you know suspending judgment is really important we're here to share and learn and those that do share their experiences you know congratulations and and support is warranted for for being vulnerable in that space the other part of it that I have noticed myself sometimes is that there can be this desire to kind of provide advice or solve as I called it here really we're not worried about you know oh next time you could think about this we're really just here to learn from others and what they have learned from that experience rather than you know providing advice unless someone you know flags a piece of advice or would like to provide some advice and also importantly you know participate in a way that makes you most comfortable as well so I will ask you to engage but if you don't feel like it or you don't feel um or you don't feel like you have much to add but you just want to listen that's also totally fine so really what our goal here is today is to apply this kind of framework or this process as a way of reflecting on our mistakes our failures are learning but then also to think about you know a way forward for this sort of process and I guess this kind of idea that I've suggested around how we can kind of foster a bit of a stronger culture for learning for evaluators which is distinct from you know the sort of culture of learning that maybe comes externally I'm trying to sort of turn it a bit more inwards as well but before I ask you to do anything I thought it would be important to you know lead from the front as it were so here's a couple of examples of mistakes that I've made one of my first ever projects that I worked on in evaluation involved one day of data entry of some feedback forms and stuff um took me granted with six days to do it because I didn't want to admit that I didn't know what the different export formats for the data from survey monkey meant and so I downloaded basically an expanded version which meant that the column headers ran for about you know 100 columns um which meant that as I was going through and entering data in various spots it took a long time to scroll across and get through all of them and so it ended up taking me six days because essentially I just didn't want to admit that I had no idea what I was doing um when I came to just getting some data out of survey monkey very simple issue or error I could have just asked someone but the time I didn't want to do it because I was in a new job I didn't want to sort of um sort of uh I guess admit that something so foundational was not something I'd done before um uh this is probably one of my favorite ones and I know others have maybe done this this sort of thing before where you've sent the wrong document to someone um in this particular example I did not know that I'd sent the wrong document and it was actually not just a draft version of the report it was actually just blatantly incomplete with notes to myself throughout and things like that um the client then spent about a couple of days reviewing it uh and then called me and they were like not really happy with the quality of this uh draft report you know there's like some sections that need some more work um so I was you know very confused because I thought it was quite good uh I was quite happy with it I went and opened the the document that was attached to the email uh and quite clearly the draft was wrong because uh there were sections that just said I need to think about this more I'll come back later um so you know it was very much an incomplete version um they sort of didn't question it they just assumed that they had been sent the correct version I didn't actually check what I had attached uh they wasted their time they were also not happy and are particularly impressed uh and then I just looked a bit um a bit dumb to be honest because I'd sent the wrong thing again very rectifiable and everything and we had to laugh about it later on but at the time I was mortified by what I had done as well um in that particular instance um so now I actually uh I don't know if others do this maybe it's a bit over the top but I actually have an email delay or email send delay and so I hit send and then I actually recall the email immediately and then double check what I've attached because I'm so paranoid that I'm going to do it again uh and the person will not be as understanding as that person was who wasted their two days of time reviewing this terrible terrible document um then there's the the classic ones uh the many times that I have not taken the client on the journey of evaluation still working out how I'm going to uh do that um uh the one time I took the wrong USB stick to a workshop a day-long workshop and so I had to just present and facilitate from memory um the workshop went terribly everyone was unhappy it did not do what it was meant to do um I did get the right USB stick after the lunch break but by the by the end of the morning people were like this is just a small little um so there's just a few examples uh and if you want more detail I can give it to you um but just to give you a sense of I guess you know the different levels that these failures can occur at um so start to think about your own experience um or examples uh from your own practice um while we go through this next little bit as some more just lighthearted examples um these were from Twitter um which you can just read to yourself uh it was like a Twitter thread around people basically making professional mistakes or mistakes in their professional practice um you know again lots of learning that they probably got from that experience um but uh I guess highlighting that everyone does make a mistake or does make those failures at times um this particular uh summary that I came across um a few years ago now I quite liked because it kind of breaks down the idea of making mistakes or or um failing at something in a few different ways um so the the y-axis there which is kind of focused on like your opportunity for learning um and the x-axis there is sort of how intentional was that mistake or was that failure so the sort of bottom left quadrant there what they've called sloppy mistakes um is essentially you know the mistakes that are just caused by you not really paying attention or or whatever else kind of the mistakes you'd want to be avoiding like attaching the wrong the wrong document to an email and sending it off um the the other three versions of mistakes there kind of reflect um different levels of learning that you get out of making a mistake um but also how intentional that mistake is so the bottom right uh high stakes mistakes which is kind of fun to say three times fast um really is about the idea that you know you you make a mistake by sort of putting yourself in a situation where there's high stakes like for instance uh the scores are tied at the end of a of a football match you know all you need is one point and then you just kick it and it goes off to the side and you know to draw or you lose or whatever it is but you know the situations um where you know everything's on the line you've done all of the work that you can mistake happens you learn from it but there's not much else that you can do um the stretch mistakes one is kind of you know putting yourself out there uh as a way of um learning and so that's you know you're sort of pushing yourself beyond your uh capability or boundary that you know that you can deliver on um so there's a lot of learning opportunities there and you're kind of doing it intentionally um the last one the aha moment mistakes is basically where you're not setting out to make a mistake uh necessarily but you learn heaps from it because of some sort of opportunity or something that's that's um resulted from it this is another uh sort of neat little summary um the the kind of idea here is essentially um this is from like a um innovationy type person but they were talking about you know the difference between um making mistakes having practices but then like the area that you really want to focus is on this idea of experimenting um and that's you know going back to the the previous slide um the sort of intentionality piece um where you're kind of directly setting out to learn something and that you accept that you may or may not fail but the key thing for them is that you know you're learning from that experience so in summary uh hopefully that's giving you something to think about but really what we're talking about there is that not all failures are created equal um they're also not always desirable um the learning process from those values is not automatic so we need to reflect um and try to sort of derive or identify um the learning um and yes and the last one um and that failure can be beneficial um it can be a good thing and so we can communicate uh that learning that experience to others and ultimately do better next time okay so now we're going to get a bit more practical uh uh not physical practical um what we're going to do through this process here is talk about our own experiences with um with failure but we're going to sort of unpack it through three different lenses um the first one being the failure itself um the second one being the context within which that failure occurred uh and then thirdly you know what have we learned from that experience um so the sort of failure component really is about the time where you made a mistake uh an error you failed in some form um I tried to think about it or encourage you to think about in terms of an internal occurrence rather than external one so it was in like something that you did or or um uh sort of contributed to in some form rather than you know someone else didn't do something and therefore I failed because of that um the context so the context or environment within which that experience occurred uh and then finally the learning components are given all of the above um you know thinking about what well what didn't um what would you do or what might you do or what could you do uh if the situation and context were to repeat um are there specific lessons generalizable lessons um that that kind of emerged for you uh so for me for instance one of the key lessons was always double check what's attached to the email and that's something I've never stopped doing since that experience um if I think there should be an easy way to do something when it comes to things like survey platforms there probably is doesn't actually hurt to either ask people but also um you can just google your question and typically the answer is going to be there um but I guess like the key sort of generalizable lesson for them from that experience for me was the idea that if it seems like there should be an easy way to do it there probably is um so that's again just to give you a bit of a sense of what I'm talking about here um so we're going to go through this process on a mirror board um but if you don't want to you can kind of replicate the same sorts of steps um just on a on a piece of paper or if you don't want to sort of do it publicly and you'd rather keep it to yourself um by all means just do it on a bit of paper in front of you um or on your desk or whatever it might be or if you just want to sort of think but don't actually want to write down also fine as well um so what I'm going to do quickly uh stop sharing for a moment um so in the chat uh momentarily uh I'm going to paste a uh mirror board link which uh you should be able to see now uh once I stop accidentally sending it to Michelle directly um so if you click on that link um it will bring you into the mirror board so if you haven't used a mirror board before um it's effectively just like a big virtual white board um so I'm just going to bring everyone to me so I have magical powers that uh everyone else doesn't have so hopefully you can see the sort of waiting room uh little space that I've that I've created I'm just going to give give it another minute or two um so that people can join okay um so the main thing is just in terms of orienting yourself uh and what you'll need to do for this process really all you're going to need to do is to zoom in and zoom out which you can do with your um with your mouse wheel you might need to hold down control to do that you can also use the controls in the bottom right corner um besides that all you're going to need to do is basically move some sticky notes around and write on them that's effectively all there is to it okay so what we're going to do first just to uh coming to area number two just to get used to using a mirror board um you'll see up the top there's a whole bunch of sticky notes there um what I'd like you to do first is a bit of an exercise just to get used to the idea of moving sticky notes around uh is to grab a sticky note and place it into either the suite or savory category uh depending on what your preference is between the two and you have to pick one you can't fence it um but then to also add in there what is one of your favorite foods that fit within that category so for me for instance um mine is probably uh yeah definitely savory um and I just really love chips like I don't know what it is but chips are just great I just love them so much someone else does too actually I can see that um yep great someone's gone even once to feather and said hot chips rather than chips I should have clarified yes hot chips crisps depending on where you're from uh also good but I would probably put hot chips above that okay good good okay so now we're going to move down okay to the next spot so so is that my magic controls okay so hopefully now you can all see what is quite a large uh intimidating space I'm just going to share my screen for the benefits of those who aren't here um but maybe join later um so now you can see what is probably quite an intimidating uh view um which is essentially three uh frames um each labeled value context and learning um so these are the sorts of uh procedural steps that we're going to go through um I've also placed off to the left hand side you can see there the uh the screenshot of the sort of four different types of mistakes or values that um I briefly touched on before um so what we're going to do here is I'm going to give everyone a couple of minutes hopefully you've been thinking about your individual experiences today um what we're going to do is we're going to start with this failure frame um and so what I'd like you to do is to grab a sticky note you can see them there at the top uh you're now experts at this process of grabbing sticky notes and writing in them um and just reflect for a couple of minutes um on what one of your experiences was in terms of making a mistake or or failure um but try and categorize it based on these four different options so above the top uh up the top here so you can see for instance uh I've got a careless rather than sloppy um but a careless mistake being those that are you know attaching the wrong document to an email um the uh-huh mistakes which are those that are you know very positive experience but they're also quite hard to plan for so that intentionality piece um which is you know basically where we achieve something or or um you know get to a place that wasn't what we intended um and you know we didn't know that we could get there but you know it's kind of a eureka moment that you managed to pull off that thing that you did so it's kind of a weird version of making a mistake or failing because in that context it might end up being a better outcome but it's not an intended one and so that's why it's categorized as a mistake or a failure in this context um the high stakes ones where you know everything's uh on the line you've done all that you can um really all you can do at the end of the day is either celebrate or mourn the outcome um and then the stretch mistakes are those ones where you know something might be really challenging um you can't get help from anyone so you're putting yourself out there you're really pushing yourself um it's really about being challenged in a way that's quite new to you as well so uh with that in mind and I can see nicking camp who are clearly mirror board users as well because their names are attached um if you can grab a sticky note and place it in that area and jot down your uh sort of experience and what we're really focusing on here and you can see the tip or some of the tips across uh on the left hand side there um you know we've been quite introspective here um we're not sort of uh ascribing responsibility to others so you know I failed because my you know boss didn't do x or whatever it might be um uh yeah like we're really just trying to talk about ourselves here in this context so not sort of putting it onto someone else um and then the thing that we'll really be focusing on after we finish on this stage is the the role of context in why that situation occurred um sorry Michelle I did again someone just wanted the link um if um if mirror doesn't load for you and you can just try to re refreshing it or or clicking on the link again but like I said if it's not loading for you by all means you can kind of follow the same sort of process just by jotting down on a bit of paper so really it's just about what's that experience with um with a failure or a mistake um don't worry about the other two steps at this particular stage um so we can see here quite a few careless mistakes which is interesting um things like not backing up documents correctly sending emails to the wrong people um uh typo and an email pubic health intern rather than public health intern wrong version of document I can totally uh totally empathize there um no explicit addressing an aspect of the project brief missing a work flight sounds awful sending emails to the wrong person with the same name um send calling to the wrong venue not thoroughly checking uh work before submitting yep can totally uh understand those experiences um some of the are hard ones um which is quite interesting spending too much uh time planning when the situation changes a lot and rapidly um learned about good reporting after submitting the report um holding a focus group at the wrong time which accidentally created opportunities for multiple people to engage in smaller group exercises exercises and produce many more insights yep so you know a mistake didn't do it at the right time but something good still resulted from it um so that's that's a great example um overcooking a piece of work that wasn't needed yep definitely have done that um some of the high stakes ones um yep that's quite an issue you want uh from the minister interviewing a high level government minister and asking the wrong questions and not recording the answers um some of the stretch ones a consolation exercise with a group of people who didn't want to move sitting at the consulting firm did very much so first encounter with google analytics um submitting a great proposal for a high impact project and coming in second yeah that's really good great really really good examples there um great that's perfect um does anyone i know again i'm asking a lot potentially but does anyone want to unmute themselves and explicitly comment on one of their experiences there um to provide a little more color i guess rather than me just reading it out um i'm not going to force people to do it though so you don't have to um so i'm not going to do that thing where the people that have their cameras on i kind of make eye contact with you unknowingly and then say hey nick do you want to unmute yourself and talk about your example uh i'm not going to do that um yeah but if anyone does want to unmute themselves uh and just briefly comment on what their example was um by all means well you said me matt so i'll i'll talk so we don't have to wait forever i was thinking about the one the constellation exercise that was me where people didn't want to move and i i came in really enthusiastically with a group of people trying to get them to kind of physicalize their relationships to one another um but i didn't really breathe the room properly and i think that they were um uh well they didn't like each other i think was a simple way of describing it and they so they didn't want to move they didn't want to be closer or further away and they just wanted to kind of sit there um so it went very flat very quickly um the word great thanks nick um elinda i can see you've unmuted yourself yeah i'll just i'll just jumping quickly i put mine in both high stakes and careless um and i guess it's one of those technology things in it but it's maybe it's all just because it's from very early in microsoft word um there was an error where if you didn't hit save before you went file send you're going to send the previous version of your document so um in this example you know a branch in my government department had had given me a list of people that had been consulted um and then they kind of rang back and said oh but drop that this group off they weren't consulted but i didn't hit save and the you know the answer went to the minister's office and the minister actually mislead parliament um by saying these people had been consulted and it's one of those we well i don't know if it's careless because it's that not knowing the the um traps i guess the bb traps i mean and everybody knows word now and you can possibly do that now but it kind of makes me reflect on the the newer tech because i think we've been through another massive step um and there's a lot of sort of google analytics type mistakes that people have put so it's it's just that um whatever generation of tech you're with is is really trying to accelerate your learning curve and and not template i guess um you know i hope there are versions of this in google analytics but you really have to save close go into email attach and then you knew you had the right version maybe so yeah i mean in the way it's the decades old one but another way it's i think the learning is probably yeah is what keeps happening to us and what we should give ourselves fail saves on yeah yeah great and i mean it's quite interesting like you made the point about like technology there and i think about my own experiences i mentioned the one before about basically exporting the wrong uh structure of the survey data out of survey monkey to then add these hard copy responses onto um but you think like you know that was a fairly straightforward experience but now like like i'm sitting here using mirror boards and and things like that like there's just newer and newer and more complex platforms and things like that that can be used and ultimately that you could potentially screw up to be blatantly honest um for instance the first time i actually used mirror with a client they i didn't lock it and then they accidentally selected everything and deleted it which has probably happened to some other people as well but yeah like those sorts of you know experiences um okay great thank you um so what we're going to do now uh so thinking about that experience so keeping that forefront of your mind um the next thing i want you to do is to move down to the the context forwards that's the next one down um so i can make everyone do that um so same premise as what we just did there's sticky notes just up above um but what i'd like you to think about now with that experience um was what was the the proper questions are off to life to you what was that context or situation that sort of um that was surrounding that experience um you know thinking about things like what did you have control or not over that influenced what happened um so for instance uh as an example again the version of the document that i sent that was wrong to um uh my client at the time one of the reasons why i sent the wrong version uh was because i was multitasking because i was under pressure to finish a proposal that was also due that day um and so i was switching between tasks you know quite quickly and you know i just want to send this thing off because you know once it was off my desk uh it was onto theirs and then you know that would give me a couple of days for a free time to then focus on this other task and so i was switching between things and not really keeping an eye on what i was doing um so you know contextually i was basically multitasking because i was time poor um and you know the the extent to which i had control over that situation and that pressure you know maybe not so much but it definitely had an influence over what actually happened and then you know those flow on consequences from that as well um the the context or the situation that i was in with um my survey monkey debacle uh that was very much a result of essentially not feeling um like i could ask what i considered to be stupid questions so that was you know sort of day one in a new role basically and i didn't want to come across like i was inept or not capable at using um the platform particularly because i considered myself or i would consider myself pretty tech savvy um and that was something that i kind of pitched to them during the interview process like oh i can use technology i'm pretty across it and so i didn't want to sort of you know basically undercut myself or feel like i was undercutting myself um by saying like oh is there a better way to do this um so you know again just a couple of examples just to um get you thinking there about you know sometimes these mistakes or these values occur um not because of anything you have control over necessarily but i think it's important to sort of reflect on those contextual factors that can influence why a situation occurs so that you can then start to think about um when we get to the next stage you know what can we take away from this experience that's um you know going to help us next time so again we'll just give you a couple of minutes just to think about that sort of experience if you want to keep adding more examples to the uh to the examples of uh mistakes or failures up top by all means um but otherwise uh if you can sort of focus on the context question for this next one that would be that would be good um and similar to before if someone wants to kind of brief us on what the context was for this situation you can you can do that as well um so i can see here that people have already started adding some things so time poor being interrupted halfway through a task time pressure i get the feeling that time time pressure is going to be quite a common contextual factor for a lot of these i don't want to say careless it sounds too negative but the you know those sorts of mistakes uh yep trying to squeeze in two trips in quick succession probably jet lags um a new project a new client and new to the work unfamiliar with what was really needed yeah that's a really great example um uh yeah and people leaving new people coming on assumptions about who knows what uh another great example um we've got some over here time pressures time pressure um no experts in the organization tasks for assistance uh no budget to engage an external developer yeah so all great examples of of those different sorts of contextual factors does anyone want to uh same premises with elinda and nick does anyone i sort of unmute themselves and just briefly touch on i guess what their what their example was if they're willing to share it but otherwise um uh otherwise just to touch on you know what what your experience was being in that context during that environment that's okay i'm not gonna force anyone i'm ash yes hello hey it's caro here i'm sorry i'm i'm in he's here and so i'm right in the middle of cooking my family's dinner so i'm multitasking massively but i um and i so i'm not able to go into the mario board but one of the things that um i've been reflecting on particularly in the context area is um thinking about a couple of some of my more challenging projects and um where distance really does become a barrier um one of the projects that involve quite a bit of co-design and um and so the fact that there was physical distance between a lot of the team members i think actually really took away from the ability for the project overall and my evaluation component from doing a really good job because we actually i think we could have benefited a lot from proximity more face time um and so i have other projects where we have a really good rapport everything's going well and so distance is just a really efficient way for us to do what we need to do but some of the other projects if i think about them um whenever you run into challenges often the best way to resolve those is face to face and sometimes that's actually impossible to do um so that's just actually a reflection on the reflection great thanks caro Ariel here i have one too so my problem was that quite a few months into strategy role i realized how strongly my view of the organization was really filtered through one perspective and so i was you know planning change while not fully understanding the status quo and planning impact evaluation all of that and i mean this was exacerbated by the job starting and then going into long lockdown but i think for me the biggest thing was that i kept prioritizing the doing over the planning and the networking and that you know although i'd say why should somebody else's emergency emergency become my emergency i wasn't really standing my ground on that because it was all so important that things needed to be done yeah like when everything's equally important it's a bit hard or at least framed as equally important um absolutely thanks for that Ariel um if there's anyone else by all means just come meet yourself and jump in um but otherwise i'll get you to go on to the next bit uh in a second okay um so what we'll do now um is moving to the last uh last little component um so this is our sort of learning piece and so you've kind of started to hear from um some people about uh you know some of the sort of experiences or takeaways that are kind of emerging so this final stage the learning sort of component is really about trying to say well okay given given all of the above so given the um the actual experience itself given that context that i was operating in at the time you know what's my takeaway uh message my takeaway sound bite for myself but then uh you know thinking of it a bit differently um what would i take away from this that i could then share with someone else um who you know maybe faced with the same situation and the same context or very similar um you know what's my sort of gift to them that i can provide from my own experience of um of making those mistakes and making those values um you know i i would urge you to think of it as like a gift to someone so you're trying to sort of articulate this um this lesson or this insight um you know uh going going back to my examples from before so that you know the insight for me or the lesson from that survey monkey experience was that there's probably always a better way to do something when it comes to technology or platforms um if it seems like it's taking a long time there's probably a fast way um that's you know one part of it and then the other part is that you know just ask like even if you think it's a dumb question just ask someone else in the team or in the organization because you know they might have had the same issue at one point and they might know or they might know where you could go um that the point with the um the attaching of the uh wrong report to um to the email my sort of takeaway message to people sometimes is um you know when you're working on those sorts of uh um type time frames for you know proposals and current projects uh as as of one example um you know carve out your time and just focus on whatever it is that you're doing don't sort of switch between tasks um you know mid activity um just give yourself that space to you know do one thing in time and do it as well as you can um but also if it seems like you're under a lot of time pressure you know raise it early rather than last minute um as well and so trying to sort of encourage people um you know they feel like they're under a lot of time pressure you know once you start to feel that way it's probably worth flagging it with with um somewhere around you so you know they might have some time free that they can contribute to helping helping you write your proposal or whatever it might be um okay great so while people are drawing down i'll just go through some of the ones that are here um building networking time and starting a new role ariel i'm going to guess that was your one um uh give something to go to start with but then come back and do training when there's time to continue to improve um i think that's a really really good point around you know the need to just jump in and start doing something but also recognizing that you know there is a benefit to actually sort of taking that time when you do have space to um to go and you know up skill or do that training to learn how to use platforms products things like that um in a better way um whoever's doing the times two thing really efficient and i like your approach to uh to adding on to things like that um checking and rechecking who the audience is and who are the who is the most influential stakeholder in the organization uh i think that's a great one um and something from my own experience that i would add on to that is that it's even more important in the context of staff turnover um so i have had experiences before where i've had a new uh client contact person come on board and i've kind of just assumed that their expectations or you know maybe not even assumed i just haven't sort of thought about it um but you know kind of gone ahead with what was agreed with the previous person and whilst in the broad scope of what we were delivering yes we did what we were asked to do um there were some things that if i just you know had that conversation up front with them would have been much more efficient in finalizing the project because they just had a way of doing things and so they wanted to kind of see that reflected in the work that we were um producing for them uh so very minor thing but i think you know checking and rechecking that sort of thing is really important um don't stick to the regional plan if that's what's needed so i mean that's kind of a line to what i was saying there fine trusted sources yep absolutely um that's okay throw it out of that line i can just delete that um keep plans manageable um but yes absolutely even seems like the worst mistake of other things can be managed um don't be a perfectionist like to a stand that's good enough um doesn't have to clarify five times yep absolutely um delay email time so yep that's something that i instigated um for my own practice as well um yeah great what's going on there um sorry again same promises before uh is if anyone wants to kind of unmute and share their particular lesson uh give a gift to the to all the people in the room uh by all means unmute yourself and uh share your thought your reflection uh i will not force anyone though so don't worry oh matt it's cam um i was just going to say that the the fine trusted sources was was mine um and there's something about i think that we all operate we can find ourselves operating a word where we might feel a bit isolated but the value of being able to connect with um those folks in our circles that will give us honest and open feedback um as friends and confidants i think it's hugely valuable people you can run these ideas by so that you don't then find yourself delivering on something which isn't actually the thing that a client in our case was interested in on something that you're working in is interested in so that second or third or fourth pair of eyes um to look over the work you're doing is just so valuable i mean that's a that's a great sort of insight for people for instance who might be considering moving into for instance a consulting role and maybe are going to be on their own uh at least initially as well um so having those those people that you can rely upon um out of curiosity and if you're willing to share what was the uh what was the the i don't want to call it the failure but what was the what was the situation that occurred oh it was um it was a project very early on and um uh it was a relatively small piece of work that i managed to completely overcook um and came up with this you know extraordinary you know whizbang training program capacity building stuff um nick was laughing with me that i actually went and bought a printer so that i could print out some of these things and um it wasn't what the client needed like at all like it was just like they weren't interested in any of that stuff so i completely went to town something that didn't need to and had i had somebody to um to talk me off the ledge to begin with they would have said nah this isn't this isn't what anybody wants all right good stuff great thanks cam um uh last chance for anyone else before i just move on to the last little bit can be anyone i meet yourself interrupt me that's fine uh hi matt this is france hi friends um i'm struggling to pick a specific mistake because um i'm lucky to be running my own little consultancy at the moment i kind of fell into it and so i'm doing a lot of learning by doing things like um developing a theory of change with the client um what else um final report writing and uh oh doing participatory work and how participatory is that work and then struggling to maintain my own standards of perfectionism and trying to work to a level that's good enough and knowing um what's good enough for what situations and when it does have to be perfect like the final evaluation reporting um so for me the learning opportunities are just coming thick and fast it's pretty much a constant process for me um but what i'm finding really beneficial is having a mentor who i can go to when i'm stuck with something um what would be really great is uh i think something that cam was talking about was actually having a variety of people that i could go to to ask about different things so that i'm not tapping that one person on the shoulder all the time um and that actually leads to a question i have which is how can we do that how can we set up that network of people around us to ask questions when we have one and to look at things um which can be quite time consuming and you have actually raised the next question that i was going to put to everyone so this might actually be super beneficial for you um but actually just to pick up on your point there i really like the idea of um the sort of or one of the takeaways being the idea of um learning when something is good enough as opposed to needing to be perfect um because i think for me hearing that the first thing i think of is the time that's required um and you know you're going to get 80% of the way there with something like 20% of your effort but is that sort of final 20% where you then spend all of your time and so that sort of um sort of need to make it perfect is what's going to actually be the thing that takes up a lot a lot of your time um what we're going to do now um so thank you everyone who are who shared in that process um so now the last question i've kind of got um for everyone um is exactly uh to france's point around um around where to next so we've kind of gone through this process where effectively i've just tried to get you to reflect about your own stuff um rather than me sharing too much of mine um but i'm interested just in this last couple of minutes before we kind of wrap up uh you know thinking about this experience that we've gone through you've heard from some people about what their experiences with um failure were and and the sort of learning that have taken away from it um you've probably been browsing the very sticky notes and things like that um so i'm curious just to capture i guess some of your thoughts around um you know how might we find a way or have a way of sharing these sorts of experiences um but doing it in a way that's you know not just me running these sorts of things but are there sort of structures or processes or supports that would enable a bit more of an organic and ongoing sharing of those experiences um you know you don't have to have an answer i guess this is also a broader question um for for the sector about you know who should actually be sort of instigating or leading this sort of process and and how would it all function all those sorts of logistical questions um but i guess in terms of what you would find useful in terms of understanding what people's experiences are and what they're learning was you know what would you like to see uh exist or um be in place um so you can um just spend the next minute or two while i um uh stop my screen share and i bring up the other document um and then i will do a bit of a closeout um or you can just unmute yourself and just think out loud that's totally fine as well um for some stuff okay well yes cam that is shameless self-promotion would you like to outline what your community practice is that you're launching since apparently i'm now just providing this field space for you um it is i i didn't mean to say that but to to the to the answer france your question is up we found ourselves in this exact same position and say is there a is there uh an environment that we can um help facilitate and support a space where people can come together and share their insights it's around a particular area of work so that may not be the exact area that you're interested in but i do think things like communities of practice are hugely valuable um as we move through um our process and our practice and be able to connect with others um in the spaces that we're working with um so i'd encourage anybody to to to look for those kinds of communities of practice that make sense in the context of their work um someone uh has commented there that they basically wrote up lessons learned slash reflections document shared with colleagues um so it sounds like you know even just the active documenting it is beneficial um but then from the sounds of it you know extending beyond that uh where like is there a place where those sorts of things could be housed or retained for the benefit of others who are um not necessarily uh colleagues um i mean these are all sorts of again this is just a bit of a space to think out loud um more than anything else but i guess getting you to start to think about you know not just how you learn from those um experiences that you have but then what what are the ways in which you could share those with others whether it's through a community of practice uh or something else entirely documenting yet sharing with others you know putting it out there in some form um because i think that for me is probably the key thing is finding that way or that means or that process to share learning with others um if anyone has any reflections at this particular point uh linda i can see if i muted yourself so maybe you want to say something yeah um i'm just thinking about i don't know because i don't actually have an evaluation qualification or practice but one of the things about covid has been that um people who live in outside capital cities have found that we can actually participate in a lot more at least um you know free professional development um and brokeouts and conversations due to that and i don't know but i assume there's been some value added from mixing that up um and also people of color professionals who are people of color um yeah i guess ways of of reaching outside the box to you know when you've got a community of practice it doesn't have to be all practitioners of the same practice um you know whether that's evaluation or policy development or service design or whatever um so i yeah just encouraging to think about ways of of reaching out i actually find facebook quite good for um for just informally being aware of conversations that are happening in my community which actually turn out to be about well we think this government policy is good or bad it's not said in those kind of words but it's oh my god i can't get my kid into a dentist kind of stuff so yeah just putting in a plug for that diversity yeah great thank you um so i'm a stickler for making sure i finish on time um so just as my sort of final uh i guess um pitch and yes this is just a reuse to fly from yesterday so some of you have already seen it um but what i what i really emphasize is you know a shift away from this idea that uh these experiences that we have where we make mistakes or where we fail um something to sort of hide away or or tuck away um uh really we want to be sort of moving to a um a culture of embracing our failures and learning from them and i think that extends then to the idea of um sort of having forums like this where we can kind of share and disseminate some of those experiences a bit um because uh hopefully for some of you you've gotten something out of this but i think even for me just hearing some of those examples that people shared and seeing some of those things that were written um was really beneficial for me um even in something that has only just come to me now even in the context of just reassurance that i'm not the only one that you know makes mistakes because sometimes i'm really time poor or you know uh sometimes feel like oh it'd be great if someone else could look at this but i don't have anyone like some of those experiences that are maybe a bit more universal or a bit more commonplace that we might think um is really beneficial as well um so we've got two minutes left so if there's you know questions or thoughts that people want to share by all means um uh if you are interested in joining we call it joining but it's quite easy uh the design and evaluation seek there's a linking group which you can search for um or you can send an email to the email address there um and uh we've got a sort of mailing list that we can add you to if you're interested in helping to organize activities you can also send an email and just um do it that way um and i'd also just like to take this moment to thank um bill and michelle and the as for hosting the learning sprint this week thank you again um so with the 90 odd seconds remaining if anyone has any thoughts or questions or uh general ideas um that they want to share by all means unmute yourself talk freely um but otherwise we're sort of formally wrapped up um with that with this session