The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume ll, Number 3, 1996
Issue Topic: Results-Based Accountability
Promising Practices
Self-Governing Communities and Families: Real-Time Change and Performance
Casey Morrigan from Foundation Consortium for School-Linked Services describes her organization's 2-day meeting which included roundtable dialogue between evaluators and funders and the issues raised in local program evaluations of some of California's comprehensive, integrated supports and services initiatives.
The Real-Time Change and Performance Model provides a philosophy, process, and a set of tools for improving results for communities and families. It is being used nationally with child welfare reform and family support initiatives.
As a philosophy and process, the model provides a context for a dialogue on self-governance and self-evaluation. As a series of methods and tools, it helps map the relationships between present and future results for families and the belief systems which underlie those relationships. It fosters a community's sense of responsibility for its own outcomes. It engenders an optimism that the well-being of a community's families can be improved.
Self-Governance and Self-Evaluation
Self-governance refers to the ability of individuals, families, organizations, and communities to exercise power and authority over themselves. Self-governance is the ability to govern and steer one's fate by assuming responsibility for individual and collective decisions and actions.
Self-evaluation is a process of introspection and accountability for one's own actions and fate. It is a process of self-criticism, experimentation, and continuous learning which leads to change and improved quality of life for families and children. Self-governing and self-evaluating communities and families replace hierarchical power relationships with relationships marked by responsibility, full access to information, and freedom of choice.
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Further ReadingEmery, M., & Purser, R. E. (1996). The search conference: A powerful method for planning organizational change and community action. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Jacobs, R. W. (1994). Real-time strategic change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Robinson, D. G., & Robinson, J. C. (1995). Performance consulting: Moving beyond training. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Stacey, R. D. (1996). Complexity and creativity in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. |
Real-Time Change and Performance
Julie was just six months old when she was removed from her family due to severe physical abuse. She has been in foster care a little more than a year. More than a third of her life has been put on hold. The damage in terms of attachment, trust, and self-esteem are beyond calculation. Real-time change for Julie calls for “change when it is needed as seen through her eyes.” Julie needs a permanent home now. The definition of “real-time” accords with the time scale inherent in the problem—the child's, the family's, or the community's.
Community Performance Dialogues and Relationship Maps
The Real-Time Change and Performance Model collapses the traditionally separate elements of strategic change—planning, implementation, and evaluation—into one continuous self-governing and self-evaluating learning cycle. It does so through a process of inclusive community performance dialogues where the relationship between performance and results are uncovered and mapped. Real-time change is initiated through a two and one-half day community and organizational dialogue facilitated by outside consultants.
Setting the Stage for Community Performance Dialogues
Prior to the performance dialogue, communities and organizations engage in a performance assessment, decide who should attend the event, and begin the process of identifying ongoing performance teams and partnerships to.
Performance Assessments. One of the first steps is conducting a preliminary performance assessment. Facilitators meet with key representatives of the host organization and community, and make an initial assessment of current outcomes and desired future results. Identifying results sought for families and children begins the process of establishing a common data base for the performance dialogue.
An Inclusive Roster of Participants. Facilitators discuss with the host organization and community what is meant by inclusive participation. One of the pitfalls of the process can appear at this point. It is typical of planners to neglect the people who must implement the action plans and the people who are supposed to benefit from those plans—ordinary citizens. Facilitators help ensure maximum participation—ranging from as few as fifteen to a hundred or more.
Performance Teams. In the pre-assessment process, facilitators advocate for developing an organizational and community performance team, if one does not already exist. The primary role of the team is to build on and refine the common data base, track results, and establish a mechanism for ensuring public accountability for results. A team is typically headed by a performance coordinator from the host agency and stakeholders from the community, including consumers and interested citizens.
Performance Partnerships. The concept of performance partnerships is introduced in the initial assessment. Performance partnerships reflect the collaborative efforts that will emerge from the real-time change and performance dialogue. They will reflect the commitments among various stakeholders to bring about specific changes in their own practices and behaviors as well as those of others.
Conducting the Community Dialogues: An Eight-Step Process
The actual community performance dialogues are conducted over a two to a two-half day period. The dialogues represent an eight-step process:
Step 1: Building Community Through Dialogue. Inclusive community dialogues involve all members of the relevant community, they seek to uncover the values, assumptions, and behaviors that stand between citizens and their aspirations.
Step 2: Change Through Self-Evaluation. When it arises from within the community, individual, family, and organization, self-evaluation and self-reflection can be empowering and liberating. This step provides a framework for identifying and mapping the gaps between present and future results for families and children.
Step 3: Establishing a Common Reality. Step three involves creating a common reality, providing participants with a whole-picture view of the present and the future. This view represents a common experiential data base constructed by compiling the perspectives of all those engaged in the dialogue.
Step 4: Moving Forward by Looking Back. In order to go forward, we must uncover and identify the values, assumptions, and behaviors that both help us secure present results and stand in the way of future outcomes. In this step, the relationship between present results and performance strategies is mapped.
Step 5: Design a Bridge to the Future. Change involves a shift of individual and collective paradigms. The process of improving results for families and children begins with changing the relationships among all the parts. Step five addresses the process of achieving paradigm shifts.
Step 6: Creating a Vision of What Can Be. How are we to move into the future? We first need a vision of where we want to go. Step six maps the relationship between future results and performance strategies.
Step 7: From Community Promises to Performance. In order to change the part (the family or community), the whole (human services, families, and communities) must change. Step seven involves a shift from promises to performance. This requires all parties to align their beliefs and values in support of positive results for families and children.
Step 8: Commitment to Self-Governance and Public Accountability. Public accountability for positive outcomes for families and children and community participation in deciding how to achieve those results needs to be as easily recognized. Step eight captures the link between public accountability, responsibility, and self-governance.
More Than An Event: A Commitment to Democratizing Social Interventions
Real-time change and performance represents more than an event, more than a two and one-half day community dialogue. It represents a change in the philosophy of social intervention. The responsibility for results and the accompanying freedom to choose the path(s) that families and communities take to achieve improved results for children is returned to families and communities. Government—federal, state, and local—and human service organizations are stewards to the process of liberating the self-organizing creativity of families, organizations, and communities to discover their own paths and their own answers.
Gary M. Nelson, DSW
Director of Family Forum
School of Social Work
University of North Carolina
301 Pittsboro Street, Campus Box 3550
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550
Tel: 919-962-4370
Email: gmnelson@email.unc.edu