Greetings from the Results Leadership Group -

I want to start off this month's issue by welcoming a new member tothe RLG team, Janay Queen. She will be joining us in July to help implement the Results Scorecard for new users. More on Janay's extensive background below.

Next, for those of you that have jumped on the E-book craze, Mark Friedman's book, Trying Hard is Not Good Enough, is now available to for download on your Kindle. Of course, we still have the traditional paperback version available as well at the RBA workshop DVD on our website. See below for links.

Our 2010 Community Impact Webinar Series continues in July with our event Creating Community Impact: United Ways and Technology. We have also just added another event in September. Check the Upcoming Events section for more information.

Also this month, we have tips from Mark Friedman on choosing population indicators, information on how the Promise Scorecard can help fulfill the requirements of the Promise Neighborhoods Grant Application, and a call for proposals from the Community Indicators Consortium to write "Real Stories" of communities, organizations, and/or jurisdictions that have tried, successfully and not so successfully, to integrate community indicators and organizational performance measures.

As always, please feel free to contact us with questions or comments on anything RBA related.

Regards,
Justin Miklas
The Results Leadership Group, LLC

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Upcoming Events

RLG welcomes JaNay Queen as the newest member of its staff. In her role with RLG, she will serve as the Director of Client Services with a central focus on implementing the Results Scorecard™. Ms. Queen works with public and private sector leaders to implement results-based strategies that enable organizations to achieve their desired goals. Ms. Queen comes to us from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy (MSPP) where she served as a Project Manager for leaders in the United States Virgin Islands, who worked to improve the conditions of health and education for all of their children. She also provided project management for the UMD Leadership Technical Assistance Team in their partnership with Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), a national initiative with the sole purpose of improving healthcare quality and reducing disparities. Ms. Queen served as a fiscal manager, where she developed and managed proposals, contracts and budgets for several of the MSPP's public leadership programs. Currently, Ms. Queen is a Ph.D. candidate (PhDc) in the University of Maryland College of Education with a research agenda that focuses on the adaptive challenges of public-private partnership leaders who employ a collaborative approach in their work together. She is a trained facilitator and is certified to administer and interpret the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator.

Trying Hard is Not Good Enough Now Available for Kindle

Mark Friedman's book, Trying Hard is Not Good Enough, is now available for the Kindle at Amazon.com

Also available:

Trying hard is not Good Enough (paperback)
Results-Based Accountability™ Workshop DVD


Click here to order

CIC web site

Real Stories Submittal Form

The Community Indicators Consortium (CIC), as part of a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is seeking proposals to write "Real Stories" of communities, organizations, and/or jurisdictions that have tried, successfully and not so successfully, to integrate community indicators and organizational performance measures.

The Real Stories project is intended to provide real life examples of the advantages and challenges to both community indicator and organizational performance measurement projects as a result of integrating or linking these two types of efforts. The published Real Stories, from 5-20 pages in length, will be used to advance the knowledge of community indicators-organizational performance measures integration and for training and other outreach material to community leaders as a way to improve or inform decision-making and create measurable, positive change in communities.

CIC is looking for proposals from individuals and groups who are directly involved in these efforts as well as individuals and organizations that work with community indicator and performance measurement projects. A stipend of $2,000 will be awarded for each Real Stories published.Three-to-five Real Stories will be selected for publication in 2010.

The deadline for submitting proposals for the 2010 Call for Real Stories is June 22, 2010. Notification of selected proposals and guidelines for development will be sent on July 15th. The deadline for the written first draft is September 15, 2010.

Visit the CIC web site for more information about the Real Stories project.

RBA/OBA Ideas Page

Raguide.org

Resultsaccountability.
com

Shortcut method for choosing population indicators
RBA/OBA Ideas Posting #5

The "regular" method presented on pages 54 to 56 of "Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough" involves rating each potential measure "high, medium or low" on three criteria: Communication Power, Proxy Power and Data Power. A simpler method for doing this mirrors the selection steps in choosing performance measures in steps 4 and 5 of Appendix G.
For each potential indicator, identify those for which you currently have good data. Put a circle next to these measures. Then ask "If you had to stand up in a public place and explain to your neighbors what you mean by (the result in question, e.g. Healthy Children), and could only use one of the measures with a circle next to it, which one would you use?" Then ask, "What if you could have a second.... a third?" Through this method you identify the top three indicators for any given result. This method is exactly equivalent to the Communication/Proxy/Data method for this reason. By first identifying the measures for which you have good data, you address Data Power. In asking which one people would use in a public place, it forces them to consider Communication and Proxy power together, namely, which measures are most powerful that people will understand? This method is faster and easier to use than the process of rating each measure.
This method also sets up the creation of a Data Development Agenda. Again, paralleling the performance process, ask "If we could buy one of the measures for which we don't have data, which would be the first we would buy?" "What if we could buy a second?" Through this process you can create a prioritized list of needed new and better data.

For more RBA/OBA tips, visit Mar Friedman's RBA/OBA Ideas Page.

The Results Scorecard

The Promise Scorecard

We now have live demo sites setup for both the Results Scorecard and the Promis Scorecard. To request an online demo of thes applications, please send us an email.

For those of you applying for a Promise Neighborhoods Grant, we've put together a document that outlines some specific requirements of the Promise Neighborhoods Grant Applications and explains how the Promise Scorecard can help fulfill them. Click here to download.