Ups and Downs

As my group is reaching crunch time to complete our project with Wake Forest RL&H, there are elements of this project and the performance consulting process that we're attempting to facilitate that stand out as cool and not so cool.

 

The cool stuff:

• Almost every member of my group is completely reliable, hardworing and extremely competent.  How nice it is to divide work and know that we trust eachother to do a good job.  I've worked in many groups where this is not the case, and I end up picking up the slack for the slackers.
• 3 of my group members are data driven and have experience and know how to manipulate and measure the data we've collected.  This project is definitely DATA DRIVEN, and it is driving the actions and recommendations we make.  For example, from three different data sources (archival resident satisfaction surveys, star RA interviews, and average RA survey data) the performance gap became clear and convincing.  Our clients, because of the data driven reports we've provided them that points to these needs areas, have completely agreed with our logic and have had an A-Ha or two.
• I've been able to see how I fit into this group.  My skills and talents have definitely been highlighted, while many of my weaker areas, especially math, have been able to stay hidden.  I've enjoyed being the planner, the scheduler, the template maker, aka the tasky one, and my group seems to appreciate my efforts to keep us on track to complete an awesome project.
• My computer literacy and competency continues to grow as I'm challenged to create new things.  I'm becoming ever more comfortable with Excel, have first time experience with Survey Monkey, and I participated in my 1st Google + hangout .  We used Google+ at our last meeting with our clients, and it worked SO well.  What an awesome tool to use in future contacts with clients.

 

Not so cool stuff:

•  I felt underprepared for the last meeting we had with our clients.  I felt like we scrambled together for the hour prior to our meeting to get stuff in line to discuss with our clients.  It was a bad feeling.  I personally like to have everything in order the day prior.  The meeting went well, but we sent them the documents that were going to lead our discussion two minutes before our scheduled meeting time!  The clients had no time to review or think through our work.  I would like to build into my future professional practice pre-work as often as possible.  I feel it generates more reflection time which then leads to deeper and more meaningful discussions during meeting times and builds strategic action thereafter.