Society of Performing Organizations

"By their fruits ye shall know them" Peter F. Drucker

Action: Are your performance yardsticks appropriate to your objectives? Peter F. Drucker

On this day, Dr. Drucker looks more to the organizations which perform social tasks. Contributions are made toward specific individuals and society as a whole. It contributes outside itself.

Example: In my charity organization www.childrensartwalk.com we have selected as our objective to "plant seeds of desire for success in underprivileged children" and we do this by "teaching" experiencing with them the joys and tribulations of painting in oil. Our program has 9 "success points" which each child must accomplish in her own time, and we naturally/daily measure the childrens' progress against those points. Every one of our 1000's of kids has accomplished the program, and some of them can even paint.

However, Dr. Drucker's question is real... how do we now that we accomplished what we had set out to do... "plant the seed for a desire for success in the kids". Well we measured it as well we could in three ways:

1) We asked the parents to give us feedback on any changes they had seen in their sons and daughters over the course of the program. Given the "open" question, we got many types of responses, but one theme came through loud and clear. The children were more confident and ready/willing to tackle new tasks.

2) We asked representatives of the children in our quality review session to talk of what they had learned. Again an open question, but similarly, we found that children admitted to an increased confidence.

3) We asked the staff of the school to evaluate the children they had sent to the class. And again and again the same answer came back. Confidence, willing to take responsibility. Interestingly, the teachers also spoke of an increased receptivity to mentoring.

None, or very few of the respondents spoke about painting skills or art appreciation. The program is a success, and we have no trouble at all recruiting volunteers.

Maybe this works for our small organization, but it doesn't work for larger, more important ones as we saw yesterday. Maybe it's "by their fruits and costs to bear fruits, ye shall know them". The social cost/benefit. How do the organizations you cherish do it?