Building a Learning Culture with Andrew Taylor and Ben Liadsky
- On November 4, 2019
We talk this month with Andrew Taylor and Ben Liadsky of Taylor Newberry Consulting, a program evaluation firm just outside of Toronto, Canada. Andrew and Ben chat with us about building a learning culture — what it means and how foundations can help support their grantees in this effort. This discussion reminded us a lot of our conversation with Sammy and Scott from Arbor Brothers in the sense that it reminded us of all the ways in which funders can lead the way for promoting healthy evaluation and learning practices with their grantees. We’ll share this episode with some of our funder friends and so should you!
Taylor Newberry Consulting has a bunch of great resources on their website. We’ve linked to some of them below. If you find them useful, you can let them know via the Contact Us page on their website or via their Twitter page or via Andrew’s Twitter page. (Ben doesn’t use Twitter, which is probably healthy for Ben. We should all be more like Ben.)
Also, Andrew and Ben are going to be co-leading a pre-conference workshop at AEA this week. Check out the half-day workshop on Wednesday to learn more about building a culture of learning within organizations!
Resources from Taylor Newberry Consulting
Research
Achieving Greater Impact by Starting with Learning
Learning Together: Five Important Discussion Questions to Make Evaluation Useful
Practical tools
Self-assessment tool: an 18-question self-assessment that organizations (both grantmakers and grantees) can use to identify and assess the state of learning in their organization.
Question bank: A tool that contains a variety of questions aimed at helping funders develop a deeper understanding of the culture within an organization and the way it approaches learning.
Training guide. This document can be used to help grantmakers better understand the importance of organizational learning and how to engage externally with others in a learning-focused way.
Next month we talk with a group of professors who teach program evaluation at their colleges/universities. Please join us to learn more about the challenges (and also the fun side) of preparing the next generation of program evaluators!
Sponsors! This week’s unwitting sponsor is Ramen. You may call the three brisk months starting in late September and ending in late December “fall,” but Jen calls them “Ramen Season.” She likes to sample ramen at restaurants throughout the city, but also likes to make her own and even provided a little photo of the ramen she prepared on the eve of this episode’s release. See below and make special note of the brightness of her yolks. May we all strive for such splendor! Friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances — run out and get yourselves some ramen this fall season or visit Jen at her Brooklyn apartment and demand that she whip some up for you!
