This is awesome! It reminds me both of action research expanded to social enterprise on the one hand, and meaningful outcomes within the framework of sme’s on the other. Early days it seems. Time will tell if this approach yields results. Looking forward to more on this topic!
So what do those 1,000 customers in the Ziqitza survey gain from this method? Do they feel burdened by having to answer survey after survey? Does Ziqitza feel that they burdened? It seems that a Lean Data approach should incorporate a value proposition for the beneficiary/customer and be focused on reducing the massive data collection redundancy, which is ultimately a burden for everyone.
Gaspar, thank you for this comment. Our goal is to provide value to end customers who participate in all the ways we can. This begins with the direct changes and service improvements that come about - for them - as results of Lean Data surveys (which is rarely ever the case with large scale academic studies). We are also aiming to find ways to provide direct value to participants through things like sharing data back to them directly and offering comparison to peer sets. It’s still early days for us here but this is definitely our goal. My colleague Tom Adams (co-author) and Jer Thorpe wrote about this in more detail in this piece on Medium: https://medium.com/acumen-ideas/whose-data-is-it-anyway-3f9ba60c8924#.ude0hfqhh
Thanks, Sasha. It seems to me that we should continue making an effort to provide analysis and share why we think data is is so important to respondents and participants. We need to make a paradigm shift from seeing respondents as subjects to including them as partners. My theory is that will lead to better data and better accountability. I really enjoyed the Medium piece, thanks for sharing!
This is really great work you have led and shared. Indeed, the biggest issue for those of us who have to report impact tend to focus on jobs created etc. and not the quality of those jobs or the way in which they (hopefully) affect the job owners positively etc. Really great idea on how/why to collect data efficiently and then use it not only to understand impact, but also how to use the insights gleaned to adjust the project/program so it is more effective/impactful
Hi Sasha and Gaspar. My enterprise ‘I Change Her Life’ is working in Pakistan. We have been collecting data through workshops that we conduct in rural areas. We found that our participation and response increased when we incentivised our survey and offered the participants to win through lucky draw.
Excellent article, and a validation of my action research that lean data can be used to validate hypotheses in operations management.
Is there any rule-of-the-thumb guidance on how lean can the data be to be meaningful (i.e. what would be “too lean”?
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COMMENTS
BY Josh Lange
ON November 25, 2015 02:08 PM
This is awesome! It reminds me both of action research expanded to social enterprise on the one hand, and meaningful outcomes within the framework of sme’s on the other. Early days it seems. Time will tell if this approach yields results. Looking forward to more on this topic!
BY Gaspar Rodriguez
ON December 1, 2015 11:46 AM
So what do those 1,000 customers in the Ziqitza survey gain from this method? Do they feel burdened by having to answer survey after survey? Does Ziqitza feel that they burdened? It seems that a Lean Data approach should incorporate a value proposition for the beneficiary/customer and be focused on reducing the massive data collection redundancy, which is ultimately a burden for everyone.
BY Sasha Dichter
ON December 14, 2015 07:42 AM
Gaspar, thank you for this comment. Our goal is to provide value to end customers who participate in all the ways we can. This begins with the direct changes and service improvements that come about - for them - as results of Lean Data surveys (which is rarely ever the case with large scale academic studies). We are also aiming to find ways to provide direct value to participants through things like sharing data back to them directly and offering comparison to peer sets. It’s still early days for us here but this is definitely our goal. My colleague Tom Adams (co-author) and Jer Thorpe wrote about this in more detail in this piece on Medium: https://medium.com/acumen-ideas/whose-data-is-it-anyway-3f9ba60c8924#.ude0hfqhh
BY Gaspar Rodriguez
ON March 11, 2016 04:59 PM
Thanks, Sasha. It seems to me that we should continue making an effort to provide analysis and share why we think data is is so important to respondents and participants. We need to make a paradigm shift from seeing respondents as subjects to including them as partners. My theory is that will lead to better data and better accountability. I really enjoyed the Medium piece, thanks for sharing!
BY Arthur
ON May 10, 2016 08:20 AM
This is really great work you have led and shared. Indeed, the biggest issue for those of us who have to report impact tend to focus on jobs created etc. and not the quality of those jobs or the way in which they (hopefully) affect the job owners positively etc. Really great idea on how/why to collect data efficiently and then use it not only to understand impact, but also how to use the insights gleaned to adjust the project/program so it is more effective/impactful
BY Sasha Dichter
ON May 10, 2016 10:13 AM
Thank you Arthur - this is exactly what we’re working towards.
BY Ambreen Zaman
ON May 16, 2016 02:57 AM
Hi Sasha and Gaspar. My enterprise ‘I Change Her Life’ is working in Pakistan. We have been collecting data through workshops that we conduct in rural areas. We found that our participation and response increased when we incentivised our survey and offered the participants to win through lucky draw.
BY Dr Ranjith Nayar
ON November 19, 2019 07:14 PM
Excellent article, and a validation of my action research that lean data can be used to validate hypotheses in operations management.
Is there any rule-of-the-thumb guidance on how lean can the data be to be meaningful (i.e. what would be “too lean”?
- .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)