Tool
Six Questions for Reviewing Your Program
A one-page review of whether the setting you lead is helping people develop. Use it on your own or with the people you work alongside.
How to use it
Answer from what happens, not from what is intended.
Work through the questions in order. For each one, write down what actually happens in your team, program, or organization today. If an answer surprises you, or nobody agrees on it, that is usually the place to start.
- 01
Environment shapes behavior
What is the environment allowing, reinforcing, or preventing?
List what people here are expected to do. Then list what is actually rewarded, corrected, or ignored. Where do the two lists disagree?
- 02
Development requires intentional design
What conditions would let these people learn, adapt, and improve?
Clarity, meaningful challenge, feedback, accountability, adaptation: which of these is deliberately built here, and which is left to chance?
- 03
Better decisions create better outcomes
What would make the decisions being taken here better than they are?
Pick one decision that comes up again and again. Who makes it, with what information, and how do they find out whether it was right?
- 04
Systems create lasting impact
What survives here when the person who does this well leaves?
Name the person this place depends on most. What do they know that is written down nowhere?
- 05
Every environment is unique
What makes sense here?
If you are borrowing an idea from somewhere else, what about your goals, resources, constraints, culture, or history makes this setting different?
- 06
Learning never stops
How does this environment find out that it is now wrong?
When did this program last change something because of what it observed? What told it to?
Where the questions come from
Each question comes from one of the six beliefs in the Project’s Operating Philosophy. If your answers point to something you would like to think through with someone, see how we work with organizations.