HISTORY

WORK

RESOURCES

CONTACTS

BOB WILLIAMS

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

FACILITATION

ACTION RESEARCH

ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

WHO AM I ?

I was born and brought up in the lush Devonshire countryside, but left England in the late 1980's to live here in Aotearoa New Zealand. For the past decade or so, I've lived with my partner Paul in an odd and wonderful house surrounded by native bush overlooking Wellington's ever changing harbour, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

WHAT DO I DO ?

I divide my working time between evaluation, strategy development, facilitating large-group processes and systemic organisational change projects. Most of my work seeks to create and sustain the links between these different activities.

Most of my time these days is dedicated to providing training and consultancy support in the use of systems concepts in evaluation.  This includes workshops, evaluation design, and one-on-one mentoring and advice.  Contact me for more details about what I can do for you and your work.

Visit my Resources Page, where you can download a wide range of tricks, tools, writings, workshops and other stuff I've developed over the years in the evaluation, social research, group dynamics, organisational development, knowledge management and facilitation fields. Feel free to try them out.

You can see the various jobs I've done in recent years by visiting my Work Page. If you want the even earlier stuff, then go to my Ancient History page.

I'm a fairly well known figure in Australasian evaluation, through my evaluations, my work within the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES), and my contributions to the two Internet discussion groups "Evaltalk" and "Govteval". I oversaw the merger of the Society's two publications "Evaluation News and Comment" and the "Australasian Journal of Evaluation".  Internationally I'm probably best known for promoting systems approaches and concepts in the evaluation field.

...  and this is the view from where I do most of my work.  The tree on the bottom left with the irridescent flowers is the glorious Pohutukawa.  Known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree, mature trees are completely covered with the flowers in December and January.  The entire neighbourhoods turn red for four wonderful weeks.

MY APPROACH

I'm committed to my work as a learning process, and to methods that enhance organisational learning and development. I run workshops on program evaluation, performance measurement, program logic, systems thinking and organisational development in Aotearoa New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore.

My methods of working tend to be participative; train as well as inform; and combine elements of evaluation, organisational learning, action research and strategy development. I've an active (and published) interest in the use and abuse of performance measures as evaluation tools.

I've a particular interest in "large group" processes (eg Search), and have worked on "large group" whole systems organisational change processes in the UK, the USA, Singapore, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Indeed workshops and group based techniques are a particular feature of my work, and I frequently design and facilitate workshops on a wide variety of issues.

OTHER STUFF

I have working relationships with SPEC Associates, the Southern Cross Institute for Action Research (SCIAR), Work Education & Business Research (WEB), and the Collaborative Institute for Research, Consulting and Learning in Evaluation (CIRCLE).

I review books for the Journal of Management Learning, and write occasional papers for the Australasian Evaluation Society's Journal. I've also been published in the "Public Sector" the New Zealand Public Service Association's journal. I contributed a chapter on "Reflection" in "Effective Change Management Using Action Research and Action Learning" published by Southern Cross University Press. I've a chapter on how to get evaluation results used in Evaluating Policy and Practice: A New Zealand Reader [Pearson Education 2003].  I also wrote the entries on "systems", "systems thinking", "quality" and "planning" for the Encyclopaedia of Evaluation [Sage 2004] and on systemic inquiry for the Encyclopaedia of Qualitative Resarch Methods [Sage 2008].  There's also a chapter, "Evaluation for practice improvement and organizational learning", with Patricia Rogers in the "Handbook of Evaluation" [Sage 2006].

I edited "Systems Concepts in Evaluation" with the late Iraj Imam for the American Evaluation Association  supported by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.  For more details on this groundbreaking volume visit my systems page here where you can find out how to purchase copies. 

My professional development workshops focus largely on the application of systems concepts in evaluation and have been presented in various forms at the 2002 Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) Conference, the 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 American Evaluation Association Conferences, the 2007 Sri Lanka Evaluation Association Conference, and in other places in the USA, Europe and Asia.

..... AND ALSO

I'm a NZSIA Level Two instructor in both snowboarding and adaptive disciplines.  I have a particular interest in snowsports for those with physical and intellectual disabilities.  I'm on the Board of Disabled Snowsports NZ, and run the adaptive program at Turoa skifield during the winter months.  

So I live on one form of water or the other in spring, summer, autumn and winter.

I'll never turn down a fine meal, a decent film, or a good argument. My CD collection is far too big; everything from Basement Jaxx to Bartok, with music from Lima to Lancing. Especially here in Aotearoa, which produces a truly unique blend of European and Pacific sounds, be it hip hop, country, traditional, rock, chill-out, or classical. Our local musicians, DJ's and bands have to be the next big thing. Fat Freddy's Drop ? Oh you ain't heard nothing yet. Check this out to hear what I'm banging on about, or this to buy the stuff.

I absolutely love travelling.  I get a buzz whenever I'm at an airport, simply because it means I'm about to meet new people in new settings, listen to their stories, tell them my stories and work with them on new things.

Basically I enjoy life enormously, and love to see others doing the same.