Harnessing the Power of Data

Leaders are beginning to grasp the power of data to transform organizational culture, increase operational efficiency, and better serve their customers and communities. But making that happen can be a daunting task, causing many to give up before they've even really started. Whether you're looking to improve or still trying to get started, learn how to build a data-driven organization from the ground up and what steps to take to realize the full potential of your data.

Bring New Insights to Light

There is a wealth of insights, inspiration, and actions hiding in your data, but most professionals don't know how to access it or what to do with it. Learn how to dive into your data using tools you already have at your disposal to identify trends and recommendations for improving your services and your bottom line. Everyone will have the chance to work with real data (your own if you can provide it) and get hands-on practice in both working with the data and extracting insights from what it has to show us. This is data analytics training for people who are scared of the words "data analytics!"

Ask This, Not That: A Guide to Better Surveys

Customer feedback is essential in better serving the needs of our communities, but often customer surveys and program evaluations are an afterthought. Learn how to strategically rethink what, when, and how you are asking for customer feedback to produce survey results you can actually use. See examples of underutilized features in most current survey software that can actually be used to make surveying more fun, less repetitive, and even help promote better customer service and marketing efforts.

Once Upon a Pie Chart: Using Data to Tell Your Story

When communicating your agency’s services and needs to others, your message has a bigger impact when it’s backed by data. But telling your story with data requires more than simply adding a few charts and graphs to your reports and presentations. Learn the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data so that you can use it to create an informative and compelling story to share with staff, elected officials, and the public. We'll complete chart makeovers and give you the chance work with real data (your own if you can provide it) to put everything you've learned into practice.

The Art of Gaining Consensus & Getting Things Done

No matter whether it is a new project, policy, park, or program you’re working on, getting people on board and working together is a key challenge that every professional must overcome in order to get things done. Learn how to proactively weave the fundamental steps for consensus-building into your projects in order to avoid many of these challenges in the first place, as well as how to respond to resistance and conflict when it inevitably happens.

Smart Moves for Success Projects

Park and recreation professionals are often tasked with overseeing special projects. Even when excitement is high, balancing these additional responsibilities with an already full plate is tough. Whether you will be leading a planning processing, new technology initiative, construction project, website redesign, or even a special event, learning some key basic project management skills can have a big impact on your project’s success. Learn how to keep your project and team on track and finish on time and on budget while holding on to your sanity in the process.

Innovation In Action

It's easy to talk about the concept of innovation, but much harder to actually achieve. How do you move beyond the aspiration to become more like companies such as Google and Apple while working within the reality of local government? Through stories of innovation successes and flops, learn where innovative ideas get their start and how you can bring them to life in your own organization.

What Consumers Want

Understanding trends and incorporating them early into your programs and services can provide a huge boost to your participation, revenue, and customer satisfaction. However, the fear of wasting time on what may turn out to be a fad often causes organizations to miss out on the benefits they can provide. Learn the current outside influences that are shaping that way that your customers are making decisions about how to spend their time and money and how to adapt your programs & services to the changing times.

Customer Experience By Design

Customer service, once the hallmark of great companies, is no longer enough in a world where customized, on-demand products and services are quickly becoming the norm. Successful organizations are working instead to improve the entire experience, starting before customers even walk through the door. Learn what the customer experience entails and what affects it and examples of what you can do to intentionally design great experiences for your customers.

10 Questions Leaders Should Stop Asking

With pressure piling up from massive amounts of data, the expectation to do more with less, and demands from elected officials and the public, it’s easy to become preoccupied with looking for answers. But great leaders know that the better results start by asking better questions. Unfortunately we often don't realize the impact that our words have. In this interactive session, learn what common questions often have an unintended effect and how to ask better questions to be a better leader.

Putting Your Strengths to Work

Often when trying to determine what makes a great leader, we start by creating a long list of qualities we've seen in the people that inspire us. Have you ever noticed that there is not one quality on those lists that every single successful leader possesses? This is because what great leaders have in common has nothing to do with the list of talents they possess, but instead that they are keenly aware of what their individual talents are and make a point to use them every single day. Likewise, if you want to be successful and happy in your career, instead of trying to copy who these leaders are, you should copy what they do.

This workshop works best as a pre-conference seminar or half/full-day workshop, or a series of several shorter workshops. It requires all participants to complete an electronic assessment in advance.

Dealing with the 3D's: The Difficult, Demotivated, and Duds

Leading your staff isn’t always as easy as those Successories posters may have you believe. Learn how to diagnose the cause of an employee’s poor performance before it spreads to the rest of your team and how you can treat staff as individuals while holding them to the same expectations.

Learning Without Lectures

Regardless of the popularity of your programs or the quality of your facilities, your staff will always be your most important resource. Why then when it comes to training our most valuable assets, do we always seem to end up spending the majority of our time using the same worn-out lecture-type settings? Discover the qualities of an effective training and the secrets to teaching the "unteachable" skills. Prepare to get active with hands-on activities that you can bring back to your own organization.