Yowza got thru that!

Participants eagerly await information

I was in charge of a workshop/conference for work today. I was kinda stressed about it. Because I'm a control freak. It was for the Environmental Management System (EMS) program that I'm lead worker on. It was at the Botanical Center and around 30 people attended.

Laura - consultant, presides

Laura, our consultant from Dallas and I worked together on the content of the workshop. She put together the PowerPoints and the training materials, so she's been stressed too. Laura arranged for a guy from EPA in Washington, who is an EMS expert, to talk after lunchtime. He sat in on our morning sessions and was very complimentary of our program. ;>)

I introduce our speaker

Pat Boddy

I also lined up a couple speakers for the workshop, including Pat Boddy, former DNR Deputy Director. I put together some materials in preparation for the speakers - especially Pat who talked about setting good goals. Because in EMS, the participants - in this case, Solid Waste Agencies, set annual environmental goals to help them meet the requirement of continuous improvement to be in the program.

Goal-setting assistance could help each of us! Who couldn't use help figuring out just what we're really trying to get at!?!

It was a little confusing for some of the participants. But the basic idea is to get at - what is your REAL purpose for a goal you are setting? Here is an example that we had to work through.

A solid waste agency sets a goal of hosting 500 people in their educational center in 2011. Is that a good goal? It's measurable. But what does that number tell us? Not much really. What we talked about today is what the real goal should be. What is that agency was trying to accomplish by bringing people into the ed center? Mostly likely education about the facility services - recycling/disposal etc.

So a better goal might be behavior change after facility tour. To measure this, the facility could poll users to find out how they knew about the services.

It's like the difference between losing weight to fit into your jeans, and eating healthy for your lifestyle. Your goals need to be beyond the quick fix number. It's kind of a hard thing to wrap your mind around...

Jim Horne US EPA talks EMS

Anyway - I'm back at it tomorrow morning! Can you tell - I love this stuff!

Tomorrow will be a smaller group. Next year we'll be doing this conference again -  I'm already planning how I might do it better! Control freak!