![BOB WILLIAMS 
EVALUATION STRATEGY FACILITATION ACTION RESEARCH
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Whaia te iti kahurangi Ki te
tuohu koe me he maunga teitei 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 couple of decades, 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 Pages, 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
iridescent 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, Europe, Japan,
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 My latest book is Systems Concepts in Action : A
Practitoner’s Toolkit, written with Richard Hummelbrunner.
More details on my Systems and Evaluation page. 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 and Evaluation page
where you can find out how to purchase copies. With
Meenakshi Sankar I edited the publication Evaluation -
South Asia for UNICEF South Asia Regional Office, and am
on the editorial boards of the American Journal of
Evaluation and New Directions in Evaluation.
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, six American
Evaluation Association Conferences, the 2007 Sri Lanka
Evaluation Association Conference, and various 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 Lansing. 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. Check this out to
hear what I'm banging on about, or this to buy the stuff.
I absolutely love travelling, which is probably a good
thing because I am in an aircraft heading somewhere across
the Pacific every couple of months. 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.
 "The problem with the world
is everyone is a few drinks behind"
Humphrey Bogart](About_Me_files/shapeimage_2.png)
