General Winter Summit presentations and ongoing conversation

Hi all, I am happy to also share my survey questions that I used to generate a lot of content for that and what will ultimately be our framework/Sustainability Action Plan at GBD.  Asset mapping is an enormous part of creating plans. Start with what you have! Don't try to create an entirely new system. This is a way to build buy-in which leads to actually successful plan implementation - because you can't do it on your own. Make sure people feel (and are) valued for their unique skills and interests. Elevate them. Connect people.  Create a survey that works for you - my questions were formulated for very specific reasons based on where we were as a firm when I was doing this, and how I function in my role. I used a free survey platform called Typeform that I selected for its nice user interface (re: too many clicks = bad news). It also generates a usable Excel output. I did four surveys over 4 weeks so that people could handle the bite-sized pieces. Typeform tells you how long it takes people to take the survey, so I could tell people a few days in "don't forget to do this, it's only taking people 4 mins on average" or whatever. I put my most critical questions in the first one since I knew I'd have retention issues. I had about 60% response rate from our 90-ish person firm in the first survey which I consider representative. I also had a drawing for folks who took the survey and included their name. I made sure that once the survey was over, I made some nice charts that I showed at Staff Lunch. Even though I haven't moved forward with this in its huge framework form for a while, people got the initial feedback to see they were being heard. That is critical! You can't collect a lot of info and do nothing with it. It has certainly influenced how I'm operating, what L+Ls we host, etc.  The data's been hugely important for my conversations with our firm directors. The other piece was learning peoples' interests so that I can better connect with them in my role. I like to send individual emails to people when I see something they might find interesting. That's just how I operate. Do what works for you! Survey questions attached - turn on Track Changes for additional commentary (I'm verbose).  Really appreciative of this group/forum as an audience for this shifting project/framework. I've very hopeful that you'll be inspired by my approach to develop your own that works well for you. Please let me know if you have questions or feedback! Here or hannahs@gbdarchitects.com. Hannah