Bob Williams
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 1980s to live here in Aotearoa New Zealand. For a couple of decades I lived in an odd and wonderful house surrounded by native bush overlooking Wellington's ever-changing harbour, Te Whanganui-a-Tara. More recently I've moved to an equally iconic building, Wharenui (Maori for big house) overlooking Wellington's inner harbour.
I'm a fairly well-known figure in the evaluation field, through my evaluations, my work with evaluation societies and my contributions to various internet discussion groups. Internationally I'm probably best known for promoting systems approaches and concepts in the evaluation field.
For this work I received the American Evaluation Association's Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award — a huge honour.
"An individual whose written work on evaluation theory has led to fruitful debates on the assumptions, goals, and practices of evaluation."
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.
For other resources, 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. Feel free to try them out.
You can see the various jobs I've done in recent years on my Work page, or the even earlier stuff on my Ancient History page.
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 systems thinking, program evaluation, performance measurement, organisational development and program logic in Aotearoa New Zealand, Europe, Asia, Africa as well as North and South America.
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 (e.g. Search), and have worked on large group whole-systems organisational change processes in the UK, the USA, Singapore, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Other Stuff
I've been involved in a bunch of books. More details on my Systems page.
With Sjon van 't Hoff
With Richard Hummelbrunner
My latest book
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.
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. For several years I ran the adaptive program at Turoa skifield during the winter months.
I'll never turn down a fine meal, a good beer, a decent film, or an engaging argument. My music collection is far too big — everything from Jamie XX to Janacek, from Lima to Lansing. Especially here in Aotearoa, which produces a truly unique blend of European, American and Pacific sounds.
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.
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