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Criteria to Evaluate the Accountability of Past Initiatives
 
These criteria focus on what happened, why it happened, and what was learned.

1.  Clarity of goals and expectations:

• Were goals, success metrics, and roles clearly defined at the outset?
• Did stakeholders share a common understanding of what “success” meant?

 2.  Evidence base and rationale:

• Was the initiative grounded in evidence or a clear theory of change?
• Did the chosen approach logically connect to expected outcomes?

 3.  Implementation quality and fidelity:

• Were planned activities carried out as intended?
• Where deviations occurred, were they documented and explained?

 4.  Fit and feasibility in the real-world context:

• Did the initiative fit the organizational, cultural, and environmental context?
• How well were resource constraints managed?

 5.  Capacity to implement:

• Did staff, leadership, infrastructure, and systems support effective implementation?
• Were gaps in capacity identified and addressed?

 6.  Outcomes and impact:

• To what extent were short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes achieved?
• Were unintended outcomes (positive or negative) identified?

 7.  Efficiency and use of resources:

• How well were time, energy, and money used relative to results?
• Were there more efficient alternatives that emerged through experience?

 8.  Transparency and data use:

• Was monitoring data collected, shared, and used appropriately?
• Were decisions documented in a way that allows scrutiny and learning?

 9.  Corrective action and continuous quality improvement (CQI):

• When problems arose, were timely adjustments made?
• Was there a mechanism for learning and improvement?

 10. Sustainability and institutionalization:

• Were successful practices maintained, scaled, or replicated?
• Did the initiative leave lasting capacity or systems improvements?

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Criteria to Evaluate the Accountability of Future Initiatives

These criteria focus on planning quality, strategic alignment, and likelihood of success before implementation begins.

1.  Defined needs and clear goals:

• Are needs well-documented and supported by data?
• Are goals specific, measurable, and aligned with organizational priorities?

 2.  Evidence-based strategy selection:

• Is the proposed approach grounded in research, best practices, or prior success?
• Is there a clear rationale connecting the chosen strategy to desired outcomes?

 3.  Fit with context and stakeholders:

• Is the strategy culturally, politically, and operationally appropriate?
• Do stakeholders support the plan?

 4.  Capacity readiness:

• Does the organization have (or plan to build) the skills, staffing, systems, leadership, and partnerships needed?
• Are resource constraints recognized and addressed?

 5.  Strategic use of resources:

• Is the plan realistic, given time, energy, and funding?
• Does it prioritize high-leverage actions?

 6.  Implementation planning:

• Are roles, timelines, milestones, and responsibilities clearly defined?
• Are there contingencies to manage risks?

 7.  Monitoring and evaluation plan:

• Is there a clear plan to track progress and outcomes?
• Are data collection methods feasible and meaningful?

 8.  Accountability structures:

• Are decision-making processes explicit?
• Are there mechanisms for transparency and tracking commitments?

 9.  CQI and adaptation mechanisms:

• Is there a built-in process for reviewing data and iterating during implementation?
• Does the plan define how adjustments will be made?

 10. Sustainability planning:

• Does the plan consider long-term viability beyond initial funding?
• Are there strategies for building durable capacity or systems?

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Citations for Criteria to Evaluate the Accountability of Past Initiatives
 
These criteria map most closely onto program evaluation, implementation evaluation, CQI, and accountability frameworks:

• Carroll, C., et al. (2007). A conceptual framework for implementation fidelity.
• CDC. Evaluation framework – standards for accuracy, propriety, and utility.
• CDC (1999). Framework for program evaluation in public health.
• Chambers, D. A., et al. (2013). The dynamic sustainability framework.
• Damschroder, L. J., et al. (2009). The consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR).
• Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis (CQI, PDSA cycles).
• Durlak, J. A., & DuPre, E. (2008). Implementation matters.
• Fixsen, D. L., et al. (2005). Implementation research: A synthesis of the literature.
• Funnell, S. C., & Rogers, P. J. (2011). Purposeful program theory.
• GAO (2015). Standards for internal control in the federal government (Green book).
• Langley, G. J., et al. (2009). The improvement guide.
• Patton, M. Q. (2011). Developmental evaluation.
• Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., & Freeman, H. E. (2004). Evaluation: A systematic approach.
• Scheirer, M. A. (2013). Linking sustainability to program planning and evaluation.
• Wholey, J. S. (1983). Evaluation and effective public management.
• Wandersman, A., et al. (2000). Getting To Outcomes.

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Citations for Criteria to Evaluate the Accountability of Future Initiatives
 
These criteria draw from planning, evidence-based decision-making, implementation planning, and organizational readiness literature—much of which underpins GTO:

• Behn, R. D. (2001). Rethinking democratic accountability.
• Bryson, J. M. (2018). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations.
• CDC (1999). Evaluation framework.
• Chambers et al. (2013). Dynamic sustainability framework.
• Damschroder et al. (2009). CFIR domains of inner/outer setting and intervention–recipient fit.
• Deming (1986). PDSA.
• Fixsen et al. (2005). Implementation stages and drivers.
• Funnell & Rogers (2011). Theory of change for planning.
• GAO (2015). Internal controls and accountability systems.
• GAO (2015). Resource stewardship and risk assessment.
• Mintzberg, H. (1994). The rise and fall of strategic planning.
• Patton (2011). Evaluation for adaptive management.
• Rossi, Lipsey, & Freeman (2004). Evaluation planning principles.
• Sackett, D. L., et al. (1996). Evidence-based medicine.
• Scheirer (2013). Sustainability integrated into planning and design.
• Wandersman et al. (2000). Getting To Outcomes.
• Weiner, B. J. (2009). Organizational readiness for change.

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Definitions Tailored by Sector

1. For funders (philanthropy, foundations, and institutional investors): Accountability science is an interdisciplinary field that provides funders with systematic, evidence-informed approaches to assess the impact and lessons of past investments and to strategically design and support future ones—helping funders fulfill their responsibility to steward limited resources wisely, operate transparently, and advance meaningful, measurable results.
2. For government agencies: Accountability science is an interdisciplinary field that equips government agencies with systematic, evidence-informed methods to assess the outcomes and drivers of past and current programs and policies and to strategically design and implement future initiatives—supporting agencies in their responsibility to use public resources efficiently and effectively to improve well-being.
3. For nonprofit organizations: Accountability science is an interdisciplinary field that helps nonprofit organizations use systematic, evidence-informed approaches to learn from past work and to strategically design and improve future initiatives—strengthening their responsibility to use limited resources wisely and to demonstrate meaningful, mission-aligned progress for the individuals and communities they serve.
4. For corporate settings (business, industry, financial services, and technology): Accountability science is an interdisciplinary field that applies systematic, evidence-informed approaches to evaluate past performance and to strategically plan and improve future initiatives—enabling organizations to fulfill their responsibility for transparent decision-making, efficient resource use, sound risk management, and delivering better results for customers, employees, and shareholders.

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Accountability Science Model: Responsibility → Evidence → Action → Results  

Accelerating the Science and Practice of Bridging Research and Practice: Via Accountability Science

The research–practice gap remains a persistent chasm: “If we keep on doing what we have been doing, we will keep on getting what we have been getting.” Despite progress, the science of how to bridge this gap has been underdeveloped.

The Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF), originally developed with CDC and updated as ISF 2.0 (Wandersman et al., 2024), provides a pathway to diagnose barriers and accelerate progress toward outcomes. ISF 2.0 connects:

• the science of evidence-based interventions;
• synthesis and translation of scientific knowledge;
• individual and organizational motivation and capacity (barriers and facilitators) within schools, healthcare, and other delivery systems; and
• support for delivery systems through tools, training, technical assistance, and quality improvement.

ISF 2.0 is strengthened by the Getting To Outcomes (GTO) approach, a rigorously tested accountability model that structures decision-making and improves results. GTO reframes accountability as a scientific process rather than a compliance exercise. It demonstrates that evidence-based interventions are necessary but not sufficient for achieving outcomes in complex settings. By integrating GTO, ISF 2.0 aligns funders, researchers, practitioners, delivery organizations, technical assistance providers, and consumers within one framework. It also incorporates the readiness heuristic (R = Motivation × Innovation-Specific Capacity × General Capacity → R=MC²), offering a practical method for understanding how accountability processes activate motivation and capacity for implementation.

Positioning accountability as a central organizing principle transforms the research–practice gap into a testable, improvable process. This shift enables psychology and implementation science to accelerate progress, reduce inefficiencies, and improve the equity and effectiveness of services delivered to communities. A science of accountability can thus serve as a unifying principle across interrelated domains, bridging evidence, support, and delivery systems to produce real-world outcomes.

This interactive and engaging podcast examines using GTO and readiness in a project in Thailand and brings issues of readiness, implementation, and sustainability in a low and middle income country to life.  This information is based on the journal article, "Strengthening System Readiness for Health Interventions: Lessons for Implementing Interventions and Implementation Support in Low-And Middle-Income Countries," authored by Hongtu Chen, Komatra Chuengsatiansup, Dylan R. Wong, Siranee Sihapark, Thawatchai Krisanaprakornkit, Bussabong Wisetpholchai, Sirinart Tongsiri, Ladson Hinton, Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, Abraham Wandersman, Andrea H. Marques, Andrea Lamont, and Sue Levkof.

Below is a link to an outstanding conversational 19-minute podcast that not only brings the TA Effectiveness Logic Model article in the December 2024 special issue to life—it brings TA to life. The article is called "The Technical Assistance (TA) Effectiveness Logic Model: A Tool for Systematically Planning, Delivering, and Evaluating TA," authored by Victoria Scott, Elizabeth Chagnon, and Abe Wandersman.

Click below to hear an extraordinarily engaging interactive podcast about the recently published journal article: "Barriers and Facilitators to Adopting a Systematic, Proactive, Evidence-Informed Technical Assistance System," written by authors Andrea E. Lamont, Amber Watson, Brittany S. Cook, Andrew Romero, Kellen Schalter, Abigail Nellis, Kristina Clark, Ariel Domlyn, and Abraham Wandersman.

Many of the solutions to our major social problems (e.g., homelessness, drug overdoses, children with mental health problems and declining test scores, social isolation of the elderly) are like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that don’t fit together, and we may have missing pieces and don’t even know it.
 
I recently was in a session with the Executive branch’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), also known as the Drug Czar’s Office, and shared the attached PowerPoint presentation. While the slides are primarily about substance abuse prevention (and treatment), the concept illustrated in slides 4 and 5 appears to be a very good metaphor that applies to many of our social problems including homelessness in that our solutions are like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that don’t necessarily fit together, and we may have missing pieces and don’t even know it.

Family Engagement: From “Nice” to “Necessary”
 
Now more than ever, there is a critical need for families and schools to partner in a meaningful and effective way to support successful student learning and development. Parent/family engagement in education has always been important in the success of student outcomes, and it has been addressed in federal and state education laws and policies for decades (Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and subsequent reauthorizations, such as No Child Left Behind, Every Student Succeeds Acts, and Family Engagement in Education Act of 2015). It has been well-established as an effective evidence-based practice that has a positive impact on student educational outcomes, teacher-student relationships, parent-teacher relationships, and the school environment (Henderson & Mapp, 2002). The reality is that prior to the pandemic, family engagement in education was often viewed as something “nice when it happens,” but often got lost in the shuffle amidst other competing mandates and daily demands.
 
The pandemic resulted in an abrupt, dramatic change in the very essence of how education was allowed to be implemented – not in person and not in classrooms, but remotely via distance technology. Suddenly, family engagement in education went from “nice” to “necessary.” In many cases, teachers became dependent on students’ family members in different ways from anything previously experienced, such as being able to interface with students via technology to have the opportunity to provide educational instruction. Teachers have always been dependent on parents for things such as getting their children on the bus or driving them to the school building. What changed was the ability of parents and teachers to carry out their traditional roles independently, and more collaboration was required to ensure that learning was taking place. Parents were faced with needing to know more about what their students were supposed to be learning. Teachers needed help from parents to ensure that children learning virtually were present, had supports such as appropriate learning environments, stayed engaged, and were able to work through problems. For many teachers, the importance of maintaining trusting relationships with families became an immediate reality. Those teachers who had developed that trust were the most successful in maintaining communication during the pandemic. Like the rest of the world, the education system as we have known it for decades, experienced a complete and sudden transformation for which they were not prepared, and why would they be? Who could have even known to be prepared for such a life-changing, global disruption in education – along with every other fundamental aspect of life? NO ONE!
 
Time Moves On
 
Time did not stand still. Students still needed to be educated. This meant that schools and teachers had to quickly figure out how to teach their students, and parents needed just as quickly to figure out how to meaningfully connect – or partner – with their children’s teachers. Never before were parents and teachers so acutely aware of the need to work together in order to equip students with the educational skills that they need to become college and career, yea, “life” ready.
 
Even though many schools have reopened, and many students have returned to school campuses, things “look different” from how they were before. School is experienced differently for students, teachers, and parents/families. Students – who do not have decades of experience with schools – are learning that school is not a static entity. Parents and teachers – who at least have an “institutional knowledge” with the education system, both having experienced “school as we knew it” for so many years – suddenly have no experience with this new way of operating in the ever-changing educational infrastructure that could look completely different tomorrow or next month or next year from the way it does at any given moment. That’s a level of discomfort for everyone – not knowing for how long things will be the same, how suddenly the next change will occur, and even what that change will look like. Talk about a complete disruption in the social and emotional stability of ALL involved!
 
NOT a “New Normal”
 
People talk about having to get used to the “new normal” when school starts this fall and why it is so hard to “adjust.” That’s because they are trying to adjust to the wrong thing. A “new normal” implies that the disruptive event has ended and that what life in the aftermath looks like is the way it will be consistently from now on. We have not reached a “new normal” in this case, however, because COVID-19 doesn’t have a defined start and end date. Think about a disastrous weather event such as a tornado, hurricane, an explosion or even the death of a loved one. While the devastation certainly can be horrific, a tornado often ends within minutes or even seconds of its start. With this pandemic, however, the virus is still in existence, and just as any other virus, it will mutate to survive and infect more people. Thus, the possibility of additional waves of the pandemic continues to exist. Further, the effects on our daily lives and routines, such as school attendance, are still in flux. Mandates and recommendations for closures, openings, partial re-openings, personal protective equipment (e.g., face coverings/masks), and social distancing are inconsistent and can change from day to day and at a moment’s notice.  Uncertainty and a lack of predictability is a great threat to one’s social and emotional health and well-being (Bar-Anan et al., 2009). Fortunately, the Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery Tool, developed by the Wandersman Center (Kolodny‑Goetz, et al, 2021), discusses how to understand and address changes in readiness as a result of such major disruptions. Even with difficult or undesirable circumstances, if they are predictable, at least people can learn how to adapt. With unpredictability, however, the only thing that is predictable is the unpredictability itself. Thus, it isn’t a “new normal”; it’s just “another day.”
 
This same unpredictability continues to exist in the realm of education. Students, teachers, school administrators, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, maintenance staff, and all other school personnel, as well as parents/families, all operate on a day-to-day basis trying to teach, learn, and support while being prepared for the unpredictable potential changes that can come at a moment’s notice.
 
Implications for Family Engagement in Education
 
What does all this change and uncertainty mean for students’ education, and more specifically, what does it mean for the critical role of families and schools partnering for active family engagement in education? There is a proverbial silver lining to this cloud which is the disruption in education as we have known it for decades. Parents and schools are learning how to truly partner with each other to engage in children’s education meaningfully and successfully. Teachers and administrators are figuring out how to enter into and maintain an active partnership with parents/families and parents/families are learning how to partner with schools and doing whatever it takes to effectively engage in their children’s education.
 
What does family engagement in education mean, and what does it look like from a true family-school partnership approach? Many committed, persistent, seasoned, and highly respected individuals have been beating this drum for a number of years. Despite increased attention to family engagement in education and pockets of success here and there, they continue to find themselves in the role of having to advocate for family-school partnerships and convincing schools and families that engaging in a partnership approach is really the best way to support student educational outcomes. Thanks to the pandemic that served as an accelerant, schools and families, for the most part, have been “convinced” of the importance of partnerships within educational settings, and now find themselves in the position of wanting to know “how to do it.”
 
Family Engagement in Education from a Family-School Partnership Approach
 
Family engagement really means having parents/families and school personnel connected, communicating on a regular basis, with their efforts aligned so that families can support their children inside and outside of the classroom, and educators can deliver instruction in the most effective manner for their students. It is essential that trust is established and maintained between home and school and that home and school demonstrate respect for each other. When home and school focus on a common goal – for example, student learning – then, together with reciprocal trust and mutual respect, they can engage in multi-directional communication, listening to each other and contributing their knowledge and respective expertise on any given student.
 
To whom can we look for guidance for putting these thoughts into practice? Fortunately, there are several leaders nationally who have been connecting families and schools in true partnership for many years. One example is the revered Dr. Karen Mapp whose Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (Version 2; Mapp & Bergman, 2019) is a landmark in the partnership arena (see Mapp & Bergman, 2021, for a recent example of applying this framework in today’s educational reality). This framework emphasizes the importance of using family engagement strategies, policies and programs that are co-developed by, and build on the existing assets of, both schools and families. Through this framework, multiple roles and voices are represented by parents/families and school personnel. Each person is seen as having a unique set of expertise and, thus, a unique and valuable contribution to family engagement in education through these partnerships between home and school.
 
Another landmark is Dr. Joyce Epstein’s Framework of Six Types of Involvement for Comprehensive Programs of Partnership and Sample Practices (Epstein et al., 2019). In brief, Epstein’s framework identifies six types of parent involvement as parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community. While these are ways that parents/families can demonstrate involvement, they are meant to be a two-way partnership and co-developed between the home and school, rather than parents/families simply responding to what schools have pre-determined for family engagement.
 
The Carolina Family Engagement Center

The emphasis on the relationships between home and school is so important, federal funds have been allocated to support such efforts. In fact, our own state of South Carolina is home to one of 12 nationally funded state-wide family engagement centers from the U.S. Department of Education. The Carolina Family Engagement Center (CFEC) is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education (2018-2023) and housed in the South Carolina School Improvement Council in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina (UofSC). In partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE), CFEC provides capacity-building training and technical assistance in family engagement directly to families, schools, districts, and local communities across South Carolina. In addition to the CFEC Leadership team, five dedicated CFEC Regional Family Engagement Liaisons serve as the core of the work and activities of CFEC. CFEC is supported by the expertise of seven content area specialists, housed in the UofSC College of Education. CFEC also builds statewide infrastructure to support family engagement by serving as a hub that connects families and schools with CFEC community partners and others who provide a broad range of services and resources addressing students’ academic and developmental needs. CFEC assists schools and communities to engage families from cradle to career by facilitating the growth of new networks between early childhood and K-12 systems. CFEC is guided by the multiple frameworks for family engagement mentioned above and SCDE’s South Carolina Family Engagement K-12 Framework.
 
Partnerships are key to the function and operation of CFEC. The Wandersman Center has extensive expertise and experience in working together with a wide variety of organizations and entities that are focused on realizing transformational improvement. Wandersman Center is a key partner with CFEC through the use of Getting To Outcomes® (GTO), an evidence-based accountability process to engaging stakeholder teams, which include parents/families, schools, and community members in strategic goal-setting, implementation and ongoing monitoring, and continuous improvement. CFEC utilizes the implementation science framework of GTO to provide schools and families with a road map for planning, implementing, and evaluating their family engagement work. GTO prompts users to assess needs, identify specific goals and outcomes, utilize evidence-based practices with consideration of fit and capacity, plan and implement with quality, engage in ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement, and take steps to sustain successful activities. The GTO process is integrated throughout CFEC, including at the school and classroom levels, as well as to support community partner collaboration. GTO is a flexible and adaptive process which has been critical in continuing to support family engagement in education through the family-school partnership approach during this pandemic. Another important consideration, especially during the pandemic, has been understanding the readiness that schools and families have in their partnerships. In particular, we have collaborated to identify the strengths and challenges around the readiness motivation and capacity factors that are likely to impact successful partnerships.
 
As school-family partnerships changed from being nice to necessary, teachers and families had to adapt. We saw several examples of this through a variety of outlets (see the second half of our video session from the 2021 Southeastern School Behavioral Health Conference starting with “Adventures from the [Virtual] Field: A Panel Discussion with the CFEC Regional Family Engagement Liaisons” for even more examples than are provided in this blog). One example was seen when School Improvement Council (SIC) meetings in the Upstate region of South Carolina quickly adapted to the virtual platform because they were determined to maintain their active engagement. SICs are comprised of multiple voices of stakeholders at each school that, especially with their partnership with CFEC, discuss, plan, implement and monitor family engagement in education. The SIC at Belton Honea Path High School was trained by Upstate Regional Liaison, Lorilei Swanson, in the GTO process. This process helped the SIC identify, implement, and evaluate a family engagement goal during school reopening in the 2020-21 school year. Principal Mary Boarst was concerned about the high number of failing grades for students who chose to attend school virtually. Stakeholder team members collaborated on several strategies to send students and family members the message that grades counted this year as compared to grade forgiveness policies implemented during school closings in the spring of 2020. They also wanted students and families to know that the risk for COVID-19 in the school setting was much safer than in the surrounding community due to the strict safety procedures the school had in place. The SIC developed a social media campaign to get these messages out to all students and families. The administrative team also made phone calls and home visits to send this message to all families who had students with failing grades in their virtual classes.
 
Another example was seen in the CFEC Teacher Partner Program in which teachers throughout the state work closely with CFEC Regional Family Engagement Liaisons to enhance family engagement in education with families of the students in their classrooms. For their classroom family engagement project, Jackson Creek Elementary teachers Sra. Herron (Pre-K) and Ms. McDonald (first grade) collaborated with the School Reading Coach/Interventionist to create a series of monthly virtual literacy workshops using the Google Classroom platform with the goals of growing student reading and literacy skills and parent/caregiver knowledge of and confidence in supporting student learning. Working together, educators and parents, including those from Spanish-speaking families, communicated weekly by using WhatsApp translation and voice recording features to troubleshoot, ask/answer questions, clarify instructions, share example videos and photos, and collect feedback on prepared literacy activity and material packets provided to students for at-home practice. Pre- and post-surveys indicated that parent confidence in helping their student(s) learn how to read grew and all parents reported a clearer understanding of decoding, comprehension, and vocabulary skills, which aligned with improvements in student reading level, accuracy, and comprehension from beginning and end of year assessments.
 
A third example was seen in the fact that the inaugural cohort for the CFEC Parent Leadership Program was set to take place in person starting in September 2020; however, this program quickly had to switch to the virtual platform. Led by Dr. Yasha Becton in the College of Education at the University of South Carolina and co-facilitated by Lowcountry Regional Liaison, Ms. Claressa Hinton Thompson, they were able to meet this challenge, which amazingly resulted in only a one-month delay from the original starting date. Parents and facilitators met monthly during the 2020-2021 school year, and 12 parents recently graduated from this program.
 
Transformation in Family Engagement in Education – Let this be the “New Normal”
 
Taking a family-school partnership approach to family engagement in education, by incorporating the tenets described above, means that family engagement in education is transformed to focusing on the educational outcomes rather than solely focusing on the educational process. A focus on the educational process can be characterized this way. In the traditional approach, the teacher is present in the classroom and teaches. The students show up for class and have the opportunity to learn. The parents/families do their best to support their children in their educational growth and development. Teachers and parents carry out their roles independently of each other, and IF the educational outcomes happen, that’s a bonus. No… The new way of doing business is that the educational outcomes need to be happening, and at any given point in time, the parents/families and the teachers know that progress is being made. If progress isn’t being made, then families and schools have such a well-established partnership, they immediately recognize the first sign when any student’s performance is less than their absolute best, and both parents/families and teachers collaborate with each other as soon as any signs of behavioral or social and emotional problems begin to appear. It is an equitable, asset-based approach in which the school and families are both seen as co-creators who have valuable knowledge and skills to contribute, rather than the model in which the teacher’s expertise is valued over the parents’ knowledge and skills. Thus, there are overlapping spheres of partnership in family, school, and community. Rather than pointing fingers and playing the blame game, parents/families and schools work together as partners to strategize for getting the student the help and support that they need to be healthy and productive – on all fronts – as a whole child, rather than a compilation of fragmented parts across home and school contexts (e.g., academic achievement, social and emotional well-being, behavioral performance).

SCALE helped communities around the United States shift from focusing on problems to embracing adaptation, abundance, and connection: becoming a Community of Solutions. Based on the literature of sustainable development, being a Community of Solutions requires three catalysts of change:

• Relationships are defined as how people relate to themselves, each other, and to those affected by inequity.
• Improvement refers to how the community approaches the change process.
• Equity describes how the community creates abundance through leadership, adaptability, empowerment, and connection.

Becoming a Community of Solutions transforms communities into places where health is a shared value, there are thriving cross-sector partnerships, and there is improvement in population health, well-being, and equity.

A Tool for Transformation

The complexities of community relationships, improvement, and equity are distilled into a 40-item tool for assessing and planning community transformation called the Community Transformation Map (CTM). It took nearly a year for the CTM to be developed and refined by a SCALE workgroup of implementation scientists, evaluation experts, and community leaders. The workgroup scanned the community change literature for similar tools, cross-referenced items against these resources, and conducted multiple feedback rounds with participating community coalitions.
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Each item is graded on a five-level maturity map ranging from “not yet started” to “spreading and scaling.” (See Figure 1 below.)

Prevention’s Lack of Success
 
Institutions of higher learning have never been particularly adept at preventing sexual violence. Both policy experts and advocates for survivors say that schools have a history of not fully supporting prevention or response efforts related to sexual assault and harassment. This could be in part due to colleges and universities not being fully held accountable for Title IX violations. This began to change during the Obama administration, during which over 300 institutions were put under investigation for such violations. During 2011-2014, the federal government provided detailed guidance on how schools should better prevent and respond to sexual violence.
 
Despite this guidance, many current approaches to campus-based sexual assault and harassment prevention leave something to be desired. The vast majority of such programs do not show evidence of reducing rates of sexual assault. The most frequently implemented programs on college campuses, such as bystander trainings and online training modules, have been shown to increase students’ knowledge of sexual assault and related topics (such as how to define consent) and improve students’ prosocial attitudes. These programs also improve students’ active bystander skills, but to a lesser extent. The hope is that students will use these newfound skills to intervene in dangerous situations that might precede sexual assault and prevent a potential assault from happening. While colleges and universities have hoped that increasing student knowledge and skills and improving student attitudes can lower rates of sexual assault, this has not proven to be the case. On the contrary, programs that demonstrate evidence of improving knowledge and attitudes have not yet demonstrated effectiveness in lowering rates of victimization or perpetration of sexual assault.
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“What Right Looks Like”
 
For these reasons, it has been difficult to nail down “what right looks like” when it comes to campus-based sexual assault prevention programs. However, we do know what right looks like when it comes to broader aspects of organizational functioning that contribute to the likelihood of success for interventions and prevention initiatives more generally. Using these principles, we have worked with the Wandersman Center, the RAND Corporation, and the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) to determine how these general best practices can be used to guide evaluation and improvement of sexual assault prevention at both military service academies (MSAs) and civilian colleges and universities.
 
Improving sexual assault and harassment prevention first requires evaluating and improving the capacity of organizations implementing prevention programming (e.g., MSAs and civilian colleges and universities). Organizational functioning, or capacity, refers to an organization’s ability to function effectively and productively on a daily basis and to implement the work necessary to reach the organization’s stated goals. During the early stages of this work, we cross-examined several frameworks dedicated to guiding the implementation of evidence-based prevention initiatives to identify several areas of organizational functioning or capacity important for sexual assault prevention. The frameworks reviewed included the Department of Defense’s Prevention Plan of Action, the Getting to Outcomes model, the R=MC2 Organizational Readiness model, and the CDC’s Five Pillars for Comprehensive Sexual Assault Prevention. Components of organizational capacity highlighted by these frameworks included the importance of leadership support, workforce support, collaborative relationships, proper data collection and evaluation procedures, and sufficient resources.
 
We then translated these organizational components into a set of criteria that could be used to assess how closely an organization aligns with these best practices. An additional set of criteria was created to evaluate individual prevention activities based on the principles of effective prevention. These two sets of criteria were the basis for a manual first developed to guide MSAs in assessing their own sexual assault and harassment prevention efforts (the manual was first devised for military sites given the already-established relationship between the Wandersman Center and SAPRO). This manual was pilot tested at several MSAs. A parallel version, designed to be more appropriate for civilian colleges and institutions, was then created. This translation was reviewed by prevention staff at several universities across the country who provided comments for how to improve the manual, which led to revisions and improvements to increase adoption, offer additional information and support for users, and provide guidance for adapting the manual to fit specific contexts.
 
University Self-Assessment Guide
 
The resulting product is a step-by-step instruction manual providing university prevention staff and leadership with guidance on how to assess their institution’s adherence to 65 criteria that represent best practices in prevention at both the organizational and activity levels. This manual walks users through how to form an interdisciplinary working group, facilitate group functioning, gather data on prevention efforts, apply the criteria, and ultimately generate recommendations for improvement. A graphic from the guide detailing the seven steps in the self-assessment process can be seen below, as well as an illustration of the approximate timeline for completing
the self-assessment.

While the university manual has yet to be piloted, it is intended to increase university stakeholders’ knowledge of best practices in prevention programming and empower them to assess how closely their efforts toward sexual assault and harassment prevention align with these practices. These efforts to improve institutional knowledge, evaluation, and action may be our best hope at reducing rates of sexual assault and harassment.
 
The University Self-Study Guide will be available for free download on the RAND website soon. We will provide a new blog when it comes out, which will include a link to access the guide. 
​

We talked about how we work with organizations of many forms:

• Governmental organizations
• International and domestic organizations
• Smaller, community-based organizations
• Nonprofits
• Education systems
• Hospitals
• Academic institutions
• So on and so forth. 

 
But we were wrong. 
We don’t work with organizations.
We work with people. 

And this difference… It matters.

Jonathan was an important part of the development of Readiness Building Systems, from the original development of the R=MC2 framework to the most recent developments in applications. His contributions to our center will never go unnoticed.
​
Still, Jonathan’s departure is seen as a win-win for both Jonathan and the broader center. The decision to leave was rooted in a difference of interests between Jonathan’s newest ventures and the mission of the Wandersman Center. 

We see this departure as kind of like a band whose singer decides to make a solo album. The relationships between band members remain sound…  the world simply needs more music!

​This process of splitting, however, reminded us about the humanity in the work that we do.

It reminded us that we don’t work with organizations. We work with the people within the organizations. And these people within these organizations – their relationships – are what matter.

Relationships are what underlie change.

So, when we used to say, “At the Wandersman Center, we work with organizations…”,
​we were missing something.

We were talking about the body and forgot to mention the heart.

It’s not that we didn’t acknowledge the importance of relationships previously.

We’ve published on relationships in technical assistance. We’ve studied constructs like “resistance” and “Early Adopters”. We regularly used terms like inclusivity and local expertise, and we developed relationship-based frameworks to publish in academic journals. We’ve even added a formal and intentional engagement process as an early phase of our Readiness Building Systems.

We’ve known for years that relationships matter
(see Towards and Evidence Based System for Innovation Support).
Yet, we still missed a part of the human element.

We missed the emotional piece. 
​

Our first international webinar was a success! With our friends and colleagues Julia Moore and Sobia Khan from the Center for Implementation, we delivered a fully virtual and interactive two hour event on Readiness and Implementation Science. We were so excited to have participants from North America, Australia and Africa join us. Not only did we get to present and train others on Readiness, but we got to hear from almost 120 people what their thoughts were and how they might apply it to their own work. One major goal of the Wandersman Center is to spread our ideas and readiness framework in a way that inspires action and helps organizations, and we're excited and grateful for this opportunity to do so. Look out for more trainings or tools from us, and if you're interested in hearing more about this webinar, please email us at hello@wandersmancenter.org. 

But then we sat on publishing.   And the synthesis got older and older. And older.   Between us, we've had four children and two grandchildren since we stopped writing.

So, rather than just sit much longer on a six-year old literature review, we've just put it out on SocArXiv for everyone to read, use, and critique.

Find it here, https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/84cjq, and let us know what you think and what more recent studies we should zero in on. ​

But a big concern right now is that we see young people on the beaches of some states or celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day at neighborhood bars- ignoring this advice, congregating at parties and beaches and not getting it, that even if they get a mild illness, they will pass it on to people who will not do so well with it.  Moreover, newer studies are identifying mortality occurring among younger persons who do not have comorbid diseases. South Korea and Singapore appear to be bending the Corona virus curve because their citizens recognized the need to step up and follow guidances disseminated by the federal governments to protect those around them. 

As you know, it takes being willing (motivated) and able (capacity) to do something new-- whether it is stopping smoking, doing exercise regularly, learning to play an instrument.  The same is true for our organizations e.g., government agencies or health care systems.  These truths must be carried out not only in the corona virus epicenters (New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), but also in organizations in smaller states, rural areas, and in non-epicenter regions.

How can each organization understand what it means to be ready? At the Wandersman Center, an international leader in implementation science with evidence-based results that support positive long-term change for disparate public health initiatives, we are engaged in research and application to understand and build organizational readiness for public health concerns.  One of our key areas of interest is improving organizational readiness and insuring organizational sustainability.

Below can help you think about whether the organizations we count on are ready.   The ultimate success in halting the virus will relay on “near total cooperation from the public” combined with organizational efforts.

Motivation/Willingness
 For example in regards to willingness/motivation to put into place the practices used in Asia, we can ask ourselves how each of these aspects of motivation will affect our organizations’ willingness to do the things that work—

• How important is it to the organization to flatten the curve (priority)?
• How important is it to use evidence-based practices compared to other things organizations could be doing (relative advantage)?
• Can we see organizational progress in the near term or do we have to wait a year for results  (observability)?
• How do these organizational practices fit with the culture of the organization?
• How Simple/Hard is for organizations to do these practices (simplicity)?

Capacity/Ability

• How able are our organizations to do the practices that have been effective in China, Singapore, and Hong Kong?
• Do our organizational leaders have the knowledge and skills to do the practices (knowledge)?
• Do our organizations have a champion—an important leader who is insisting that these practices be done well (champion)?
• Are the organizations that are supposed to do the practices really supporting it  e.g., with equipment, training, person power  (supportive climate)?
• Are the relationships between different units in each organization coordinated (e.g., within the state Departments of Health, different units would need to work together to do the practice or in a hospital are the outpatient, emergency room, and in-patient units coordinated (Intra organizational relationships)?
• Are relationships between organizations in place to do the practice (e.g., between the Department of Health and first responders) (Interorganizational relationships)?

Organizations will have to be willing to change how they implement prevention and screening methods as they learn what is working and what is not.  This is called “re-planning” and was first named by General Dwight Eisenhower, who was aware of the first rule of disaster planning: “No Plan survives the first contact with the enemy unchanged.”  An example today is the fact that many primary care doctors’ offices are not offering patients the Coronavirus test, because the health care system that they work for cannot obtain masks, gloves and gowns to protect nurses who obtain nasal swabs from patients.  We are the middle of re-planning with soon to be FDA approved corona virus self-sampling efforts where the patient mails a swab of sputum to a central processing company.  This is an example of how people and health care providers can work together (what Nobel Prize winners call co-production). 

​Now that you have a clearer idea about what it means to be ready—we ask the question: Are organizations ready to take the lead in flattening the coronavirus curve?

Abraham Wandersman PhD, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology, the University of South Carolina.  Dr. Wandersman directs the Wandersman Center, an internationally recognized organization based on implementation science that performs research and program evaluation on citizen participation in community organizations.

James J Gibson MD, MPH is a medical epidemiologist retired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is now working part time lecturing at schools of Public Health in South Carolina and Georgia, and recently did part-time work on HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC).  He retired as State Epidemiologist and Director of Disease Control from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Controls CDHEC in 2012.  He has also worked previously for the CDC and as an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of South Carolina.  He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi in 1964-66.

Charles L Bennett MD PhD MPP is the SmartState Chair and Director of the SmartState Center for Medication Safety and Efficacy at the University of South Carolina.  He collaborated with the late Baruch Blumberg MD PhD, ’75 Nobel Prize in Medicine recipient in documenting the effectiveness of the World Health Organization’s hepatitis B eradication program was in decreasing the impact of hepatitis B in many Asian countries from 18% to 0.5% through nationwide vaccination programs.  

Second, we were in Camden for the co-design convening of the New Jersey Health Initiative’s Small Communities Hyperlocal Data Collaboration. Using data supplied and hosted by Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH), can communities learn to use it and implement improvement projects?  It was great to see a widely diverse set of community stakeholders come together to begin to chart out their communities’ journey. One thing that distinguishes this initiative is its spaciousness: We’ll be working together through June 2022, so there is a lot of room for learning, growth, and adjusting. Kudos to RWJF for continuing to invest and support innovative methods for funding and improvement.
 
Coming MAY 2020: Implementation Matters. Together with The Center for Implementation, we will be putting on one-day workshops in DC, Baltimore, Philly, and New York City. Watch this space for more details, including specific locations, pricing, and agenda.
 
Finally in Print. Formative Evaluation and Complex Health Improvement Initiatives: A Learning System to Improve Theory, Implementation, Support, and Evaluation.  According to our records, this article had a four-year gestational period.  Not too bad!
 
Enjoy leap day!

The core staff met in Columbia to chart our strategic priorities for 2020. Some of these are covered in the annual report, but to list them all in one spot:
 
1. Increasing the evidence base for effective technical assistance. Victoria Scott’s team from UNC-Charlotte is leading this work.

2. Launching rmc2.org! For the past few months, we’ve been working to develop an automated assessment and decision system to help people work through their own readiness building process. We and our technical support staff at Resrvoir have been furiously coding to get ready for a second-quarter soft launch. Screencap below! 

3. The ROADSHOW. Look, it’s no secret that implementation science needs an implementation science. Together with colleagues at The Center for Implementation, we will be offering a series of one-day workshops in the Northeast Megalopolis: DC, Baltimore, Philly, and NYC. The goal: to provide an easy, straightforward to implementation science concepts that can be used by front-line practitioners and change managers. We’ll be sharing details in the upcoming weeks! Hope to see you all there!

4. Writing, writing, and more writing. We’ve been lax in reporting on our progress to the peer-reviewed world. We’re in a much different place than the original RMC2 article back in 2015 and the RICQ article in 2017. It’s a strategic priority to get our stuff out into the academic literature.

5. Maybe more merch? See above photo. ​

And the groundhog didn't see his shadow!  Things looking up!

​2019 was a busy year for us and we have our annual report to show for it! The Wandersman Center applied the R=MC2 heuristic in over 16 projects with partners across the country. 

In this report, we share our accomplishments and advancements in how readiness can be used to promote change for social good. Some of our more notable advancements include modifications to our assessment phase, a new process to improve CMOR and how we build readiness, and our recently released Prevention Readiness Guide. 
​
While we learned a lot this year and are proud the work we’ve done, we recognize that we still have a big to-do list, and the report outlines some of these priority areas for 2020 (including the development of our interactive web platform for readiness)! We’re excited for what’s to come in 2020 and eager to share all of it with you! 

​By the time I hit publish on this post, it may already be 2020 where you live.  HAPPY NEW YEAR to our friends and colleagues in Australia, Japan, India, and anywhere east of Riyadh and Istanbul.  For the rest of our US-based team, we still have a few hours to finish up our task lists, our cleaning, and our blog posts before heading out for the night [actually staying in and eating Doritos with 5-year-olds].
 
We here are the Wandersman Center managed to cram a bunch into the final month of the decade. First, we finally put out our Readiness Building Guide. This effort was the culmination of a massive amount of thinking and writing over the past year, informed greatly bu our experiences working on sexual assault prevention in the military with colleagues at the RAND Corporation.  Read all about it and download it at the following link.

Also, earlier this month several of our team and faculty met up at the annual Dissemination and Implementation Conference in DC.  For those keeping track, I believe this was the 3rd implementation-specific conference this year (after SIRC and GIC), and yet the flavor and atmosphere was different at each.  One thing that we were thrilled to see is that NIH appears to be recognizing the importance of implementation practice in addition to implementation science.  This turn to pragmatism fits well with the overall purpose of the Wandersman Center.  We want to see outcomes with the people and organizations that we work with, so being able to apply the incredible work that researchers across the globe contribute is incredibly gratifying.  
 
Of course, we were double happy to hear R=MC2 shouted out in two different plenaries.  Our friend and implementation-ringer Maria Fernandez talked about a current R01 that she leads, Development and Validation of a Measure of Organizational Readiness (Motivation x Capacity) for Implementation, that aims to take the RDS to the next level of rigor while recognizing the current need for implementation measures.
 
Our faculty member, Michael Marks, wrote a great blog on the use of alternative currencies as a way to address inequity in community-based settings. Read all about it at this link.
 
Finally, I keep track of all the media I consume (except for songs, because that would get bonkers). Here’s a blog recounting the 14 books I read this year: some good, some terrible, some fiction, some not. 
 
Next year will bring a lot of big things (the tour and the online platform), so we’re raring to go.  Peace to you and your loved ones and a happy, healthy 2020.

Ethnography:4th Edition — David Fetterman. As much as possible, we try to be transdisciplinary. A huge portion of our work relies on embedded and community-based knowledge. So, being already familiar with David Fetterman’s work through Empowerment Evaluation, I thought this would be a good place to jump in. 

And it was! While a lot of the methods won’t be unfamiliar to people who do community-based participatory action research, I thought it was a good primer about how to go deeper. I’ve already published some thoughts on unobtrustive measures (with a response from Fetterman!), and my next set of reflections on qualitative methods will be coming out soon.

Marketing, 4th Edition — Masterson, Phillips, & Pickton. A quick story. We had a book chapter published in Case Studies in Needs Assessments on work we did in integrated care. As part of our reimbursement, we got a $300 credit from. So, I was like a kid in some kind of store.
The best heuristic I pulled from these was the seven P’s

1. Product. What you are trying to sell, including all the services and behaviors bundled into it. 
2. Promotion. How you go about spreading knowledge of the product.
3. Place. Where the product is delivered. 
4. Price. The assigned value
5. People. Who specifically delivers the service
6. Process. How the service is delivered. This is where implementation monitoring and QA really come in.
7. Physical Evidence. Whether there is any evidence that a transaction occurred. 

​Fire and Blood — George R.R. Martin. I am in violent agreement with the internet that general contours of the final GoT episodes were fine. The implementation was not (seriously, the Night King was the Droid Control ship from The Phantom Menace?)
​
This book was much better. While I was really bummed at first when the Conquest of Aegon Targaryen was reproduced word for word from A World of Ice and Fire, once the stories of Aerys and Jaharearys started though, it really really picked up. What I loved best were the various little side stories that added mysterious depth of the world. The tales of Elissa Farman and Princess Aerea were incredible. 
​
How To — Randall Munroe. If you don’t read the webcomic, XKCD, you must. Here’s a legendary comic.

​Anyway, he wrote a silly science book about how to use very roundabout ways to solve common problems.
 
Unleash the Power of Storytelling — Rob Biesenbach. As I write this, I’m five days out from seeing the Rise of Skywalker. George Lucas has always said that Star Wars was his attempt at mythmaking and trying to tap into basic fundamentals of the hero’s journey. From our work in SCALE with 100 Million and many other projects, we know that storytelling is a critical part of reporting findings and inspiring actions. So, while this book had a business-focus perspective, the ideas are broadly applicable: have a relatable character, a conflict, a turning-point, and a resolution. We tried to put more stories into our evaluation reports. Here’s one from our Serve & Connect work I’m writing on the fly.

Brittany and Amber worked to the bone over draft upon draft to get the combined readiness — relationship survey just write. After deeply thinking about item phrasing and order, they were ready to get a better understanding of community conditions that drive police-community relationships. 

Then the S&C board came back and said “This survey is too white.”

That stung. They had prided themselves on being cultural appropriate, or really taking community needs and feedback to heart. And yet, here was a plain and straightforward deconstruction of all their effort. 
So what did they do? Rather than guess what the community wanted, they just asked. They went into the next community meeting with long, brown sheets of butcher paper that they hung on wall. On these were very simple prompts, “what does an outsider need to know about your community”. “The police are ______.” and so on. By started at the beginning, the team got much more valuable and genuine information to guide the next step of S&C. 

Yeah, that’s much more lively than, “We used a mixed-methods approach to gather community-level feedback.”  (EDIT: 12.24.19.  Did it actually happen that way?  No, not quite.  However,  in the interest of simplicity, Biesenbach notes that it can be OKAY to change some details like the timeline and the principles.) 

The Prosperity Paradox — Christensen, Ojomo, Dillon. This book looked at how we bring about large scale economic change in impoverished areas, usually on the country level. The authors argued that traditional methods of support that o build up infrastructure, what we could call general capacity, is not the most effective way to lift people out of poverty. This is what they call the push model: we are pushing general capacity into settings that may not be able to sustain their general capacity over time. Any investment in general capacity runs this risk of becoming white elephants.

Instead, they argue that innovations can drive and then “pull” market-sustaining structures into place. They define innovation as, “a change in the processes by which an organization transforms labor, capital, materials, and information into products and services of greater value.” The idea is that by bringing in a novel technology that can create local, ancillary services, larger-scale economic change can happen. This process involves:

1. Targeting non-consumption. This isn’t about helping people “work smarter, not harder.” It’s about finding opportunities to create innovations where none exists. So, focusing more on GTO step 1 rather than using QI methods.
2. Making the product more affordable by leveraging economies of scale
3. Create conditions that require additional infrastructure (so putting innovation-specific capacities ahead of general capacities). To me, this potentially indicates that general capacity may not have a dominant role over the other subcomponents. This is potentially good news for when we want to work with lower resource organizations.

Michael Marks and I talked and we agreed that there is a good overlap for thinking about how readiness could be used to help enhance the delivery and implementation of "social innovations." I do think that the intriguing idea is that there might be some instances where it is appropriate to focus on innovation-specific capacities first and let them drag along the general capacities during implementation. This is the way that training and TA is traditionally provided, but we probably need to figure out why those models aren't as effective and when exactly to incorporate general capacity.  

Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman. Dense dense dense! I started reading this a few years ago but gave up because it was a little dry. As we have been thinking about ways to build and increased motivation and momentum, I realized that I needed to understand better how people appraised situations and make decisions. So, once more into the breach. I liked it more this time (in the interim I had read The Undoing Project by Michael.) So, yes, there is a lot in Kahneman’s book about how we misrepresent incoming information and how to improve decisions makings because of that.

Dare to Lead — Brene Brown. From December 2018 to February 2019, I heard people talking about Brene Brown in four very different project settings. I felt obligated to dig deeper to see what the fuss was about. It was just okay. Brown’s theory of leadership reminded me a lot of St. Carl Rogers and the idea of genuineness. The idea is that people, especially people in leadership, need to mindfully own their feeling and use these to transparently communicate with their team.

Top of Mind — John Hall. More about general marketing than support change efforts. Basically, Hall argues that an organization needs to regularly generate and share content as a means of developing a trusting and ongoing relationship with a customer base. In 2020, we’re going to be focusing more on the evidence-based behind engagement and building TA relationships. The ideas in Top of Mind are more about trying to develop these relationships asynchronously at scale, which maybe?

Contagious — Jonah Berger. I completely forgot I had read this book. It more of the same. You need to socially share something of value so that others can see it for themselves. Kind of like building observability. 

The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle. Back in August, our team was having a problem with the construct of organization culture. This was spilling over from our intervention mapping work into our work with UTexas on the R01 measurement project. So, I pulled up the top-ranked book on culture I could find. The issue of psychological safety within an organization came up again. This is a concept put forward by Amy Edmondson (whose book I read last year), and who recently spoke at the 2019 D&I Conference. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of business trade books seem to fall into the same set of examples. I think I’ve read about Zappos at least three times by this point. I also thought the Seal Team Six example was a little showy here.

American Pastoral — Phillip Roth. Recommended by a friend who thought it was a “Scaccia novel.” Who can really know the contents of the human heart?

ReWork — Jason Fried and David Heinemeier-Hansson. No, not WeWork, ReWork. This book was too disruptive in a silicon-value sense for my taste. There’s no central thesis, just a series of odd anecdotes and platitudes with any discussion of the underlying philosophy. “Don’t make plans!” 🤨
​
No ranking: Building a Story Brand. My daughter was three weeks old when I read this. Our local library has a movie night, so my sons and wife went while I sat in an easy chair reading this. I can’t tell you anything about it.