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Every time I attend a conference or trade show I always learn something new. In most cases people will come away with lots of ideas and useful information that will help them improve themselves both professionally and as an individual. Sometimes what you see and hear at a conference reaffirms what you are currently doing or gives you that extra push to implement something new.

At a recent education conference, the presenter was showing a new system that his IT Department had developed. The system analyzed data that teachers entered and produced very informative reports, demographics and statistics that were extremely useful to school district administrators. The end result was very impressive but it meant that teachers had to enter lots of data so the reports could be produced in the first place. Remember the saying ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ or in this case ‘Nothing in, nothing out’.

Having had the pleasure meeting many teachers over my career, I’m pretty accurate in saying they are busy people and data entry on a computer system is not one of their top ten joys. Other attendees in the room were thinking the same thing and one person said ‘How did you manage to persuade your teachers to take the time to enter the data, I know that would never happen in our school district’. The presenter went on to explain that he had the same experience in the past but this time they decided to give something back to the teachers in the form of very useful reports and information to help them to their jobs better. By doing so the teachers are getting something back in return for their efforts. As the early adopters passed the news to others it was not long before every teacher in the school district was entering data so they could also receive the same meaningful reports that would help them to be better teachers.

So the next time you request someone to perform a task that will require some work on their part, consider giving them something back in return. You may be amazed at the results.

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