Judging Success?

After a pleasant meal consisting of my wife's world-renowned chicken pot pie, and a delicious lemon pie of some sort they'd brought, the conversation shifted when we moved from the table to the living room. We talked of things that matter, though it did seem that the conversations went in a gender-specific direction, at least in terms of who talked to whom about what.

Then, he asked me a penetrating question, one that has perplexed me before, during, and after its asking. "How do you judge the success of a team?" Or something to that effect. Excellent question. One that I'd like for our modest readership to weigh in on. How does one evaluate the efforts of social justice teams, or how does anyone evaluate and critique, or whatever other verbs you want to apply, in an arena where matters are exceedingly complex?

Is success judged by whether or not we were asked to present at some conference? Whether or not we learned more? Spoke out more? Wrote more on a blog or in a class project? Developed a higher level of sensitivity to the issues? Connected people with other people? Traveled? Engaged others in what we're doing?

Is "success" measured qualitatively? Or, is it measured quantitatively? Or, is the question really unimportant?

If you hit the links to the pages of the teams on the lower right of this page, you can see that we've done a few things, and I'd like to think that those folks did those things well. Some things have been done, but we're still sitting on the side lines, waiting to put some of those efforts into play. Some things continue to evolve.

I'm curious these days to know what other COAMFTE-approved MFT programs, like this one here at ACU, are doing in the areas of the curriculum and social justice and then in the area of co-curricular practices related to social justice.

Again, friends, how would you evaluate the success of a team of social justice advocates?