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  4. Stories

Leading in Uncertainty: Q&A with Bryce Bowman

Joe Boland Stories, Corporate

In the wake of the tragic killing of George Floyd, leaders are being challenged to listen, learn, and do better. We recently had the opportunity …

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Reimagining Education: Giving Students a Seat at the Table

Andrew Findlay K-12, Stories

How many times have you heard a version of the expression: “we need to get more adults in the room” to find a solution to …

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Diversity and Inclusion: An Initiative or a Mindset?

Dessalen Wood Stories, Corporate

Scan business articles or conference agendas, and you’ll likely see diversity and inclusion as a critical topic. You’ll hear how it’s the right thing for …

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Living your culture story with Lorie Corcuera, CEO and Co-Founder of SPARK Creations

Andrew Findlay Stories

Sometimes it’s the little things in early life that go on to inform who we become as adults. When Lorie Corcuera was a young girl, …

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Why employee engagement starts in Kindergarten

ThoughtExchange K-12, Stories

Whether you favor nature or nurture, the person you are today was inevitably shaped to some extent by the events of your childhood. And if …

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K12 Education

Bringing people together and building community: A leader’s journey

Jayme Smithers Stories

Community. What does it mean to you? The simplest definition is a group of individuals living in the same general area. Go deeper, and community …

Read More
Building Trust

From Competent to Compassionate: The changing language of leadership

Andrew Findlay Corporate, Stories

Words matter. The language leaders use to frame their relationship with work, people, teams and outcomes, can make the difference between enlightened leadership, or falling …

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Chimps and change: How hacking traditional power dynamics can help leaders inspire cultural transformation

Dessalen Wood Corporate, Stories

As employee expectations about leadership and work environments change, organizations need to transform their cultures to keep pace and to get ahead of disruption—because, no …

Read More
Bringing People TogetherBuilding TrustDifficult conversations

Creating authentic workplace diversity and inclusion: Te talks with Jessie Nelson of KITH+common

ThoughtExchange Stories, Corporate

Organizations everywhere have realized (or are quickly figuring out) that embracing diversity and inclusion is essential for their success. diversity and inclusion At the same …

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Bringing People TogetherBuilding TrustDifficult conversations

City Councillor Discovers What’s Important to Rosslanders and Wants to Share with All

Senka Kovacevic Stories

ROSSLAND, BC, October 29, 2014 – Nearly 1,000 heartfelt thoughts came forward from the community when City Councillor and mayoral candidate, Kathy Moore asked Rosslanders …

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Community Engagement

KREB

CHALLENGE

  • Work within a short timeline to engage a geographically dispersed group in a deep conversation about a potential organizational change

SOLUTION

  • A five-question exchange that inspired a critical discussion amongst 40% of the membership

RESULTS

  • Deep understanding of the direction members wanted to take
  • Insights from members that can inform future decision-making processes

Clinton Community School District

CHALLENGE

  • Hold a broad-based conversation with the community on a sensitive topic
  • Act on the results to meet the community’s stated needs

SOLUTION

  • An exchange designed to discover the community’s knowledge and needs
  • A follow-up exchange that narrowed down broad feedback into relevant actions

RESULTS

  • Took informed action in a highly visible way
  • Gained understanding of the community’s needs
  • Offered relevant learning opportunities

UNESCO – Julene Reed

CHALLENGE

  • Overcome language and cultural barriers to identify key topics for a group discussion

SOLUTION

  • A single-question exchange using mobile devices that instantly showed actionable results

RESULTS

  • Quickly identified important topics and drove forward group discussions

North Branch Area Public Schools

CHALLENGE

  • Overcome an entrenched culture of mistrust
  • Communicate with a busy community of commuters
  • Pass the first facilities bond in 15 years

SOLUTION

  • A broad-based exchange to discover concerns and appreciations
  • An exchange designed to distribute and gather feedback on bond information

RESULTS

  • Up-front insights into potential community questions
  • Increased confidence from positive feedback
  • Passed all three questions with significant margins

VantageOne: A better Vantage point

CHALLENGE

  • Quickly gain insight into customers experience and market placement
  • Effectively use insights to inform a brand messaging process

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that engaged more than 1,200 customers
  • Insights delivered through advanced data analysis and visualizations

RESULTS

  • Brand messaging informed by rich data directly from customers
  • Potential for increased market share from improved credit card offerings

Ann Arbor Public Schools: The starting line

CHALLENGE

  • Learn what the community really thought of high school start times
  • Find a schedule that would work for everyone

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that gathered the thoughts of 4,512 people
  • Data analysis that helped effectively design community messaging

RESULTS

  • Created a flexible, contemporary approach to scheduling
  • Developed a transportation model to meet all needs
  • Gained publicity and recognition as a leader on the issue amongst peers

Camosun College – Engaging stakeholders in a vision for the future with thoughtexchange

CHALLENGE

  • Create trust and ownership in a vision for the future
  • Get beyond special interest groups to hear from more stakeholders

SOLUTION

  • Hundreds of stakeholders confidentially and independently shared and rated thoughts
  • Deep insights and rich data delivered through advanced data analysis

RESULTS

  • Discovered student experience was most important to the majority of staff
  • Collected data to make it easier to execute the building of new facilities
  • Gained confidence in leadership and community connection

Pentucket – Laying The Groundwork

CHALLENGE

  • Ensure all voices are heard in a conversation about facilities
  • Bring people with divergent views together around a shared facilities vision
  • Get people to pay attention and consider district information

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that let all community members contribute confidentially and independently

RESULTS

  • Heard a wide range of community voices and discovered common interests
  • Successfully communicated information about the district’s facilities perspective
  • Exposed people to new perspectives and discovered needs for a potential shared facility

Wolf Creek – Setting priorities

CHALLENGES

  • Broaden community engagement in a geographically spread-out school district
  • Learn what was most important to the community in their schools
  • Discover student needs and enhance programming opportunities

SOLUTIONS

  • A broad-based exchange that let adult stakeholders share what’s important in their own words
  • A Student Voice exchange that asked students what mattered most to them in their schools

RESULTS

  • Aligned community priorities with government objectives and strategic planning
  • Developed new programming opportunities based on student needs
  • Increased viability of small rural schools

Highline – Building community trust

CHALLENGE

  • Build community trust and pass a bond referendum after 10 years and two failures

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that let the community easily share and prioritize each other’s thoughts

RESULTS

  • Increased trust and involvement from the community
  • Passed bond referendum with 67% in favor

Mountain View Whisman – Pushing the boundaries

CHALLENGES

  • Engage more people on a difficult topic to learn what’s important to everyone
  • Make informed district boundary changes that receive community support

SOLUTIONS

  • Leveraged ThoughtExchange software and professional services to drive leading engagement practices and reach more people
  • Utilized ThoughtExchange’s rich data analysis and visualization tools to quickly pinpoint trends, themes and outliers to learn what’s important to the whole community

RESULTS

  • Reduced person hours and increased participation
  • Made a data-driven boundary decision that received community support

Westview – Breaking down communication silos with ThoughtExchange

CHALLENGE

  • Bring together two community groups with drastically different values and interests for a conversation to identify common spending priorities

SOLUTION

  • An exchange accommodated the needs of both groups and brought their thoughts together to show what was most important to everyone

RESULTS

  • Discovered a positive sentiment towards technology integration and implemented a one-to-one Chromebook program

Calgary Catholic – Sheldon Kennedy and ThoughtExchange

CHALLENGE

  • Collect and prioritize feedback on an important resource from a group of 140 leaders attending a meeting

SOLUTION

  • ThoughtExchange’s leader app let them easily exchange thoughts and produce a prioritized, actionable report in minutes

RESULTS

  • Fast and meaningful feedback saved time and helped create a comprehensive, accurate resource on a critical issue

Linn-Mar Community School District – Overcoming the new superintendent challenge with ThoughtExchange

CHALLENGE

  • Help a new superintendent quickly ramp up, overcome a communications challenge and gather broad community input for a strategic plan

SOLUTIONS

  • Partnering with ThoughtExchange to engage the community in an online discussion that let them exchange thoughts in response to open-ended questions
  • Rich data combined with data visualization tools for quickly pulling specific, descriptive and actionable information

RESULT

  • A data-driven strategic plan that was built using the community’s own words and supported by people who were involved in the process

RJC – Driving change and increasing retention to boost the bottom line

CHALLENGES

  • Engage under-35 staff to learn how to improve work experience
  • Increase retention and improve productivity

SOLUTIONS

  • An exchange that reached over 80% of the under-35 demographic
  • A customized analysis that presented city and team- specific data
  • A prioritized list of 200- plus items of importance to millennial staff

RESULTS

  • Feedback informed a business decision to move into a more-modern office space
  • Made fast progress by actioning some “simple win” items
  • Connected with employees on a deeper level to increase job satisfaction and retention

BCIT – Engaging staff in a conversation about the future of post-secondary education with ThoughtExchange

CHALLENGE

  • Create a productive and open discussion with 3,000 staff
  • Analyze input and use it to inform a strategic plan

SOLUTION

  • An Advanced Exchange that created a productive discussion with thoughtful input, while avoiding the limitations of a survey
  • Industry-leading data analysis that delivered actionable insights and decreased person-hours by 20x

RESULTS

  • 4x more participation and thoughts to inform a strategic direction for education
  • Validation for leader’s direction and increased confidence to move forward

ICE – Harnessing collective creativity to shape the future of Catholic education across Ontario

CHALLENGE

  • Engage nearly 10,000 representatives from 37 school districts in two different languages to inform a symposium and strategic vision for the future

SOLUTION

  • Expert guidance from ThoughtExchange on how to manage such a broad discussion and how to ask the right questions to get the best results
  • A series of Advanced Exchanges that let people confidentially share and rate thoughts online, whenever and wherever was convenient for them

RESULTS

  • An understanding of interests helped guide discussions and establish direction on a province-wide and individual district level
  • Input to create a strategic document that was more relevant to constituents and would be well-received due to an open, fair process

Mountain View Whisman – School Safety

CHALLENGE

  • Facilitate a productive community conversation on an emotionally charged topic
  • Find solutions and develop a plan to help the community move forward on the issue of school safety

SOLUTION

  • A community-wide exchange that created a safe space for people to share and prioritize each other’s thoughts to reveal common concerns
  • An online, interactive communication channel that included a broader, more diverse group of people

RESULTS

  • A community meeting that quickly moved beyond emotion to focus on solutions
  • An action plan that’s better informed and more broadly supported in the community

Spartanburg – Transforming teacher

CHALLENGE

  • Improve the work-life balance and energize staff who felt overworked
  • Test the effectiveness of change initiatives on a year-over-year basis

SOLUTION

  • Two Advanced Exchanges that let staff confidentially share and rate their thoughts
  • Data analysis that revealed staff experience and recommended clear action steps

RESULTS

  • Happier staff who appreciate having their thoughts heard and acted upon
  • Enthusiastic teachers providing engaged students with rigorous content in positive classroom environments
  • More applications for teaching positions in the district

Kwantlen – Building a better strategic

CHALLENGE

  • Find a simple, fast and non-prescriptive way to engage 20,000 students and 1,400+ employees across four campuses
  • Learn what was most important across the organization and use the insights to create a better strategic plan

SOLUTION

  • Partnering with ThoughtExchange to launch an Advanced Exchange that got 2x more engagement in ¼ the time, with 10x less staff hours
  • Rich data and important insights from stakeholder experience that showed key themes and recommended a clear course of action

RESULTS

  • A better strategic plan focused on shared priorities and the most important goals across the university
  • A rich database of insights from stakeholders to guide resource allocation and enable more effective decisions

Spartanburg – Passing a first-ever bond

CHALLENGE

  • Prepare a bond package that would allow the district and superintendent to pass a first-ever referendum in a state where bonds are frequently unsuccessful
  • Earn constituent trust and generate $120 million in funding to address important facilities needs

SOLUTION

  • A Weather Report exchange that let the community freely share what mattered most and revealed the need to focus on facilities
  • A Facilities Scenario exchange that allowed open, prioritized community feedback on two bond packages
  • Rich data and advanced analytics that quickly revealed the most important insights

RESULTS

  • A bond package built around key community priorities and backed by trust created through open, transparent communication
  • 80% support for a first-ever referendum on a $120-million bond package

Arcadia – engages more people

CHALLENGE

  • Get more busy people to engage in a community-wide discussion about LCAP priorities
  • Make in-person meetings with community groups more effective

SOLUTION

  • A broad-based exchange that asked the community open-ended questions, let them respond in their own words, and exchange thoughts with others.

RESULTS

  • A more responsive and granular approach to LCAP through surfacing of district-wide and site-specific priorities
  • Greater community involvement and ownership of district decisions

Pfeiffer – Driving Retention

CHALLENGE

  • Learn what matters to parents and students before and during orientation to create a better experience that supports student retention

SOLUTION

  • An exchange before orientation that let leadership learn what mattered most to parents and students ahead of the event
  • Exchanges during orientation sessions to gather questions and ideas in real-time
  • Ongoing exchanges to track student experience and increase success

RESULTS

  • A better understanding of student and parent experience that informed more relevant content and helped create a more engaging event
  • A base of rich data to guide future decision making, and a way to continue being more responsive to student needs

Carroll ISD – Engaging

CHALLENGE

  • Find a new way to communicate with constituents and increase engagement
  • Create an open dialogue and gather feedback to support conversations around attendance rezoning and build outs

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that let the community openly share thoughts and collectively prioritize what was most important
  • Data analysis and visualization tools for digging into data to discover trends, interests and actionable insights

RESULTS

  • Nearly 4x more public participation than traditional methods
  • Clear action items to help the district move forward and build a conversation around important topics

Nanaimo Leader

Thought Leader
Dale Burgos

Title
Executive Director of
Communications,
Privacy and Community
Engagement

Nanaimo Industry

Industry:
K-12 Public Education

Location:
British Columbia, Canada

Size:
14,000 students
36 schools

Nanaimo – Budget

CHALLENGE

  • Collect actionable qualitative data that can be presented in a concise format
  • Build community trust by learning what matters

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that let people confidentially share and rate responses to an open-ended question
  • Data analysis tools that showed what was most important to everyone and where people agree or disagree

RESULTS

  • A set of key data points to inform a better budgeting process
  • Increased community trust and support resulting from a fair, transparent process

Kohala High School – Leader

Kassie Tarpley

Thought Leader
Kassie Tarpley

Title
Student

Art Souza

Thought Leader
Art Souza

Title
Superintendent

Kohala High School – Industry

 

Industry:
K12 Public Education

Location:
Hawaii

Size:
11,000 students

Kohala High School – Wins

Wins:

  • Gave students a safe space to exchange thoughts and be heard adults on a sensitive topic
  • Influenced state bullying policy with a student-led initiative and created a model for future student-generated solutions
  • Inspired a future community crowd leader by empowering a student to take a leadership role on a school issue

Little Elm ISD Leader

Daniel Gallagher

Thought Leader
Daniel Gallagher

Title
Superintendent

Little Elm ISD Industry

Industry:
K-12 Public Education

Location:
Denton County, Texas

Size:
7,785 students
9 schools

Little Elm ISD Budget

CHALLENGE

  • Board direction to create a bond package and run a campaign two days after signing on as a new superintendent

SOLUTION

  • ThoughtExchange data enabled leadership to build a bond package based on what mattered most to stakeholders and the district

RESULTS

  • 69% support for a $240 million bond on an election held just 14 weeks after becoming a new superintendent

Manchester Leader

Daniel Gallagher

Thought Leader
Dr. Angus Hearmon

Title
Head of Research IT

Manchester Industry

Industry:
Higher Education

Location:
Manchester, UK

Size:
40,490 students
6,000+ academic and
research staff

Manchester Budget

CHALLENGE

  • Engage busy academics across departments to discover what’s important to everyone
  • Collect evidence-based, actionable data to inform a business case for purchasing IT resources

SOLUTION

  • An exchange that engaged 7x more staff in 4x less time and included diverse perspectives
  • Actionable qualitative data that showed what mattered to different groups of staff

RESULTS

  • A successful business case that met the needs of all researchers
  • Staff who felt truly heard through the use of fair, transparent process

Hilton Central Schools Leader

Dr. Casey Kosiorek

Thought Leader
Dr. Casey Kosiorek

Title
Superintendent

Hilton Central Schools Industry

Industry:
K12 Education

Location:
New York State

Size:
4,500 students

Hilton Budget

The ROI

The Hilton team also held two public meetings on the issue of armed security guards. To reduce
emotional volatility, there was no opportunity for the public to speak. Dr. Kosiorek and four
of his senior administrators did their best to answer a manually collated version of 200 submitted questions over two nights. Staff later posted all questions with answers on the district website.

“ThoughtExchange was much more beneficial,” Dr Kosiorek says. “It captures the thoughts right there, and everyone can just log in and see what’s being said. ThoughtExchange costs pennies on the dollar when you consider the cost of all the staff time involved in setting up those two forums, collating all the information and getting the answers back out through the website.”

Windsor Central Leader

Dr. Jason Andrews

Thought Leader
Dr. Jason Andrews

Title
Superintendent

Windsor Central Leader Industry

Industry:
K-12 Public Education

Location:
Broome County
New York

Size:
1,747 students
4 schools

Windsor Central Questions

The Questions

The Questions

  • What are your thoughts about changing grades to 1-4 rankings?
  • What are some important ideas we should consider as we work to make our schools safe and welcoming for all students, staff and families?

Kings Local School District Leader

Dawn Gould

Thought Leader
Dawn Gould

Title
Public Relations Coordinator

Kings Local School District Industry

Industry:
K12 Public Education

Location:
Warren County, Ohio

Size:
4,518 students
7 buildings preschool
through 12th grade

Kings Local School District Questions

The Questions

  • What are some important things for us to consider as we plan for how we maintain and improve our facilities in the years to come?
  • What are your thoughts or questions about the facilities options presented?
  • What thoughts and questions do you have about this final draft of the Kings Master Facilities Plan?

Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Regional Division Leader

Dr. Chris Smeaton

Thought Leader
Dr. Chris Smeaton

Title
Superintendent

Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Regional Division Industry

Industry:
K12 Education

Location:
Alberta

Size:
5,079 students

Plainview Old Bethpage Leader

Dr. Lorna Lewis

Thought Leader
Dr. Lorna Lewis

Title
Superintendent

Plainview Old Bethpage Industry

Industry:
K12 Education

Location:
New York

Size:
5,200 students

Use Case:
District Planning Communications

Chula Vista Leader

Dr. Lorna Lewis

Thought Leader
Dr. Francisco Escobedo

Title
Superintendent

Chula Vista Industry

Industry:
K-6 Public Education

Location:
Chula Vista, CA

Size:
29,300 students

Use Case:
Accountability Planning

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