eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468564372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 03/29/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 132 |
| File size: | 301 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Think Like A PATRON
(WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND)By Ken DeSieghardt
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Ken DeSieghardtAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-6439-6
Chapter One
The 80/20 Rule
There's a familiar maxim in business that goes something like this: "80 percent of your business come from 20 percent of your customers."
It's a tried-and-true reminder that a business's best opportunities for meaningful growth come from those who are already active, engaged customers. The cost of encouraging more purchases from already satisfied customers is a fraction of what it takes to build and nurture new relationships.
Of course, this doesn't mean that a business should ignore the great unwashed who may not have discovered how much they need the widget the company's peddling. It's simply a fact that the cost of adding these new customers is typically far greater than the cost of convincing those already in the know to buy more from you.
The intent of the 80/20 guideline is to focus the time, energy, and resources a business has available where the greatest opportunity for a meaningful net return exists.
Our research has discovered that school districts have their own 80/20 rule of sorts. Unfortunately, they tend to apply it backwards.
Specifically, school districts typically obsess over the thoughts, ideas, concerns, and opinions of the 20 percent of patrons (a majority of whom are parents) who make it a point to speak up regularly, while assuming that all is—for the most part—fine with the 80 percent of citizens who rarely, if ever, say a word.
Generally speaking, about half of that 20 percent are the people I call "the Happys." (Please excuse the rather unique spelling.)
"The Happys" are those smiling folks who are first to sign up to volunteer, who are always at the PTO or PTA meetings, who are always popping in at school to enjoy a noon meal with their child or to thank a teacher for special attention, who are always writing letters to the editor championing the district, and so on.
They're your raving fans. They're well-known and appreciated at the building level, and the true stars of this group are also known at the district level because they've made it clear that they "will do anything for the schools." The Happys are the people you start each day hoping you'll see, because they're great morale boosters around the Central Office or in your school buildings.
The other half of that 20 percent are—as you probably guessed—"the Unhappys."
"The Unhappys" are also first. They're first to stand up with the dicey question at an open house; first to call you when something doesn't seem quite right to them; first to speak negatively about your bond issue; first to say no when asked to join a committee; first to speak during the public comment time at the Board of Education meeting (often on the same topic they talked about last month); and so on.
The Unhappys are the ones most likely to cause you to lose sleep, because nothing you do seems to satisfy them. It's never the answer they are looking for (or hoping for), and the more you leave them unsatisfied, the more they seem to find fault.
So, it's only human nature that you relish the encounters with the Happys and gird yourself for interactions with the Unhappys.
And who gets lost in that equation? The 80 percent of your patrons whom you never hear from.
Research backs up what would seem to be common sense when it comes to these groups and their attitudes toward your district.
Specifically, unless you do something that deliberately alienates the Happys, they'll remain your fans for life. Think about it: how much turnover is there at your local building PTOs or PTAs (aside from the times when the leaders of those organizations move up to the next building level with their sons and daughters)?
By the same token, there is no way to please a true member of the Unhappys.
In a twist on the old breakup line: in this case, "It's not you, it's them." They are who they are because they enjoy a scrap, or maybe because they didn't get their way once in school and see this as their chance to get back at someone in authority. Whatever the reason for their feistiness, they can't seem to understand the word no. They just like being a thorn in the school district's side.
Knowing this, why do so many school districts focus their emotional energy and resources on the Happys and the Unhappys when it's the opinions of those you never hear from that districts need to understand, and it's their support that districts need to cultivate?
More than likely, it's because understanding this silent but vast majority seems like an impossible task. They never show up for public meetings, never leave you a voicemail or send you an e-mail, never set foot in any one of your buildings (expect, perhaps, at conference time), never come to a sporting event, and never volunteer for anything.
All they seem to do is vote. And that's where they make their voices heard.
Are they trying to be mysterious? For the most part, no.
The truth is that most patrons in this 80 percent majority are so busy with other things in their lives that they cherry-pick a handful of items as ways to judge whether schools, and the district leaders who run them, are doing a good job. (This is much, much different from the Happys and the Unhappys, who regularly review your budget, your staffing plans, the books on your library shelves, your coaches' policies regarding playing time, and so on. They live to praise or to criticize, and they want to be well-armed when they do either.)
In other words, if the things that matter most to this silent majority appear to be functioning effectively, then they'll generally think that everything else is running smoothly as well.
These patrons may not be active advocates, but they are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt on most topics if they believe that the district's performance is acceptable to exemplary in the areas that matter to them.
For school district leaders who are excited about the work they do and who want to share each and every detail with their patrons, this can be rather discouraging news. But, study after study that we've conducted—in districts from very large and urban to tiny and rural—backs up this sobering assertion: your patrons don't care as much as you do.
Knowing this, you have two choices.
Choice A is to try to make them care by overwhelming them with data and with reasons why they should care. This is the "If they only knew, they would care" approach, and it's all wrong.
Why? Because it violates the basic principle of communication:
The sender of the information must be communicating something that interests the listener. No interest equals no listening.
Like it or not, the 80 percent in the middle aren't interested in much detail. They already tune you out now on most areas—except the ones they care about—and you can't change that by shoveling more data in their direction. Stop trying to "convert" them.
It's the same reason that BMW doesn't try to win over Kia drivers, and vice versa. While you may occasionally find a Kia driver with a big, fat company bonus check on the showroom floor at the local BMW shop or a recently unemployed BMW driver who finds it necessary to downsize his or her ride, both companies know that if they tried to talk to someone who's not inclined to listen, they would be wasting their time and money. They save the details for the 20 percent and pick up some of the remaining 80 percent by chance.
Choice B, on the other hand, involves focusing the majority of your communications and district/patron relationship-nurturing efforts on the topics that are of interest to this audience and bringing them "into the tent" that way. This doesn't mean you ignore the other great news you have to share; you just don't spotlight it quite as frequently or as aggressively as you may want to.
The good news in Choice B is twofold.
First, members of the 80 percent group will start thinking, "Hey, the district knows the things that interest me," and they will begin to pay closer attention to what you have to say on all fronts. Second, your Happys and Unhappys will still be right there, soaking it all in. (No, there is no magic communications formula that makes the Unhappys go away or changes their minds.)
Sound easy? It isn't.
You know how good your district is, and you are very familiar with all the great news you could share to prove that point. Leaving some of that information on the shelf when you speak to your patron population requires discipline.
Worse yet, you will get tired of hearing yourself talk about the same subjects (just a different verse each time) over and over again. You'll think to yourself, "Can't I say something else?"
The short answer is "yes." Again, this isn't a case of shutting off the spigot of information. It's a matter of simply finding the right balance of hot and cold water that will make the largest number of your patrons sit up and take notice.
It's sort of the school district version of what advertising icon David Ogilvy said when asked about his definition of marketing: "Marketing is finding out what people want and giving them more of it, and finding out what they don't want and giving them less of it."
Your communications should follow this simple, yet powerful, definition. On the pages that follow, we'll discuss what our research suggests patrons in districts large, small, and in between have said they want more of.
Chapter Two
The Patron Information Pyramid
Step into any first-year high school journalism classroom, and you'll hear about the "inverted pyramid."
Simply stated, the concept says that when you are writing a story for the media—whether it be print, broadcast, online, or another format—you should put all the most important facts at the beginning and the details deeper into the story. The idea is that if a reader, listener, or viewer only glances at (or only hears the beginning of) your story, you need to give him or her the salient points right away and leave the details for those who are interested enough to keep reading, watching, or listening.
Coined long before our collective attention spans devolved to eight-second sound bites, headlines on a crawl across the television screen, or snippets on the Web, the inverted pyramid is as much a sales strategy for capturing the attention of the broadest target audience as it is a journalistic principle.
Journalists then and now know that they are competing for your attention, so they have to give you a reason to care about what they have to say.
That reason goes first in the story ("Stock market takes a nosedive!"), followed by exactly how much of a dive it was, which types of stocks took the biggest hit, and so on.
In the world of school districts and the information they have to share, the principle of the inverted pyramid applies as well—but with a twist. What goes at the top of this inverted pyramid should be dictated by what patrons think is important—whether or not the district sees it the same way.
That's a statement that's likely to upend more than a few school district communication plans out there. Patrons should be extremely interested in every nook and cranny of school district life, right? After all, it is their tax dollars we're spending, so shouldn't we go out of our way to prove that we're worth what they're investing?
In theory, yes. After all, schools are the foundations of great communities, so understanding the details about what is going on in your local school district—so that you can get involved—should be important. Sadly, it isn't.
Once again, you're left with the choice of force-feeding information that you think is important or following what we call the Patron Information Pyramid™. Our research will tell you that the latter is the way to go for your district's health, for your budget, and for your sanity.
The Patron Information Pyramid looks like this:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In studying this order of information, your mind will likely drift to that "frequent flier" patron who always signs up to speak at your Board of Education meeting. Or the one who is constantly haranguing your best principal over the math curriculum the district is using. Or the one who always sends you statistics about how students who use Apple computers in school fare better on college entrance exams than do those who "are forced to use a PC" and so on.
These are the 20 percent of your patrons that I talked about earlier. They're familiar to you, because they are always in your face. However, their level of specific interest is atypical in terms of your total patron population. Helping you put that call, e-mail, or encounter into perspective is what the Patron Information Pyramid is all about.
But, in saying that, it is important to remember that the Pyramid is not a recipe; rather, it is a guideline. There will always be cases in which, for example, a topic can move around the Patron Information Pyramid—particularly between the middle and bottom levels. It could be a short-term outlier (such as a nasty discussion at a Board of Education meeting that stimulates extensive, unwanted media coverage for a brief time), or it could be something that is unique to your district that moves the topic up or down.
That's OK. The Pyramid comes from research findings, and it's meant to guide you on the most important outgoing communications—not to provide you with an escape clause for dealing with challenges initiated by patrons.
In essence, the average patron is most interested in the basics of school district life: teachers, buildings, the value they receive for the tax dollars they are spending, and whether the district is delivering a good education that prepares students to be successful—whether as lawyers, plumbers or anything else.
Those are the issues that, in their minds, define a quality school district.
Of more modest importance—but still important at varying levels—are student safety (remember, this is an aggregate of findings from urban, suburban, and rural districts; a general expectation of safety is assumed in most districts), principals, class sizes (again, unless there's a problem), technology that students have available to use, whether or not the district keeps its promises, and whether you spend their money equitably across all the choices you have for those resources.
The least important factors are the ones that are, in their minds, a couple of steps removed from the primary educational function of schools. Extracurricular activities, staff member courtesy, and the performance of the superintendent, Board of Education and the Central Office staff just don't register for most patrons—unless there's a problem.
This is often the hardest concept for superintendents and members of the Board to wrap their heads around. Why? Because, they hear from patrons all the time, either directly via phone, fax, e-mail, or in-person, or anonymously, such as when a nasty post appears on the local newspaper's blog.
But, like understanding the difference between "total visits" to a website and "unique visitors," it's important to put the volume of comments from patrons in proper context.
Our patron research has confirmed that critics are much more likely to speak up about the district and its leadership on a broad swath of issues than they are to focus on one area where they may have a complaint. If you forget that context, it's easy to get swept up in the notion that everyone is fixated on what the district's leadership is up to.
However, that same research shows, on average, that 25 percent to as much as 45 percent of patrons have no opinion about the work of the Board of Education or the superintendent, for example. Again, if there's no reason (such as a controversy) for the average patron to be interested, he or she won't be, while the rest typically evaluate the performance at or above average—or they admit that they don't know enough to offer an opinion.
The message: What happens in the classroom (or what patrons think happens in the classroom) matters most, along with whether or not a school district is careful with patrons' money and keeps patrons relatively informed. Everything else is supplemental data in the typical patron's mind.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Think Like A PATRON by Ken DeSieghardt Copyright © 2012 by Ken DeSieghardt. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Endorsements for Think Like a Patron....................viiIntroduction....................ix
Chapter 1 The 80/20 Rule....................1
Chapter 2 The Patron Information Pyramid....................7
Chapter 3 The Top Tier of the Pyramid: Essential Information....................12
Chapter 4 Essential Information: Value for the Tax Dollars Spent....................15
Chapter 5 Essential Information: Quality of School Facilities....................22
Chapter 6 Essential Information: Quality of Teachers....................27
Chapter 7 Essential Information: Quality of Education....................33
Chapter 8 Essential Information: Preparation of Students for the Future....................41
Chapter 9 Essential Information: Ongoing Communication between the District and Patrons....................47
Chapter 10 The Middle Tier of the Pyramid: Important Information....................55
Chapter 11 Important Information: Performance of Principals....................58
Chapter 12 Important Information: Student Safety....................64
Chapter 13 Important Information: Class Sizes....................71
Chapter 14 Important Information: Technology Available to Students in the Classroom....................77
Chapter 15 Important Information: District Promises Made and Fulfilled....................82
Chapter 16 Important Information: Spending Balance....................87
Chapter 17 The Bottom Tier of the Pyramid: As-Needed Information....................91
Chapter 18 As-Needed Information: Extracurricular Activities....................93
Chapter 19 As-Needed Information: Courtesy and Responsiveness of Staff Members (in Schools or in the Central Office)....................97
Chapter 20 As-Needed Information: Performance of the Superintendent and the Board of Education....................101
Chapter 21 How to "Think Like a Patron"....................104
Chapter 22 Some Final Thoughts....................112
About the Author....................115