Created template education zone in Detroit.
Overview
Education is an important part of society, so whenever I get the chance I try to help improve the quality of education in my community. One chance to do that was during my Ross consulting class where we worked with Excellent Schools Detroit to improve early childhood education. My team was assigned the zoning and partnership portion of the project. We examined the current situation in Detroit by collecting primary data along with using research done by other institutions.
Our team was always motivated to do our best since we knew our work is going to benefit kids in the Detroit community. We ended up creating a lot of interesting suggestions to tackle the lack of partnerships and zone organization that we uncovered. We made a template zone consisting of the partnerships that should exist within a zone to ensure success in early child education.
Skills and Insights
Part of the project, we conducted phone interviews with people working at early education centers. I discovered how interviews are more informative than surveys which are limited to the questions within. With phone calls, you can drill down to the details as the conversation progresses leading to more quality information. I learned the depth of library resources at our disposal at Ross and the great help that information experts, called librarians, can give you on your research quest.
At a certain point we had too much data, so we had to learn how to summarize the important aspects into visually appealing takeaways. The latter is important as a persuasion tool, for people are visually oriented and that approach is more appealing than a 40 page report. As with all consulting projects, we learned how to manage the client’s expectations by scoping the breadth of our project before starting to work. After all the deliverables were said and done, I noticed how the initial client meeting really helps in determining what they want in a project.
Lessons Learned
Biggest impact on me was the comfort of called calling people and getting relevant information for your research. I’ve cold called people while networking with alumni so I’ve had some experience. In this scenario it was for a different reason and we were cold calling complete strangers with no bond connecting us. It turned out to be easier than expected and in the process I managed to improve my small talk skills for the long run. In all I managed to add a new skill to my data collection skill repertoire.
In addition to that, this project helped me learn a new method for solution development. One of my teammates suggested we use Kottor’s 8 step change model. I haven’t heard of the model previously so I was delighted to learn more about it. After further learning, I realized that I’ve seen the principles the model is based on within previous business courses I’ve taken or books read. This made the model resonate more with my own memories and mental models, thus ensuring I will still apply it in the future.
Importance
Typical with non-profits Excellent Schools Detroit lacked the analytical man power to conduct a full-blown investigation on early education in Detroit. Our team’s deliverables will help ESD lay the groundwork of possible ways to tackle the early education issue in Detroit supported by an in-depth analysis. Our project was really important to the community as it’ll lead to improvement to education which is a critical factor in everyone’s life.
The model zone we created can lead to overarching success in Detroit if applied to different school districts and neighborhoods. It’s a cost efficient solution that requires buy-in of different stakeholders in the early education realm rather than just investments. This experience managed to teach me how non-profit foundations work. The main lesson was quantifying the impact and when the results will be achieved in order to convince foundations to issue grants.