TurningPoint^® Case Study

Institute 4 Priority Thinking

BACKGROUND

Peter C. DeMarco is the president and founder of Institute 4 Priority Thinking, LLC, a consulting firm that devotes the majority of its client support between executive coaching and organizational development. Their consulting approach employs a strong economic platform to help clients improve their overall performance. DeMarco and his team of 14 have developed a philosophy of business based on an integration of realist philosophy based on Aristotle's work with modern corporate finance concepts. Their goal is to "help organizations get their priorities straight and keep them straight."

DeMarco left "Corporate America" three years ago and Institute 4 Priority Thinking got off to a fast start. DeMarco used audience response systems in the past at other organizations and realized soon after he started his business that it was time to purchase one for his company.

THE CHALLENGE

In early 2005, some of DeMarco's employees began to aggressively research audience response system for their business because they often use interactive, on-site polling with clients. They teed up four competitors, turned on the projector and started exploring the technologies. The further they dug into TurningPoint, the more they realized it was the right fit.

"We chose the system because it's small, easy to carry around, and the carrying cases are designed for folks like us who are road warriors," he said. "And they are just a simple but elegant device to work with. It's easy to do a variety of things with them."

THE RESULTS

For almost all of their presentations with clients, Priority Thinking uses some level of polling. With groups beyond 5-10 people, they have found that it's an excellent technique to draw people into interacting with the moderators and the group.

"There are different styles of people; some are reserved, and no matter how much you facilitate you're going to have difficulty drawing them in." So to rectify that issue, interactive polling has become their selected method to involve participants and to make sure all opinions are heard counted.

DeMarco's team employs TurningPoint for everything from basic questions like: "Do you agree with this comment?" to use of a simple likert scale. Priority Thinking goes deeper when they have participants name top strategic priorities and subsequently walk through each one and discuss if they have participant support for each priority.

"Because our model is all about establishing sound priorities – the basis for Priority Thinking^® –we use TurningPoint's Ranking Wizard to allow people to stack competing priorities and then see the power of the weighting amongst the priorities," he explained. The Ranking Wizard feature supports enhanced decision making capabilities, allowing presenters to easily create "lists" of items, issues, priorities or goals and rank them against specific "criteria" supporting either static scale or paired comparison. Peter stated, "For example, when we want to stack a number of different priorities into an order, people can rate them and the system automatically generates the pairings. We can then see the order in which people are placing them, as well as the power, meaning the difference, between the pairings."

When visiting his client's respective offices, Peter is pleased with the receptiveness to the program. Cautious about using good psychometric-based tools, DeMarco states that TurningPoint is ideal for his data-gathering needs. There are three areas why the product works so well with his clients.

"The first reaction we get is that people just like the technology. They think it's fun. That kind of reaction is important," DeMarco said. "I tend to be more analytical and ignore that aspect, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how often people comment, ‘Hey, that's neat!'"

Second, he enjoys the moments when the group's "undiscussables" are revealed because TurningPoint polling has allowed participants to express those issues anonymously. "People, in general, really enjoy that they can trust the anonymity of TurningPoint and reveal their true beliefs without fear of the boss in the room. Even if he's a great boss, they just believe they can be more transparent."

"At the same time, we do not use the system as a crutch for not talking about real problems or conflicts in the team. Using this audience response system draws out the real issues," he continued. "But to resolve issues, it requires appropriate confrontations by the members of the group and TurningPoint gets the process going."

Third, participants enjoy the discussion of demographics. "When we do the splits on tenure, sex, job type, or geographic location, it is very interesting for the audience to see the profile on the questions change; especially within larger groups, when sliced by the demographic categories," he said.

Revealing the power of demographics is an important part of the session. "If you sort the demographics correctly, and then go through and use good questions that draw out more insightful responses, the data reveals a lot about the organization."

"In fact, we get a lot of chuckles when we split it by male/female or by age. To see the differences in how people view reality. So partitioning or subdividing has gone over very well."

DeMarco also shared another revelation that he deems interesting: exposing conflicting answers within the organization or a group of individuals. When used effectively, people will answer certain questions that will conflict with different answers later on. Priority Thinking will then explore reasons for the discrepancy.

"For example, when doing an ethics or culture survey, people will say they want to ‘do the right thing,' yet we find answers that reveal their reluctance. We can help discuss the conflict in their responses."

CONCLUSION

DeMarco depends heavily on well-designed questions to subtly expose conflicted feelings among participating members, revealing the individual's and group's emotional state. But instead of just looking at behaviors, like so many other consulting firms, Institute 4 Priority Thinking focuses on developing a proper understanding of human nature.

"The tool has helped us draw out the deeper philosophical framework that is operating in people versus just operating at an emotional level," he explained.

When in a client meeting, TurningPoint allows Peter and his team to stagger comparisons along various priority sets and ask, "Does everyone agree these are what the priorities should be?" and then ask participants to expand on what's really there. They'll ask, "do these align or not?" and then work on closing the gap. This is how they help company cultures. Often a culture survey can describe what's going on, but it can't actually prescribe. Using TurningPoint is the only way DeMarco has been able to draw these critical insights out. Perhaps to a lesser degree with surveys, but he could not do this activity in a large interactive group session without TurningPoint. "And that's why we're such big fans of the technology."

Another positive aspect of integrating TurningPoint is that most of the work Priority Thinking does is on-site and they have the ability to do the analytics immediately. TurningPoint seamlessly integrates into PowerPoint^®, and the slides are instantly populated with the data from the participants' answers, so DeMarco's team can do their work on the fly. Once the data is sliced and screen captures are available, they are able to leave the management team with enough data that they can automatically begin to take action instead of waiting for a report.

DeMarco's book, Priority Thinking, with data compiled from using TurningPoint, is due in 2009.

For more information about purchasing or renting a Turning Technologies' audience response system for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.