Building a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy – Shared Vision

Step one in building a stakeholder engagement strategy is clearly defining and articulating organizational values. Step two is creating a vision for the organization. This is not a vision statement, by vision I mean an actual picture of how and where you want your organization to be in the world. The question vision answers is – What [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Tips n’ Tricks Tuesday – Groups Trick

Importing Groups Trick for Thoughtstream Administrators There are lots of different ways to add participants to a Thoughtstream. If you are running a small Thoughtstream you can just enter participants individually. If however you have hundreds of participants you will want to import them as a group. Thoughtstream administrators can do this easily by importing [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Building a Stakeholder Engagement Strategy – Start with Values

If you are really serious about stakeholder engagement then you no doubt have a clear, well defined and integrated strategy in place. If you don’t or if you are thinking it’s time for a review then this series of posts for you. Building a stakeholder engagement strategy As with all strategies the foundation of a stakeholder engagement [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Tips n’ Tricks Tuesday – Converge Trick

So you’re doing a HUGE Converge and you find that your participants are so enthusiastic and passionate that they have combined several thoughts into one response. Every Elf has had this experience. So Elf trick magic is what we’ll use. Notice that there are two tabs at the top of the Thought list in Converge. [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Stakeholder Engagement Success Story – Red Deer Public School District Boundary Changes

“After the decision was announced, I received a grand total of two emails from people who had issues with the decision that was made…I am very satisfied with the results.” Piet Langstraat, Superintendent Red Deer Public School District Background Red Deer Public School District was faced with the challenge of changing the boundaries for their elementary [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

11 Laws of Systems Thinking and Stakeholder Engagement

In a previous post we introduced the idea of systems thinking as a way of looking at the world and defined different types of systems. This post uses Peter Senge’s 11 Laws of the Fifth Discipline to expand on how complex systems work and more importantly looks at how stakeholder engagement can reduce the unintended consequences that plague many of our [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Stakeholder Engagement and Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a way of looking at the world and making decisions that is enhanced by stakeholder engagement. Sometimes we move so far from the foundation that we forget the basics. Senge, Deming, Ackoff and many other have written about systems thinking and still others have built upon their work sometimes to the point that the [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

A Short History of Parent Engagement in Education

“If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” So sayeth Michael Crichton. Stakeholder, aka parent engagement has a rich history in North America. Knowing that history may help us understand how we got where are and may even help us [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Allagogy – From Pedagogy to Communagogy and Everything in Between

There was once only one “agogy” and now there are many. Most educators are intimately familiar with pedagogy – the art and science of educating and teaching children. Some are also familiar with andragogy – the art and science of educating and teaching adults. Recently a few more agogies have captured our attention so we thought it was [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple

Our Secret Thought Sorting and Matching Algorithm

Our secret thought sorting and matching algorithm, called Converge, gives us a distinct competitive advantage and for the first time ever we are sharing our under-the hood-technology with the masses. Of course our customers have known our little secret since… well since they became customers. But here, for the first time, we’ll share it with everyone else. First a little context. [...]

THOUGHTstream - engagement, collaboration, technology and community learning THOUGHTstream - engagement made simple