What is Transformation R&D?
Transformation R&D is a scalable, from concept to fully integrated approach in guiding your team and organization through optimization, transformation, and/or disruption. Focused on innovating programs & systems, transforming teaching experiences, and designing strategy, Ventures can serve as your research and development department without you having to create one.
From teacher to trustee, start from where you are. You can decide on an entry point of transformation that is accessible and attainable for you and your team. Whether it is optimizing, transforming, or disrupting your practice or organization, begin with a practical pace and approach along this purpose-driven journey that aligns with your mission, community needs, and budget.
Why is Transformation R&D Critical?
Education is changing.
In this moment, we live amidst a fundamental reordering of how we think about school: from the centuries-old belief that content knowledge is its central currency, to the nascent understanding that what you know matters less than who you are, and what you are uniquely capable of impacting.
Acknowledging this reality, you and your staff are busy and taxed by the day-to-day grind of school life. Change feels too challenging. And, you have no margin with your current staff to make the shifts necessary to advance the noble work you undertake with this generation of students. In other words, you need more hands and hearts, supporting your efforts.
So, while we are attempting to get back to normal, innovation and technology are revolutionizing the way we live, work, play, and gather. Yet, human connection and the ability to connect with various types of people from different backgrounds is of great importance.
Navigating the complexities of these paradoxes, how will we be ready? How do we keep up? Where do we even start? That is where Ventures enters the picture. As current practitioners in the field leading change with students, staff, and families right now, we can be your guides in transforming your organization.
Innovating Programs and Systems
How might we...
Optimize
- Evaluate current programs/systems and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Reorient or scale a specific system/area of programming
- Cultivate leadership capability in optimizing programs & systems
- Train staff members in optimizing programs & systems
- Integrate responsive executive coaching for ongoing feedback to optimize programs and systems
- Cultivate teaching capability through “office hours” for real time questions and wonders by staff
- Create experience – retreat, workshop, book study – to fuel ideas
Transform
- Create experiences to spark transformative ideas
- Reframe and replace new program systemically, within a division, or grade-level
- Develop plan to implement and integrate new program or system through onboarding, digital and print collateral, clarity of language, and ongoing training
- Cultivate leadership capability in transforming programs & systems
- Integrate executive coaching to implement personalized solutions, new systems and methodologies
- Train staff members in transforming programs & systems
Disrupt
- Create experiences to ignite disruptive shifts
- Scale major programmatic shifts in schedule
- Create a School within a School model
- Launch a new school
- Apply corporate ESG criteria to School
- Cultivate leadership capability in transforming programs & systems
- Train staff members in disrupting programs & systems
Transforming Teaching Experiences
How might we...
Optimize
- Evaluate current instructional methodologies and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Evaluate current curriculum outcomes and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Evaluate current assessment practices and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Accelerate student engagement and deeper learning through faculty workshops
- Shadow teacher or administrator
- Cultivate leadership capability in support of transforming teaching experiences
- Integrate responsive executive coaching for ongoing feedback to optimize teaching experiences
- Cultivate teaching capability through “office hours” for real time questions and wonders by staff
Transform
- Reframe and adopt new teaching methodologies
- Reframe and adopt new curriculum outcomes
- Reframe and adopt new assessment map and practices
- Develop plan to implement and integrate new curriculum, methodologies, outcomes, and/or assessment map and assessment practices through onboarding, digital and print collateral, clarity of language, ongoing training
- Cultivate leadership capability in transforming teaching experiences
- Integrate executive coaching to implement personalized solutions and new methodologies
- Train staff members in transforming teaching experiences through interactive and ongoing coaching
- Cultivate community for high-flyers within to advance and scale up transformative teaching experiences
Disrupt
- Develop new definition of student
- Develop new definition of teacher
- Scale major shifts in teacher to learner centered models, transcripts, school schedule, and technology portfolio
- Cultivate leadership capability in disrupting teaching experiences
- Train staff members in disrupting teaching experiences
Designing Strategy
How might we...
Optimize
- Evaluate existing strategies and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Conduct a market research study and receive recommendations about next strategic steps
- Receive R&D (Research & Development) Reports
- Conduct 360 Journey Maps of students, parents, and/or staff experience
- Cultivate leadership and board capability
- Conduct a SWOT analysis
- Create a signals committee, studying sparks of innovation impacting sector
- Create experience – retreat, book study – to fuel ideas
- Integrate executive coaching for ongoing feedback in optimizing strategy
- Identify spatial strategies and renovate facility space
Transform
- Create experiences to spark transformative ideas
- Design a new organizational foresight and strategic plan
- Develop a operating system focused on 5-7 year targets, 2-3 year pictures, 1 year priorities, 90 day batches)
- Design a new Brand portfolio (drivers, promises, attributes)
- Reframe and adopt new organizational structure
- Cultivate leadership capability in transforming strategy
- Develop plan to implement and integrate new strategy through onboarding, digital and print collateral, clarity of language, ongoing training
- Integrate spatial strategies through new facility construction
Disrupt
- Redefine mission statement and identify
- Create new market segments to differentiate product in market, scaling demand
- Develop a 2nd operating system, strategic network next to the existing hierarchy
- Cultivate leadership capability in disrupting strategy
How does my community benefit from Transformation R&D?
You decide your entry point of transformation. While no one knows your organization better than you, we can create a customized strategy that outlines how to best guide you and your team. We feel a great responsibility to make an impact and inspire transformation with a relevant, high touch, and evidence-based approach that aligns with your mission, community needs, and budget.
We can be your research and development department without you having to create one. Automatically, you have expanded your team’s reach for ideas, data, design, strategy, implementation, integration, and measurement without having to reorient your current staff, hire more staff members, or even conduct a search with resources you don’t have to reallocate or redistribute. Serving alongside your staff in support of missional needs and expectations, we help you build organizational capacity.
We serve students and families in the field right now. We understand the complexities of change and how to navigate fluid, dynamic circumstances. We get it. For more than a decade, we have been leading transformation in teaching & learning, engaging instructional design, growing enrollment, assembling high performing teams, building exceptional brands, and launching innovative programs.
Through extensive training and interactive experiences, we will deepen the leadership capabilities of your team and the pedagogical expertise of your teachers. With a bias towards reflection and action, we will be able to guide your organization to create a shared understanding of mission, vision, language, roles, and responsibilities. Additionally, providing data that you don’t currently have, we can deepen your ability to monitor and measure your strategic progress and impact through pragmatic operating systems and practical priorities.
Increasing student engagement, enriching adult talent and experiences, cultivating a culture of innovation, improving decision-making, and scaling efforts of transformation become the headlines when investing in Transformation R&D. When committed to the process, you will generate momentum with short-term wins and create a multiplying effect – scalable ideas, programs, strategy, and partnerships. And, your students, teachers, and community will have quite a story to tell.
HOW CAN WE HELP?
Let us know where you are on your journey. Transformation needs a guide. We can help.
