Executive Summary

The Slow School of Business (Slow School) is an innovative, unconventional collaborative learning initiative intended to build mindful dialogue and practice within the business community. After several months of successful pilot operations in 2014, a strategic decision was made to restructure Slow School's processes and refresh the curriculum's content.

To help inform these activities and provide valuable customer insights, Select-Engage was asked to conduct market research describing:

1. General information about existing and potential Slow School participants;
2. Insights around past and active participants' Slow School experience; and
3. Existing and potential participants' interest levels around various course structures (i.e. course types, class lengths, timing), course topics (i.e. customer service, communications, costing), membership options and incentives.

A web survey was accordingly designed, and participants were sought from existing contacts of either Slow School or its founder, Carolyn Tate. The research results cumulatively describe an initiative with excellent prospects for ongoing success and extensive reach amongst its target demographics - as well as current weaknesses, potential risks, and opportunities for improvement and growth moving forward.

Background

Slow School was officially launched in June 2014 at the Hub co-working space in Melbourne, Australia. Slow School aims to bring mindful and conscientious practice back into the business vocabulary, in a major way. Through the dozens of classes, community dinners, day workshops and other events hosted during its first six months of operation, Slow School established itself as a vibrant nexus bringing together conscious business people in the community.

Taking its name from the Slow Movement - which encourages bigger picture viewpoints and more considered approaches, ultimately yielding better and more sustainable results - Slow School serves as an educational meeting point where the lines between learner and teacher are blurred. A student in a class one day may have been the facilitator of another class the day before. Members come prepared to share their expertise, experiences and insights. Many professional collaborations have taken root and flourished as a result of Slow School connections.

From its inception as an innovative possibility in the mind of founder Carolyn Tate, Slow School has enjoyed unwavering support from members of the local business community. Countless volunteers have dedicated their time and resources over a period of many months, to advance Slow School from concept into reality. Throughout the latter half of 2014, approximately 500 participants engaged with Slow School through its more than 25 events.

By the end of 2014, Slow School was in a position of strength and ready to transition from a non- profit start-up initiative into becoming a financially viable profit-for-purpose structured business. To ensure the success of this vital transformation, Slow School would require reliable information regarding its clientele, to inform strategic plans and guide its restructured operational approach.

Through existing ties with Select-Engage co-founder Genevieve Sovereign, who had been a Slow School participant and volunteer, Carolyn requested a web survey to investigate the experiences and preferences of Slow School attendees and potential participants. The results would be used to inform Slow School’s evolving operational strategies and event offerings for the coming year.

Methodology

The research was to have three primary goals. The first was to gather general information about existing and potential Slow School participants - from basic demographics such as age and gender, to more complex ideas around career states and learning preferences. The second goal was to gauge existing and potential participants' interest levels around various course structures (i.e. course types, class lengths, timing), course topics (i.e. customer service, communications, costing), and also possible membership options and incentives. The third goal was to build an understanding of past and active participants' Slow School experience - to learn how they first heard about it, why they initially came, why they came back again (or didn't), and what they found most and least rewarding about their Slow School experience.

An initial consultation session took place between Slow School founder Carolyn Tate and Select-Engage co-founders Rory Cantwell and Genevieve Sovereign, to define the research goals and develop a preliminary strategy. Research participants would be derived from two of Carolyn's business databases: her dedicated Slow School database, and her private brand database for Carolyn Tate & Co. Altogether, this would make available more than 3000 unique individuals to participate in the survey.

Select-Engage delivered a first draft of the survey for review and revision by Carolyn and other Slow School associates. Once a final draft was approved, the survey was set up online and tested.

Individualised survey tokens were created for each participant contacted, to enable tracking of each individual's responses. Upon survey launch, email invitations with these custom tokens were distributed to the prospective participant pool. Approximately one week after the initial email invitations went out, a follow-up email was sent to any who had not yet participated, reminding them of the survey and requesting their participation.

Results

About Our Participants

Invitations to participate in the survey were emailed to 3164 contacts in total, of whom 217 participated - yielding a response rate of 6.85%. The responses of 12 participants were necessarily discarded due to data quality issues, leaving 205 cases for analysis.

Fifty-four participants (43% of valid answers) described themselves as male and 71 (57%) as female. This is a satisfactory sample of both genders, and provides confidence that the research conclusions apply to both.

The largest age cohort was 50-59 (37%), with the second largest being 40-49 (31%). The next largest cohorts were the 30-39 (15%) and 60-69 (14%) cohorts. Slow School attendees are of a mix of ages, but the mature 40-59 bracket clearly dominates comprising 68%.

Contact with Slow School

When asked "How did you first hear about Slow School?", the most popular response was "From Carolyn" (25%), closely followed by "Carolyn’s email newsletter, website or blog" (20%). Slow School is still quite dependent on its founder's social circles.

On the question "Have you ever attended a Slow School event (i.e. day or evening class, dinner, social event)", 71 (40%) participants said "yes" they had, 104 (60%) said "no" they had not. This means survey respondents were a mix of present and potential Slow School participants. Having attended an event was strongly correlated with living closer to The Hub venue (p < 0.001). Women were more likely to have attended in the past than men (p < 0.001), but were not necessarily more likely to attend in future.

When the 71 who had attended an event were asked "How many events have you attended?", 47 (66%) had attended one or two events and 24 (34%) had attended three or more. This shows that a mix of regular and casual/new Slow School participants was surveyed, and that there is scope for Slow School to increase regular participation within existing contacts.

On the question "Why have you never attended a Slow School of Business event?", the most common answers were "I don't live in Melbourne" (26%), followed by "I've never heard of it until now". The former indicates a large untapped market for Slow School outside the Melbourne CBD and/or the greater Melbourne area. Age was moderately correlated with distance - those respondents who live further away from Melbourne tend to be older.

A substantial cluster of respondents reside in and around metropolitan Sydney, with still more residing nearby in regional NSW. Brisbane and Perth feature smaller but still appreciable clusters.

Putting distance and new connections aside, the most popular reasons for non-attendance were "Melbourne CBD location is inconvenient" (10%), "Another reason" (6%), "I'm usually not available on weeknights" (3%) and "Not sure what Slow School offers compared to other programs" (3%). Participants who put forward "Another reason" made comments "other priorities", "haven't had time", "just heard about Slow School" and "It's def on my radar".

On the question "Why have you never attended a Slow School of Business event?", the answers "I'm usually not available weekdays" and "I'm usually not available weeknights" are moderately correlated (r=0.43, p<0.001). Regarding weekdays and weeknights - people who can't make one will often not be able to make the other either.

When asked "What would make you more likely to attend a Slow School of Business event?", the single most common category of free response was "Sydney location". Perth and Brisbane were also mentioned several times. Only a handful respondents mentioned anything else - notably lunchtime and weekend classes.

The question "Which of the following styles of event have you attended?" had as the most common answer "Classes" (18%), but "Dinner (15%), "Launch party" (12%) and "TED Talk - Speaker Graduation Night" (12%) were also commonly cited.

Of the different topics under "How important to you are the following elements of Slow School?", the answer "Exposure to new approaches and ideas" was the clear winner, with "Meeting new people" and "Opportunities for collaboration" also being popular.

Components of Satisfaction

On the question of "Are you likely to attend a Slow School event in future?", 78 respondents (58% of those answering) said yes, 51 were unsure (38% of those answering) and only four said no (4% of those answering). This is very positive.

Bivariate correlation revealed that likelihood of attending in future was negatively correlated with interest in the following topics - "Write that Business Book", "Be a Brilliant Blogger", "Is There a TED Talk in You?", "Get It Right Online", "Master Collaboration with Your Peers", and "Serving Is the New Selling". Participants who were less likely to attend in future tended to be more interested in those topics. While these results were statistically significant, they should not be overstated, as the effect size was modest.

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests indicated that the strongest predictor of likelihood to attend in future was whether the respondent had attended a class before. This indicates enduring interest among Slow School attendees, suggesting high value in marketing to existing and past participants. The next strongest predictor was unsurprisingly distance - those who live farther away rated their likelihood of attending to be substantially lower. While this is not surprising, it indicates that participants are not willing to travel far for events.

Alternate Class Times

When asked if any of a range of options would make them more likely to attend Slow School events in future, survey participants responded as follows:

These answers were not mutually exclusive, and some of them were commonly selected together. "Holding events/classes during business hours on a weekday" was moderately correlated with "Short courses with real outcomes" (r=0.27, p<0.001). This may be linked to corporate customers, a possible subject of enquiry in future surveys.

Also, later start times and shorter classes were moderately correlated (r=0.58, p<0.001), indicating the existence of a sub-group of respondents who prefer later start times combined with shorter class durations.

Co-designing the 2015 Curriculum

The next survey section related to co-designing Slow School's forthcoming curriculum, where respondents were asked to rate the attractiveness of various course topic possibilities. The results of this section are summarised as follows.

Weighted mean enthusiasm across all respondents:

These results indicate that "Get Paid What You're Worth" was by far the most popular topic. Interest in "Escape the Corporate World" was warm among those self-described as "Currently employed but thinking of going freelance" (difference did not reach statistical significance), but otherwise interest was fairly neutral.

Bivariate correlation revealed underlying connections between "Build a Conscious Business", "Develop Your Business Vision" and "Is There a TED Talk in You?". These topics tended to be of interest to the same participants, and participants who attend one of these classes are prime marketing targets for the other two topics. "Is There a TED Talk in You?" is also significantly correlated with "Write that Business Book" and "Be a Brilliant Blogger". "Is There a TED Talk in You?" attendees appear to be unusually broadly interested, and are a particularly valuable group for cross-promotion.

Correlations also detected some interesting underlying interactions: men were more interested than women in "Get Paid What You’re Worth" and "Get It Right Online". Age was negatively correlated with "Build a Conscious Business" (older people were less interested in this topic) but otherwise age made surprisingly little difference - older and younger participants tended to be interested in the same topics (with that one exception).

Willingness to Pay

Topic interest was also analysed according to amount respondents are willing to pay for short courses:

Among those willing to pay $750 or more for short courses, "Be a Brilliant Communicator" was almost as popular as "Get Paid What You're Worth". Participants were also asked if there was anything else they'd like to learn. There were just a few responses, most of which were related to time management - "Managing your time so you are working ON your business more and less IN your business."

Participants were asked how much they would be willing to pay for a short course. The cumulative responses present an estimate of market size for each price point, as shown below:

There were no statistically significant differences in willingness to pay between age groups, nor between men and women. Interestingly, willingness to pay was moderately correlated with interest in the topic "Master the Tough Stuff - dealing with conflict" but not with any of the other topics. "Master the Tough Stuff" seems to be significantly more attractive to a group of participants who are overall more willing to pay for courses than others. This result may indicate that participants from higher-conflict industries, or perhaps who have higher levels of responsibility, are more interested in this course - presenting a potentially worthwhile area of exploration for future research.

We additionally asked survey participants if they were interested in attending events at atypical times/locations - public holidays, school holidays, and at retreats. These responses are summarised below:

School holidays were the most sought after, with 64 participants (61% of those answering the question) responding with an unambiguous "yes". Retreats were also of interest, but there was more uncertainty there. Public holiday classes were less popular.

Lastly, the date of questionnaire submission presents an interesting data set. Correlations show that participants who responded to the survey at a later date are significantly further away, older, and are more likely to have attended before than other survey participants. These respondents may be busier than those who responded quickly. Given that many of these people replied quite late to the survey, it seems probable that others like them didn't respond at all. This trend and its associated data indicates that past attendees are likely somewhat older and live in slightly more distant locations than the average respondent to this questionnaire.

Conclusions

Slow School's Strengths

One primary message is that Slow School's greatest strengths reside in the vibrant and unique community that has formed around it. Exposure to new ideas and concepts was one of the most important draws for the majority of participants. There is great diversity and breadth of background amongst both participants and facilitators, which is another strong draw to the school.

Slow School's Weaknesses

Primary weaknesses in Slow School's approach thus far include its most common time slots (early weekday evenings) not being preferred by a substantial number of participants. Twenty- seven percent of respondents expressed a desire for later class starting times. Additionally, many participants suggested that some facilitators' preparation and delivery quality could be improved.

Slow School's Opportunities

In terms of opportunities, there was strong interest shown in several of the proposed course topics for 2015 - particularly "Get Paid What You're Worth" and "Find Out What Clients Want". One quarter of respondents expressed interest in attending Slow School classes during the day. These respondents were especially likely to also express interest in “Short courses with real outcomes". In light of this, Slow School might do well to investigate avenues for accreditation in order to become more attractive to training-budget setters.

Amongst participants who had not yet attended a Slow School event, the most common reason was living outside Melbourne. As many survey participants cited Sydney as their home, opportunities may exist for holding satellite events in that area.

Slow School's Threats

One potential threat to Slow School will arise from the challenge of maintaining a curriculum of fresh and relevant topics. Additionally, Slow School is still very dependent on its founder and her personal connections, especially in regards to the recruitment of new participants.

Recommendations

Staff

The Slow School of Business has an exceptional depth of talent in the facilitators available, and participants were mostly very positive about that. Maintaining and expanding this pool of talent should be a priority. Efforts to encourage mentoring within the group, and to implement timely planning and preparation supports for courses should be prioritised as well.

Systems

Slow School has developed well on its current trajectory, but ongoing efforts to systematise and formalise business processes will become increasingly important for future growth.

Continuing efforts should be made to keep abreast of training trends and hot topics in business. Feedback should be continually sought from participants not just around their experiences, but also their expectations and desires moving forward.

Strategy

Given the interest shown in short courses, efforts to capture more corporate training spending are likely to be fruitful. Options for accreditation may be wise to investigate, as well as planning the space and logistics to deliver business-hours classes.

Broadening the methods used to recruit new Slow School participants is also imperative for future growth. Current online and social media presence has only been a very minor contributor to Slow School recruitment, and may not be well-suited to Slow School's model. Other ways to draw on more interpersonal networks should be investigated.

Thank-you

A full data set of the survey results has been provided to Slow School, in addition to this formal report. Select-Engage would like to take this opportunity to thank Carolyn Tate and the rest of the Slow School team, as well as all survey participants, for their time and insights throughout the research project.

Appendices

Appendix One - Questionnaire