Balancing Intuition and Data: Considering 'expert' voices and experimenting with new data to define a nonprofit program.
Advising Rethink Food on how to use experimentation to learn from stakeholders, overcome assumptions, and define a new strategic approach.
Project Overview
Challenge: Rethink Food is a nonprofit that addresses food insecurity in New York City and beyond. Since 2020, Rethink has partnered with restaurants to get dignified, culturally appropriate meals into the hands of food-insecure communities. From its inception during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rethink’s vision struck a chord: restaurants were struggling and more folks were out of work, stuck at home, and facing food insecurity. Rethink’s leadership—well-connected in the hospitality industry—rallied a coalition of high-end restaurants wanting to get involved in charitable initiatives. Their organization grew organically.
A few years down the road, Rethink’s approach needed to evolve. Their organization had grown. Their early rallying cry–the COVID pandemic–was not affecting everyday life in the same ways, though issues of food insecurity and restaurant vulnerability persisted.
Huge, ambiguous questions loomed over Rethink’s leadership team. How do they design a program with broad appeal that’s an ‘easy yes’ for restauranteurs (especially those outside their personal networks)? What should they offer as part of the program? And importantly, when making all these decisions, whose opinion matters?
Approach: The Human Factor joined Rethink’s strategy team in an advising capacity. First, critical to breaking down ambiguous questions is identifying underlying assumptions — implicit beliefs and hunches that form the basis of our judgments in ambiguous situations. For example, if we assume that a restaurateur’s primary interest is in networking opportunities, the team may move forward with programs that provide opportunities to connect with peers, when other primary interests may exist.
In our work, we have learned that while assumptions can guide us to ask the right questions, validating or debunking our beliefs with real-world stakeholder data is critical. In light of this, the team ran a workshop with internal stakeholders to gather their perspectives, our joint team keeping a pulse on the data coming in and identifying assumptions for pressure-testing in experimentation.
After gathering these inputs, we set a course to expand the variety and quantity of stakeholder data around these ambiguous questions. Our joint team designed experiments that included more ‘expert’ voices (in the traditional sense) but also cast a wide net to include new and unexpected stakeholder groups. Rethink’s strategy team ran the experimentation, with The Human Factor advising on experimentation protocol iteration and output generation.
Results: Within weeks, Rethink’s strategy team presented experimentation outputs to Rethink’s CEO and Board of Directors. The strategy presentation included stakeholder feedback, quotes, and priorities to communicate the state of Rethink’s partnerships: how various stakeholder groups saw Rethink, and the value of an evolved kind of working relationship. Productive conversations sprung up around unattended and unidentified stakeholder needs. With this new, clarifying stakeholder, Rethink’s leadership was able to answer nagging questions and make certain decisions on the spot.
Importantly, the Rethink team was able to prioritize between the multiple initiatives that were on the table. Strategy and programming initiatives that would have taken weeks or months of FTEs’ time to develop were nixed upon seeing contradictory stakeholder data. Priorities clear, the team charted a course for where time and energy would be spent in the organization’s critical upcoming weeks.
Project Timeline
Weeks 1-2: Set Goals & Design Assumptions Gathering Workshop – The Human Factor and Rethink Food reviewed data gathered to-date and set an agenda for the first virtual workshop with internal stakeholders.
Week 3: Run Assumptions Gathering Workshop – In the virtual workshop, the team ran activities to collect internal stakeholders’ open questions, assumptions, and goals for the program.
Weeks 4-5: Design Experimentation Plan & Recruit Stakeholders – Using the outputs from the first workshop, the joint team planned the experimentation process through a series of in-person and virtual working sessions between the Rethink strategy team and THF.
Weeks 6-9: Coaching on Experimentation and Storytelling – The Human Factor advised as the Rethink strategy team conducted the experiments, iterated the experimentation plan, and designed outputs for executive storytelling.
Project Details
- 1-2 The Human Factor coaches serving as advisors to Rethink Food’s business strategy team
- Activities included 1 workshop and a series of experiments
- The Human Factor in a coaching capacity helped with cost-effectiveness for Rethink Food, a nonprofit organization
- The Human Factor offered design and storytelling guidance on executive presentations
Summary
Challenge
Rethink’s strategy team faced an ambiguous question: how do we define a program with broad appeal that is structured and can be operationalized by a growing team? Further, what data is important to gather, how do we gather it, and who should we listen to?
Approach
The Human Factor served in an advisory position for experimentation that included a workshop with internal stakeholders and experimentation with external stakeholders.
Results
Rethink defined its priorities and next steps for the new program. Further, it emerged with new methods of stakeholder engagement, new types of data, an aligned leadership vision, and a reinvigorated strategy team. Defined priorities and next steps for the program’s strategic direction, as well as new data streams coming in, an aligned leadership team, and a reinvigorated strategy team