Project 4 · Power User Group · serves O2-KR1 Referrals

The schools that would vouch for us, in a room together

Forty-one schools clear the rules, and one more is in by exception. Sixteen of them sit in two tight clusters, which is what makes an actual tea possible rather than a diary problem.

Power users: 41of 231 ever taught, plus 1 by exception
Their lessons: 35,68655% of everything we have taught
Children today: 236being taught right now
Booked ahead: 6,080lessons already scheduled

Phase one · Identify (task 4.1, closable today)

Most of this is already done. The list below came out of the placement records this morning.

Fix what "the most" means, then stop debating it

There are two honest readings and they give different rooms. Lifetime volume rewards schools that taught thousands of lessons and have since gone quiet. Current intensity rewards schools with children on the books today. A referral group needs both: history earns them credibility, current activity means they have something live to talk about.

The definition used here, and the one I would keep:

children being taught right now (from the placement records, not the dashboard's Active flag, which is unreliable)
300 or more lessons delivered
two or more of our services used

That yields 41 schools. Ranking them then blends four things at once: lifetime lessons, children today, lessons already booked, and breadth of services.

Done when: the three rules above are written down somewhere Daniel can disagree with them.

ZoeDone

Put the list somewhere it will still exist next month

A list in a chat window is not a deliverable. Create a Power Users table in TAM with the 41 schools, each carrying its score, lessons, children today, lessons booked, services used and named contact. Tag tier one and tier two so the second tea has a ready-made guest list.

Done when: the table exists in TAM and task 4.1 is ticked in the Gantt. This is today's work and it is small.

Zoe20 Aug

Have Daniel and Ops strike anyone off before you invite them

The data knows volume. It does not know that a school is mid-complaint, in a billing dispute, or on the do-not-work-with list. Send the 41 to Daniel and to whoever runs delivery and ask one question: who should not be in this room, and why?

Ask a second question while you are there: is anyone missing? A school could be a fierce advocate on 200 lessons, and the 300-lesson rule would have cut them.

One is, and it has been added. Quarrydale Academy in Sutton-in-Ashfield fails only the 300-lesson test: 78 lessons taught, or 241 counting everything ever scheduled minus what is still ahead. It passes the other two, and it has 660 lessons booked for 7 September, which against the Booked column below would rank second of the whole top twelve. The school that looks weakest on history looks strongest on what happens next. Anne-Marie Davison is also the school leader whose review call the after-meeting overview page was written from, and the one school voice we have no signed-off quote from. She is in Leicester's group, not London's.

And it is the only one. The same test was run across all 231 schools we have ever taught, on 27 August: who has taught fewer than 300 lessons but has 300 or more booked for the new academic year? Three others come up, and all three fail two of the rules rather than one, so none of them belongs in the room:

The Bishop of Winchester Academy, Bournemouth. 1,408 lessons booked from 7 September, none taught, one service, one child placed.
The Ilfracombe Church of England Academy, Devon. 524 booked from 7 September, none taught, one service, one child.
Faringdon Community College, Oxfordshire. 363 booked from 4 September, none taught, one service, one child.

Each of those is a single new contract with one child on it and nothing delivered yet. Nobody at those schools has experienced us, so there is nothing for them to vouch for. Churchill Special Free School is the near miss at 227 booked from 1 September, under the line on both counts. Quarrydale is the only school in the book that fails one rule and passes the rest, which is what makes it an exception rather than a lowered bar.

Done when: you have a named strike-list and an approved final group. Part answered: the one addition is settled. The strikes still need Daniel and Ops, due Monday 24 August and now three days late. This is the one thing that cannot be finished by tomorrow, because it is not yours to finish: steps 5 and 6 need the approved group before the names and the invitations can be final.

Zoe asks · Daniel + Ops answerstrikes overdue · was Mon 24 Aug

The tier one twelve

Ranked on the blended score. These are the strongest partnerships we have.

#	School	Where	Lessons	Children now	Booked	Services	Contact on the records
1	The Lenham School	Kent	727	22	681	4	Helena Jefferies
2	Unity College	Lancashire	770	18	654	2	Sara Cardno
3	Harris Academy Greenwich	Greenwich	328	20	514	2	Sharon Galloway
4	Queensmead School	Hillingdon	1,490	10	402	3	Sarah Flanagan
5	Humphrey Perkins School	Leicestershire	1,413	17	42	4	Sharon Perry
6	Ark Evelyn Grace Academy	Lambeth	1,694	8	223	4	David Coker
7	Dixons Brooklands Academy	Manchester	2,894	4	51	3	Zoe Storr
8	The Martin High School, Anstey	Leicestershire	981	17	5	4	Josh Saye
9	Bishop Ramsey CofE School	Hillingdon	1,160	7	231	4	Leo Robinson
10	Devizes School	Wiltshire	618	4	648	2	Vicky Gale
11	King Edward VI CEVC School	Suffolk	399	11	417	2	Katy Farrow
12	The Grove School	Shropshire	1,974	3	39	4	David Littleford

Phase two · Plan it fully by Friday 28 August (task 4.2)

Task 4.2 is the planning, not the event. Everything below is a decision to close this week so the invitation can go out on day one of term.

Run it where the schools already are, not where the top twelve are

The tier one twelve are scattered from Lancashire to Kent. Getting all of them into one room is a diary problem you will lose. The geography solves it instead: two natural clusters, each big enough to fill a room on its own. Eight is a sensible size for a group that has to talk to each other, not a threshold the OKR sets.

London and Greater London: nine schools. Ark Evelyn Grace, Queensmead, Bishop Ramsey, Ruislip High, Oasis Academy Enfield, Harris Academy Greenwich, Archbishop Tenison's, Belmont Park, Ark Bolingbroke. Three of those nine are in Hillingdon alone.
Leicester and the East Midlands: seven schools. Humphrey Perkins, The Martin High, Castle Rock, Beauchamp College, Judgemeadow, Sir Jonathan North, and Quarrydale Academy. Quarrydale is the one that travels. Sutton-in-Ashfield is in Nottinghamshire, about an hour up the road, which is why it belongs to this run and not the London one.

Do London first. It is the bigger cluster and it becomes the reference run, so Leicester in October is a repeat rather than a scramble. Leicester at seven also survives a drop-out and still fills a room, which nine in London only just does.

Done when: London is chosen, a named date in the week of 22 September is held, and an after-school venue is booked.

Zoeby Fri 28 Aug

Invite the person who feels the win, not the person who signs

The names on the placement records are the people who rang us about a specific child. They are the right guests: they have a story, and they are the ones other schools believe. The head teacher and the finance contact are not the audience for this.

Check each name is still in post before writing. Several of these contacts last placed a child months ago, and school staff move over the summer.

Done when: nine named, verified invitees with working addresses.

Zoeby Fri 28 Aug

Make the invitation about them, and say what it is not

These are customers, so the invitation has to be honestly non-commercial or the room will arrive defensive. Three things it should do:

Lead with their own number. "You have placed 22 children with us and have 681 lessons booked for the autumn" beats any adjective. Each invitation carries that school's real figures.
Name who else is coming. The draw is the other eight schools, not us. Peers with the same problem in the same city is the whole offer.
Say plainly that it is not a sales meeting, and mean it, because step 8 depends on that being true.

Done when: nine invitations are written and personalised with each school's own figures, saved and ready. They send on the first morning of term, not before.

Zoewritten by 28 Aug, sent day one of term

Design two hours where they get more than we do

The failure mode is a Purple Ruler presentation with tea. Invert it: they talk, we listen, and they leave with something from each other.

Twenty minutes: each school says the child they are most stuck on this term. No slides. This is the reason peers come.
Thirty minutes: three of them describe what they actually did, with our part kept small and factual.
Thirty minutes: what is not working with us. Invite the complaint publicly. A group that has never criticised you will not vouch for you either.
Twenty minutes: what we are building next, and let them redirect it.
Tea, properly, throughout. The unstructured half hour at the end is where introductions actually happen.

Done when: a run sheet exists with named speakers agreed in advance, not volunteers on the day.

Zoe · Daniel in the roomby Fri 28 Aug

Make the referral ask once, afterwards, one to one

The referral is the point of the project, and asking the room collectively is how you lose it. Nobody volunteers in front of peers, and it retrospectively turns the invitation into a sales pitch.

Instead: within three working days, write to each attendee individually with one specific ask. Not "do you know anyone" but "you mentioned the school down the road has the same problem, would you introduce me". Specific asks get answers; open ones get silence.

Done when: every attendee has had one named, specific ask, and each answer is logged.

Zoewithin 3 days of the tea

Record it so the next one is easier and the KR is provable

Three things to capture, or the event evaporates: who attended against the invite list, what they said was not working (that list is next quarter's product roadmap and it is worth more than the referrals), and every referral logged in TAM against the school that made it.

Three schools in this group are already story candidates with work in flight, so cross-check before asking twice. Harris Academy Greenwich and Parrs Wood both have case-study drafts in progress. Quarrydale is the one to watch. Anne-Marie Davison has been owed a story draft for her quotes since 15 June, and a tea invitation arriving before that draft does lands badly. Send her the draft first.

Done when: attendance, complaints and referrals are all in TAM, and the Gantt row goes to Done.

Zoeby 30 Sep

What success looks like, in numbers you can check

Four or more referrals logged by 30 September. That is the graded number, the one in O2-KR1, and the only one MJ marks. Everything else is how you get there: nine invited, eight or so in the room, and a written list of what the group says we get wrong. Two referrals are already logged this cycle, so read the target carefully before you count: four in total and four more are different jobs, and the key result does not say which. The Leicester seven become the second run in October, by which point the format is proven rather than invented.

The shape of it