Experience Strategy Podcast: Experience Strategy in the Educational Journey with the Founders of [YELLOWCAR]
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In this episode of the Experience Strategy Podcast, we’re joined by Dr. David Willows and Suzette Parlevliet, co-founders of [YELLOW CAR], the world’s leading experience strategy and consultancy firm for schools. David and Suzette share their insights on transforming education through the lens of experience strategy, discussing the unique challenges and opportunities in the international school landscape. They introduce the Felt Experience Indicator, a tool developed by [YELLOW CAR] to help schools measure and understand the experience of their community members, fostering a culture of listening, feedback, and continuous improvement. With their diverse backgrounds and dedication to making experience strategy accessible to schools worldwide, David and Suzette are committed to helping educational institutions align mission, experience, and impact, ultimately redefining success and creating meaningful value propositions that resonate with their target audiences.
Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experience nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas.
Aransas: Welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Aransas Savas
Dave: And I'm Dave Norton.
Aransas: And today we are joined by our friends, Dr. David Willows and Suzette Poliflite. They are the co founders of Yellow Car, an organization that we've had the great joy of working with over the last year or so. David and Suzette are focusing on the experience strategy of international schools, a space that is ripe with potential.
And in which they have found so many new ways to create impact that ultimately has a potential to influence [00:01:00] all of us and our well being. Our students are certainly our future. Our educators are a huge part of any society. And nurturing these audience with an experienced strategy lens is just, uh, the ripples to me are sort of inconceivable, but super exciting.
So David and Suzette, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for being here with us today. Thanks so much, Herances.
Suzette: Both David and I are very excited to be here and have this conversation with you.
Aransas: So to start off, I did a terrible job describing what Yellow Car did, but tell us a little bit more about the genesis of Yellow Car to begin.
Suzette: So both David and I used to work for many years at an international school in Brussels in Belgium, and we were leading an advancement team there, overseeing marketing, communications, admissions. Uh, alumni relations, fundraising, and, um, particularly in our last few years, we started more and more [00:02:00] focusing on the experience that we were creating for our families.
And it's that type of work that we've taken with us, uh, to what we now call Yellow Car, our very own, uh, where we work with school leaders and their teams around the world to intentionally design, not only that family experience anymore, but also the experience for students and employees in schools.
Aransas: And why is it called Yellow Car?
David: So that's a great question. And, and what's interesting about when you build a company, you come up with a name. And um, we came up with Yellow Car and I think over the last few years, maybe this is a brand identity issue, but we've been called Yellow Car, Yellow Cab, Yellow Coach, Yellow Bus, uh, not Yellow Plane, but, um, and now when it's my birthday, there's Everyone buys me yellow.
Um, so, so it's, uh, it's an interesting question. When the story actually goes that when, uh, we were both younger, Suzette was younger, much more recently than me, but we were both younger and it turns out that we had the [00:03:00] same childhood game that we used to play on long car journeys. Um, we would sit in the back seat with our brothers and sisters, and it would be a long, boring, um, adventure.
And so we would, uh, to amuse ourselves, look out the window, and we would look for a yellow car. And in our part of the world, um, they weren't very common. This was not Manhattan. Um, and when you found a yellow car, you would declare yourself the winner. And what we found was that we not only had that childhood experience, but we found that once you started playing that game, um, even as adults, you started seeing yellow cars Transcribed by https: otter.
ai Everywhere and what we really feel very strongly is that the world is full of schools and most of them Tend to look the same And so what we really believe very strongly is that the schools that are going to stand out like the yellow cars In the future are those that [00:04:00] intentionally design The experience of school and, um, I guess part of us also wants to feel that when you next see a yellow car, you'll think of us.
Dave: Okay. So I have to say that I love the description of your story. That is so amazing. I thought I knew what yellow car. meant because I assumed that it had to do with the yellow bus and that it was a play on, uh, school buses.
Suzette: Oh, that's brilliant.
Dave: I had no idea about this game that you play. That's so fascinating.
People ask us all the time why I called the company Stone Mantle and there's a story behind that too, but we're not going to tell it right now. But, but I just think that that's so interesting that it's a kid's game. That's so fun.
Aransas: Uh, and so that pervasiveness, talk to me about how that relates to the mission of Yellow Car and why you believe experience strategy [00:05:00] is so vital for schools.
David: Yeah. I think, I think one of the things that, um, in our context, having worked for many years in international education, which is pretty pervasive across the world and quite competitive in terms of, uh, schools vying for market competition is that, um, we've gone the way of many, uh, companies before us. We often don't think of schools as businesses, but we know that the international school market is a big business.
It's now worth 60 billion, uh, globally. And so we're talking about Uh, 14, 000 schools, uh, and, and six, more than six million students are being educated in these schools. And one of the things we realized is that these schools tend to look the same. They tend to have the same language on their websites.
They have the same pictures of kids, um, in science labs, um, with a Bunsen burner and a test tube promoting what it is their product is. [00:06:00] And, um, so what we often say to schools is that we have to do what great hotels have done. The difference between a good hotel and a great hotel is that a great hotel has thought so carefully about every one of those touch points.
It's designed the journey and it has done it with intentionality. And even if you don't, realize what has happened. You just feel this friction free experience. And so much of our work is to say, how do we take everything that is outside of the educational world and learn how to apply that to an educational context?
That's super
Aransas: cool. And what do you believe ultimately is the effect of schools embracing an experienced strategy mindset? What's in it for them other than just being more competitive in a highly competitive market?
Suzette: Oh, I think there's many things in there. I often when we kick off the conversation about experience, [00:07:00] people always think that it's like this fluffy thing that you do just you add a bit of like extra moments that create wonder or surprise and that's it.
But actually, if you are intentionally designing and are able to articulate what that experience is like, it should have an impact on your bottom line should have an impact on your enrollment numbers, it should have an impact on recruitment and retention of teachers. Because ultimately great experience are great experiences are more likely to, um, attract people and want for them wanting to be engaged and involved and foster support.
And ultimately it should create better experiences for all those people that are part of the community who then want to talk about it. And that words of mouth will have its knock on effect. So we often talk about how schools can spend a whole lot of money on their mark for their marketing budget. But it's better to invest that in actually creating and curating what that experience is like, because there will be a significantly higher [00:08:00] impact.
Aransas: Well said. And with some things that can be perceived as so soft and fluffy, how are you creating that sense of confidence with your customers?
David: So I think, I think one of the things we're doing is trying to bring a lexicon, a language to schools that gives them the, the building blocks to think about their school through the lens of experience.
We often say it's a bit like trying on a new pair of glasses. If you look at a school through the lens of experience, it can sometimes be a little bit hazy at first. It can be, actually make you feel a bit queasy because you're used to seeing school through the lens of learning or curriculum Or finance or marketing these traditional zones, the silos, in fact, but rather than, um, um, doing that, what we're suggesting is put on these new pair of glasses and begin to use the language and see how that feels.
And I think that's where we've had to try [00:09:00] and build a number of models that translate what's happening outside of the education sector to school. So one of the things that we developed very A long time ago now was something called the life cycle of school experience. This is where we really help schools think about the journey that, um, parents, students, and employees are on a different stages, the different stages of that journey and how our role is to help them move through those various stages and to examine what is actually happening.
So one example might be to really think about how are we onboarding students and in that admissions process? Are we actually helping them choose the right school for the parents to the right school for the children? Um, are we onboarding them in the right way? Are we keeping them engaged? Are we thinking about what is the experience of communications?
One example, we went to a school not too long ago where the experience [00:10:00] of one mother with four children in the school Was that she was receiving 36 emails per day from the school and every one of those emails had something good and viable to say but collectively the experience was Soul destroying and the parent almost had to give up her job in order to manage the email flow from the school You And so what we're saying is, we need to consider from the point of view of the end user, in this case the parents, what we are doing, and to think about how can we make that not just efficient for the school, but efficient for families who are coming to the school.
Suzette: Schools are in many ways notorious for being or working very siloed. So whether that's the difference between faculty and staff, but equally, if you're thinking about those stages that David was just talking about, you can just like the team that we were leading, you could see it as a, Them a separate teams, your marketing and communications team, your admissions team, your fundraising and alumni [00:11:00] team.
And what we're seeing is that the more siloed an organization or a school is, the more siloed that experience tends to be as well. So we, we also need to think about what is this, how can we start working in more integrated ways in order to create that more integrated and coherent experience. And so we're creating all sorts of frameworks, like the one Dave is talking about, and tools that will help us to see what is in place, how can we measure that, um, uh, yeah, to, to create that lexicon, that language.
Aransas: That relates so much, Dave Norton, I feel like I have to use last names today, uh, to the work you've been doing with contextual journey maps.
Dave: So. Before I talk about contextual journey maps, I think telling the story of experience strategy as a lens that you have to put on is a very important technique.[00:12:00]
It's one that I used to use a long time ago, and I haven't used it recently, and you've reminded me. Because I live in this world all the time. I'm constantly thinking about experience strategy. I sometimes don't even realize that other people don't see the world the same way. And Rances is probably smiling right now because she's used to being the translator sometimes for that kind of stuff before we start to.
Before we start to talk to them about journey mapping, before we start to talk to them about measurement, before we start to talk to them about all of these different things, we need to help them understand the lens. So I think that's, that's really important. Now let's, let's go to this topic of, of contextual journey mapping.
It's the context that people find themselves in that really dictates. What their experience is all about. It's not the [00:13:00] process that the organization has created. And oftentimes the organization, especially if it's a, an institution like an educational institution, they're so focused on their process.
They're not in any way focused on the context in which the mother that you described finds herself in, or the student finds themselves in. And that's why it's so important that we, we think about context.
David: I think it's really interesting when you talk about context, because one of the things that we are feeling very strongly right now is that the context And the landscape of international education certainly is changing.
So, um, yes, we're in the process of, uh, helping schools build and construct experiences, but the context in which they're doing that is shifting. So, for example, we're actually seeing significant shifts in the way in which, uh, [00:14:00] parents choose schools for their children. Um, uh, we actually, uh, call it learning in an age of Ryanair.
So what we mean by that, and if you, if you've ever been to Europe and got a cheap flight, you've probably, uh, got a Ryanair flight. And if you, you're not sure, it was the one with the yellow seats. Um, but what do we mean by that? We mean that, um, in the, in the good old days, or in the olden days, Parents, uh, would come to an international school, they had often the companies paying for their children, uh, the, the children of the expats to, uh, enter the school, and they would take on the full tuition fee.
And that meant that in some ways, coming to an international school was a bit like coming to, um, uh, flying British Airways towards adulthood. Um, and there would be a lounge, there would be first class and business class, and it would all, it would be about all of the frills. And what's happening right now is we're seeing the attrition of that kind of business model, [00:15:00] which is actually then leading parents to say, Ah, if that's not happening, then now I'm going to choose, uh, more like, I'm going to choose the Ryanair flight.
I'm not so interested in the great sports program or the theater, or maybe the fantastic campus. All I'm interested in is getting my child from A to B and having an experience that is good enough. to get them to the next stage of their education. And that context is really changing the way in which schools are having to think about their value proposition.
And what is the experience of these big international schools that in a sense are stuck like British Airways used to be or Lufthansa or any of these airlines and thinking, what is it that we offer That is going to compete with, uh, the Ryanair flight. And this is where one of the things that we feel very strongly is that we have to go back to redefining the experience of education, not as the end [00:16:00] product, the gateway to university or a successful life beyond, but actually the experience of education is childhood, and we have to give meaning and value.
To the childhood that we are providing in collaboration with parents, and that's where the value proposition really comes in. That's
Aransas: really beautiful. And I think it's distinguishing that, that makes your work so uniquely valuable. So one of my favorite things that you've been doing and, and really having worked in this industry for a couple of decades now, I'm so impressed by the speed of innovation.
Jen. at yellow car and the speed of impact and growth. But one of the things I'm most excited about that you're working on is this felt experience indicator. So talk to us a little about that and what it's meant both for yellow car, but also for the schools and the audiences you are talking to with that piece.[00:17:00]
Suzette: Yeah, so we started being, doing experience strategy in schools. The question kept on, kept coming back to us about how do we actually measure what that experience is like. And if you look at what's currently being done in schools, um, and I don't think that's just international schools. I think it's schools around the world.
It are, these are the typical satisfaction surveys. And if we're thinking about, Where we are at right now, where we are saying as a school, we also need to understand how we're no longer in a service economy, but an experience economy. We shouldn't, we should no longer ask questions about how satisfied are you with some of the services?
Do you like the food that we're serving? Do you like the bus? What about your teachers? We need to ask questions that are starting to unpack what that experience is like for students, for parents, and for employees. And so we started on the back of a napkin, uh, creating this. Um, framework that we now call [00:18:00] the Felt Experience Indicator.
And, um, it is consisting of three circles that are all connected to one another. So the first circle is that life cycle of school experience that David talked about earlier. It allows us to determine what part of the journey are we focusing on. Are we focusing on those families that are in the admission stage, those new ones, or current families for joining us. The ones that are leaving or even our former ones, like the alumni, and are we focusing on families? Are we focusing on students? Are we focusing on employees? So that in a way for us, that's, that's the scope. Then we started thinking about if we're thinking about the school experience, what might be some of the dimensions, um, that make up that actual school experience.
And, uh, while doing strategy workshops around the world for the last two years, we asked every single time that, How can we ask different questions linked to the experience? And we came up with the six dimensions that are happiness, connection, understanding, belonging, [00:19:00] gratitude, and confidence that allow us in a way to identify potential wavelengths.
So in other words, can we see what the wavelength of parents is? Between, from preschool all the way to grade 12, is happiness increasing over time? Is it dipping or peaking? And then the question of course is also, why is it peaking or, uh, peaking or dipping? And this is where that third circle comes in.
These are some of the qualitative questions and they are linked to the progression of an experience. Questions around, what were some of the expectations that you were having? What are the impressions? What are the highs and lows? What's that residual memory and how well did it end? These are the kind of questions where we are able to identify particular topics that, uh, underpin some of those wavelengths that we are starting to see.
So it's, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a very exciting tool that we're only starting to unpack right now. We've been piloting it over the last year with a number of [00:20:00] schools around the world. Um, and, um, yeah, let's see how can that then impact the experience for all those community members.
Aransas: Not just in isolation by school, but collectively across schools, the insight potential there is huge.
David: Yeah. And I, and I think this is where, um, we've been quite surprised to see not just how powerful it is to visualize, um, it's a bit like, um, as we said before, you're, you're, you're What we're doing is helping people put on those experience glasses, but then when they put on the glasses, they're literally seeing an experience wavelength and they're beginning to see what is happening within the school through this new lens.
And I think what we're saying often to schools is we don't actually know, and this is the To Dave's point about the context, we don't know why there's a dip in grade four, we're just seeing a dip in grade four, and it allows us to be curious about it. [00:21:00] And then very often when we follow that up by going into a school, a lot of what we're doing is then facilitating powerful conversations, for example, between students and teachers, where we're saying, look at the data together and tell stories about what you think is happening.
And we've had already some remarkable conversations that we've witnessed, where students have, in that context, because it's a safe conversation, being able to say, I feel this, I feel that, in some cases, you're biased, that you have favorites as a teacher. And that's affecting my overall experience and ultimately my well being.
And a teacher having the confidence to be able to say, I've, I don't want to hear that, But I'm glad that you've told me, and it's given me a new perspective off some of the things we may need to work on together. And, and this we often follow up with [00:22:00] this, um, co creation session where we're saying, if this is the experience, how can we imagine together?
And co create new experiences. And we've we have seen some remarkable transformations where we've we've seen schools move from a position where they're, in a sense, in the dark to actually going out and saying, You know what? We've we've heard you. And these are the things we're changing immediately.
These are the things we're changing by the summer vacation. And these are the things that are a bit tough for us, but we're committed to looking at them in the long term. And so for us, that, that context is opening up a quite different arena of conversation, um, to the point that we've actually even had a multinational organization saying, Oh, that's quite interesting.
Would you help us measure the experience of our executives within the corporation. And so, uh, we are not, uh, executive experts. [00:23:00] So it's kind of interesting for us as educationalists to think what may some of these insights then, uh, lean back towards, as we lean back towards the world where we got all this inspiration from.
Um, what, what insights could we offer back?
Suzette: I think what's so powerful generally, and I think why we get so much joy out of seeing how the felt experience indicator is impacting, um, the cultures in schools, because it, what it does is it will, If, if a school's committed to taking this on every year, every two years and going through a cycle like that, ultimately what it's doing is creating that culture of listening and feedback and constant improvement.
And if there's one thing that we have seen during our time is that often we would ask, um, community members to spend a whole lot of time to give us feedback that then we don't do anything with, let alone really feedback to them what some of the outcomes are. And, and it is changing [00:24:00] some of that narrative and actually seeing how can we use this data to improve the experience?
And then how can we measure again to then see what that actual impact is.
Aransas: So exciting. What are your big dreams for the Felt Experience Indicator?
David: I think, I think as young on, well, I'm not young, but as, uh, young in this business are new, that's the word new entrepreneurs, you know, I think there is still some of this, which is, this is, uh, latest, best guess, uh, how to layer onto the world of educational schools, something that is going to be meaningful.
I think, I think, Our dream is that it actually leads to transformation in student learning, that it leads to well being in, uh, uh, in teachers and employees of schools, that it actually begins to address some of the, and identify some of the friction points, um, and that that woman with 36 emails a day is [00:25:00] no longer, um, Uh, is no longer reading emails every day, and if I think we can do some of that, um, ultimately, we think that what we have here is something that is scalable.
Um, but as, as, as entrepreneurs, we're also learning quite a lot along the way. And actually, um, we're kind of thinking. Let's just get to the end of the month and then see where we go from there.
Aransas: I love too, the way you're thinking about community building at Yellow Car. So, uh, you're actively looking for ways to scale the value and the insight of the work that you're doing, both to the schools that you're currently working with, but also those who may not be ready to fully invest in experience strategy, but are experience strategy curious.
Suzette: Absolutely. Uh, you know, when we were working in a school ourselves, we were very conscious of the access to resources that we had, and [00:26:00] in a way, um, we used it as a team to when we created something to reflect and to turn it into something that can be used for other schools with fewer resources as well.
And when we started yellow car, we felt that that was a very important component of. The way we wanted to build our own business experience strategy shouldn't, should be, well, should be accessible for everyone. And this is where, um, yeah, being able to share some of these frameworks and tools and, uh, setting up.
Monthly inspiration workshops and these kind of things are ways in which we are trying to um, share the, share the happiness with everyone around us.
Aransas: We share your value of accessibility and everyone on this podcast is probably sick of hearing me say this phrase, but we deeply believe that tides rise higher collectively when it comes to experience strategy, especially [00:27:00] in that to.
Rebuild consumer trust. It is something that we all have to hold hands and collectively work toward. Otherwise we contribute to the continual degradation of trust. And that's, that's true from the tiniest school to the largest corporation. Uh, and so it does feel like a big responsibility. And it's one of the reasons that we're so excited.
to collaborate with yellow car, because we see how you were reaching an industry that is so specific and yet has such potential for impact. And if you're listening to this and you want to get involved with yellow car, there's lots of ways to do that. We hope you'll join our experience strategy certification as one element of that.
It's allowing us to. educate and certify experienced strategists across a wide range of categories at a really accessible price point, especially accessible for those in education, because we are through a partnership with Yellowcar offering a steeply [00:28:00] discounted participant rate that you can still take advantage of, uh, and that comes with a mentorship.
From David and Suzette, along with, uh, working directly with Dave and I and the rest of our team of experienced strategists to hone your experience strategy. Beyond that, how should people look at getting involved with you, Suzette and David?
David: So I think, um, we're pretty active on LinkedIn, um, and if you, if you scroll down, sooner or later, you're going to see two people who, when they're working, wear all black and yellow shoes.
So then you'll know that's us. Um, and if that hasn't piqued your curiosity, then write to us at hello at yellow car dot IO. And the community space is open and free to anyone who wants to join. And that's community dot yellow car. And, uh, there you can connect with us and around 700 other people. So, um, there's lots of people working in [00:29:00] different parts of the education industry who, um, are already joining us there.
Aransas: Great stuff. And, uh, we look forward to continuing to partner with both of you and the potential that comes from shared resources and shared learning. And as much of a Privilege as it's been to mentor you and to work with you. We've learned so much from you and, uh, continue to be incredibly excited about the work that you're doing and its potential.
So thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules. Thank you for. Joining us today and staying true to that mission to make this valuable wisdom accessible to more folks by sharing your story here on the podcast.
David: Aransas, Dave, thanks so much.
Suzette: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
Aransas: Thank you. And for those of you listening, find David and Suzette. They put out so much really valuable content, [00:30:00] so much that is actionable. And this access to a community of like minded folks is in its own right, just a really rich resource. And then reach out to us. Let us know who you want to hear from. You'll find all of our episodes, as well as a wealth of tools, framework.
Content and ideas over at our website, stonemantle.co or if you're on sub stack, come check out our new sub stack, the experience strategist, where you'll find Dave's frequent musings on experience strategy, uh, and lots more ideas that build on what you're hearing here on the pod.
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