Invested thinking
Get to Know Us
Our Mission Proposition
How can we add value to conversations in education management?
Our Guiding Values
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Conduct yourself in all matters with honesty and integrity.
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Listen... think... then speak, but only if you have something to say.
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Don't be afraid to say, "I don't know."
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Add value to everything you do.
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Be only your best -- everything else will follow.
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Plan to learn something with each new assignment.
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Re-state all problems as opportunities.
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Your career is an adventure comprised of a long series of mini-adventures called workdays.
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Profit is just one tool by which we move closer to our objectives.
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Grow personally and professionally on a daily basis.
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Stay in balance.
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Enjoy your work and help others do the same.
Company Background
LMI conducts constituent surveys for independent schools, studying all major groups -- parents, students, alumni, and faculty. We’ve prepared over 500 customized constituent surveys for more than 100 independent schools across North America and internationally. This is all we do.
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Our mission proposition reflects an urge to continuously study the market, and to always be on the "lookout". The day we stop learning will be the day we’re out of business. Our clients are far too busy to personally attend to the market research that goes with being a successful leader. To the extent that LMI can play a key role in this leadership function, our clients are well served.
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Conducting a constituent survey necessarily brings together the skills of questionnaire design, clarity of language, computer programming, number-crunching, analyzing, and interpretive report writing. Few market research companies, it's sad to say, deliver this mix of resources. We strive to deliver on all counts.
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Anybody’s computer can generate thousands of pages of tables and graphs. That’s the easy part of conducting a survey. Figuring out what it all means and translating it into plain English is another matter altogether. This is what we bring to the table.
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Much gratification comes from seeing the faces when we deliver survey results that work as a meaningful management tool, results not previously considered possible. By careful crafting of questions and rigorous dissection of data, we’re able to shine light, not just on the easy concrete performance measures, but also on the so-called soft measures that tend to elude scrutiny. In doing so, we help clients to build and sustain competitive advantage.
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See our complete list of clients on this website and feel free to contact any of them to learn about their experiences working with us. Finally, if you’d like to understand more about who we are and what excites us in the world, see my collection of blog entries to your left. Then, give me a call at 1-519-281-3400. I look forward to hearing from you.
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Sincerely,
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Kevin Graham
Kevin Graham
President
Olga Graham
Vice-President, Research
Alana Graham
Research Associate
Meet The Team
Kevin Graham
BA (English Literature), MBA
President
Olga Graham
BA (Education)
Vice-President, Research
Ivan Shogin
Master's (Civil Engineering)
Director of Data Management
Alana Graham
M.Sc. (Social Psychology) in progress
Research Associate,
Research and Culture Chair - Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee of Graduate Students in Psychology, Western University
Alexander Graham
PhD (Sociology) candidate
Research Associate
Constituent Surveys
A Key to Your Relevance...
The days of timeless management wisdom are over. Long gone is the lotus position guru, gathering dust in some back room, humming out a map for the future. Today's gurus instead live by the mantra: "Go to market, go to market, go to market."
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Nobody is exempt from the need to anticipate dramatic swings in market demands. If you're thinking, "There will always be a strong demand for what we do today" you better have a good pension plan.
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Not long ago, we lived in the information age. Now, we're in the information management age. There's no shortage of information. What there is a shortage of, is the ability to absorb all this information, and to package it in a digestible, usable form in support of effective, timely decisions.
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As a market oriented manager, chances are that one of your key service points is this tailored management of information. Your constituents (parents, students, alumni, and faculty) now have, courtesy of the wired world, access to countless new options by which to satisfy their information needs, and access is next to free. Parents (for example) know a lot more about options in education than they did just five years ago. As a result, they are demanding a much more active role in mapping out the future of their children's education. This, in turn, has heightened the need for an informed exchange of ideas going both ways.
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You can protect and promote your market position by regularly going to your market with constituent surveys. If you don't, be assured, others will.
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Here are just a few of the benefits. Check as many as apply for your school:
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Show your constituents that you care enough to ask. You'll be impressed by the public relations value derived from merely asking.
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Eliminate the guesswork. You may know your constituents very well. They know themselves even better. Here's their chance to tell you where they are now and where they want to be in the future.
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Give voice to the silent majority. Regularly, you hear comments, good or bad, from a vocal minority of constituents. This is your best opportunity to learn more from everybody else.
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Quantify your understanding of what constituents like and dislike; of what constituents value; of what constituents feel about your programs; and, of what constituents would like you to do for them in the future.
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Differentiate constituents by satisfaction ratings; by attitudinal measures; by what they value; and, by demographics.
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Dissect your organization. Learn which specific elements of what you do are the most important determinants of satisfaction. These key factors separate your successes from your failures.
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Efficiently allocate scarce and diminishing resources. With a survey, you'll know where you're doing well and where you need attention. You'll be well poised to apply time, energy, and dollars in areas most likely to yield the greatest improvements in overall satisfaction next year.
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The bottom line. All the number-crunchers in the world can slice and dice the cost side of your operating statement until there are no operations left. But it's constituent satisfaction that drives the top line. And the top line is the most important driver of the bottom line. By conducting a survey of constituent satisfaction, you're investing in a better understanding of what drives your business.
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Commit to continuous improvement. "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it!" If you can measure it, however, you'll have a benchmark against which all future progress, gains and losses, can be compared.
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Follow a constantly moving target. There isn't a market today without exposure to change. A regular cycle of constituent surveys gives you the timely intellectual capital with which to anticipate this change. Be able to stop and turn on a dime. Build and sustain competitive advantage.
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Take your mandate from the market. Heated debates on program offerings are quickly concluded when you can drop a survey report on the boardroom table and declare, "I hear what you're saying, but that's not what our constituents are telling us."
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You win either way. If, by doing a constituent satisfaction survey, you find that your constituents love everything you're doing for them, tell the world, year after year. On the other hand, if there's a key area in need of improvement, you need to know about it now.