Rachael Maves: Hi everyone. You are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking with Babatunde Ilori. Babatunde is the CEO for Parsec education and excited to Babatunde once again have this conversation about the podcast na change. So thanks for coming on again and being a part of this conversation.

Babatunde Ilori: Thanks for having me, Rachael. Yeah, no, it would be fun to engage in this conversation here.

Rachael Maves: So, for people who have been following the podcast and listening, this is the second time that you've been a guest, Babatunde, and the first time that you came on. We talked a little bit about the podcast name, about the Getting Naked with leaders in education, and you shared just the importance and the Cornerstone of that phrase and the larger picture that it came from the book of why that was important. Do you want to just give a quick recap again around Getting Naked in the role that it plays in our company?

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, sure, I mean, I think a quick version of it is that really it's about being authentic and vulnerable and sharing the truth boldly, right, about what's happening in our systems, especially for our kiddos, and I think what we tend to do, unfortunately, is we do the opposite of Education. Sorry, Getting Naked in education is we do things like we pretend that, like it's not as bad as it is, or we're not necessarily going directly to the students to hear exactly what they're saying about. You know their experiences in the school systems, right, and so I think that this idea of Getting Naked is saying like hey, like let's just cut through the noise and like really just get that raw experience, that raw feedback, and get vulnerable with each other, because through that vulnerability, what happens is, I think, we grow stronger as a system and then and we're able to do things we couldn't do. I think that part of the issue we have is we're not able to break through these things because we're not vulnerable with each other. You know we hold back right, our ideas and our thinking and so it limits our abilities.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, and you've talked even about that for us internally, about that what that means and looks like in partnership with our districts and Charters and school leaders. Do you want to touch on that just really quickly, like what this looks like from internally in our organization to our partners?

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, I mean anyone who's a leader. If you're a leader of a school system that's small or super large, you know it's all about the people. Yeah, right, it's, it's the people that you're working with is quintessential to success. If you're in a system where you can't trust your team, if you're in a syst system where there's passive, aggressive behavior happening with adult, if you're in a system where there's no vulnerability with each other, well, we can almost guess what's going to happen in that right. And I think that when we are able to, As Leaders, practice what we preach literally with our students, oh my gosh, that's when magic happen. Right, yeah, and you see it happening constantly.

I'll give you a quick example. I have three children and Mom. My son is my middle child, so he's going into seventh grade. He just started school. They did opening of schools and you know he's like a nervous seventh grader going to a new school, middle school, right, like all these new kids, and he's super nervous. You could see it like I did the open house with them on, wife and I, and he's so nervous and like trying to do everything perfect.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] All the middle school kids are like all of them, yeah, all the changes, yeah, so funny.

Babatunde Ilori: And then it's been probably about a week since opening of schools and I'm like how's school going? And he's telling me, like his favorite teachers and his and the other kids that are in the classes and how fun he's having. He's really authentically enjoying it and like, so what makes it fun? Like, and guess what he's saying? Right, he's saying these things like well, my teacher, who's super into Star Wars, like has this, whatever thing that we're doing, and I'm staying after school as though, okay, Dad, to stay after school to do this Star Wars learning activity around Star Wars, and it's like the teacher is sharing a little bit about himself, which is he's super into Star Wars and Han Solo and all that, but then he's interconnecting it with the kids and allowing them to engage in a learning activity that they legitimately are learning in their science class and engage in an extracurricular or co-curricular activity after school. So he's like learning still, but it's like fun for him and he's like this is like great and like that's like a very positive story of like where a teacher's like revealing a little bit about themselves and the teacher probably is enjoying that, but then my kids are too, right, yeah, so that's the idea, right, where're we're able to do these things?

That's when those that like magic happens.

Rachael Maves: You know, yeah, and I see that in our company too, with the way that we interact with each other and the tough conversations that we have. And it's funny because Getting Naked has literally become like a catchphrase within the organization. I actually just saw it on the slack channel the other day. A new employee said, okay, Getting Naked moment, and he tell me about the CRM and how we're supposed to use it and. But it creates that culture of the willingness to be vulnerable and that it is a space that we can ask questions and we can push one another's thinking. We, when we first started the podcast, we got a lot of questions around like why naming it Getting Naked?

And we shared a little bit about this, about the culture, and now we're changing the name and do you want to share just a little bit around that impetus for that name change and the shift that we're that we're taking with podcast?

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, I'm not a fan of changing the name, but I get it. I get it right like we're. We're adults in the system and we're working for school systems, and so, if we want people to feel comfortable to come as a guest, right, and you're Googling, getting get an education, who knows what comes up on the Google search, totally get all that like. But it allows for these like conversations too. That's why I wanted to have this opportunity to share, like, the why behind the name change and why we had the name originally, because I think that as Leaders right, esally, educational leaders we have to model this. It's imperative because, guess what, our kids are looking at us, right, if we can not model quote, unquote Getting Naked, where we literally are being vulnerable, we're, we're, we're elevating the voices of people that are generally not heard.

Right, we authentically care. Right, we put ourselves out there in ways that you know is not typical. If we're not modeling that, how could we expect our students to ever do that? Yeah, so we are trying to model that at Parsec. It's hard not saying what this stuff is easy, right, it's. It's hard and work to do that and that's why we wanted to create this podcast to talk about that type of thing.

But I totally get it right, like if you're, you know you want to be on the show and you're like, yeah, but that name I'm gonna get politically destroyed in my wherever I'm at. You know, totally get that and that's why we're changing the name. But that doesn't mean we're not going to talk about it still.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, 100%, but I think that this is a really key point that I do want to just highlight for the people who are listening as well. I feel like this is us taking action on the things that we say that are important to us. And, you know, for a little bit of context, some of the feedback that we did get is that leaders, education forerunners in education want to be able to come on the show, but they also don't want to be put in a position where it may have an impact simply because of the name in a really s silly way. And, as I think a company that values voice, we listened to that. We heard that we had lots of internal debates and discussions around that if it was worth making that shi, knowing that this is such a core component and value for our company, but at the same time, we don't want to create an unnecessary barrier and, at the end of the day, that's where we landed. We want to be able to model the same thing that when we hear some of that critical feedback from voices that we value and trust that, if it fits with our core values, that we'll be able to shift and model that.

But you're right, the heart of the podcast to be able to bring in people who are like leading in really critical ways Across the Nation in education and having those tough conversations. That can't change at all.

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, and I think, like, if you think about, you know it's always interesting when you know we talk about obtaining like feedback, right, especially qualitative feedback. It's like everyone. So what are you going to do with that information, right? Yeah, are you going to do anything about it? And I think it's challenging sometimes, right, because sometimes with the feedback, like in this case, like I didn't really want to change the name, I'll be honest, but I was listening, you're right, Rachael, we were listening to the feedback from others and say, okay, put yourself in their shoes, get it like. Yeah, it's, it's, it's one of those challenging Dynamics there and the name can be a roadblock, and so it's like: oh, that thanks, because it's a great opportunity to talk about why it's so important to be vulnerable, why it's so important to be transparent, right, and so we have to come up with very intentional ways to still talk about that right, and because I would argue that might be the most important thing that we need in education is that vulnerability with each other.

Can you imagine, like adults in the system, what a healthy system it would be? Just the adults were modeling these behaviors. Right, yeah, from the principal of the school all the way to it could be the custodian, it could be the Child Nutrition worker, like. All of them are modeling that, and the students are seeing that. Right, they'll see it's in, it's infectious, that kind. And then guess what happens?

The students themselves start doing that with each other, right, yeah, colleagues, and in with the adults and the system. But it always has to come from us modeling this, and I think that the challenge, I see, is it's, it's tough, because when you, when people are vulnerable, you got to do something about it.

Rachael Maves: That's right.

Babatunde Ilori: So when like it's like what action? What are you? Now that you heard this, now that you heard that black students are saying in my school system: there's nothing here for me, I don't see myself in the curriculum, I don't, I don't, I don't connect with the content. Now you, they're telling you pretty directly. Now it's like: okay, do I have the courage to lean in to this problem and like actually something and do some changes to make it a better experience?

Rachael Maves: Right, yeah, and I think that's it's a perfect segue into a little bit about not only is this part of our culture that we Embrace, but one of our products is like a key component of this belief that we value voice and that voice has to be, and that vulner ility of voice has to be included in the decision making process so that we're we are making the informed decisions with the user and not just in isolation of so do you want to just share really quickly a little bit with everyone about real, because I think it continues to highlight the ways in which Parsec embodies and Embraces these values?

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, the best way I can describe this is: I've been an educ leadership for over a decade and specifically doing like data analysis and Communications work, and one of the things I realize is we pay a lot of attention to quantitative data. The typical things that we talk about in education is like state test scores, right, local assessment scores, student discipline, attendance, Etc, and those are all critically important things to measure and analyze right, and we did that right and we would have great insights and data visualization tools that we our company currently does this right like. But the challenge is this: what happens, Rachael, when I'm meeting with you? Let's say you're the. Superintendent of a mediumsized school system and I say, dude, like, look at this data Insight we're sharing with you. Chronic absenteeism for your emerging multil legal students has skyrocketed year-over-year, right like I just wanted to call that out.

I don't know if you knew that, but it's like a 500% increase in chronic absenteeism year-over-year blah, and it's like what? So what do you did you know this? And then, like, the other question is: what accounts for those results? You might be like super surprised, or maybe you might. Oh yeah, I kind of know a little bit about that because of this. Here's the.

What tends to happen is a lot of times most people are generally don't know why, the why behind it, what accounts for those results? And then we stop there at Parsec where we used to stop.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, or we make assumptions.

Babatunde Ilori: That too, either we don't know or make an assumption, think we know the answer. That's right.

Rachael Maves: I remember a lot of principals when I was even at Mader unified thought that they knew the why behind, why black students were being syst, and then when they heard directly from them, it was a different answer than what they thought it would be, and so in.

Babatunde Ilori: Examples. Historically, we could only stop and just hope to that you could exercise some type of internal resources to figure out the why, to do the focus groups with the students, to do the empathy interviews, etc. And it's highly labor intensive and I did that work. By the way, I would, literally, with my admin assistant, do these focus groups, do these empathy interviews, do the recorded on our recording devices, synthesized the. This is before, by the way, so there's no, I'm not doing CLT engineering stuff to like synthesize a beautiful theme for me. I'm doing it like we're doing it old school, yeah.

And then what we found was like: oh my goodness, especially because of AI technology, can we help obtain what accounts for the results for sign with significantly less resources? Right, can we leverage technology to this? And that was the birth of Parsec reel, where we're capturing the authentic voices, students and Educators and parents in the system, in the school community, and we're just going to ask the parents of the emergent multilingual students directly: like: what's the what accounts for those results? Like: why are we seeing this huge uptick in cocap? We're going to ask the students about those experiences directly in that situation and we're going to be able to do that like that. So, within literally 24 hours of one of our what we call real campaigns, you can actually answer this question that before would have taken you a huge amount of time and labor to figure out.

And that's the beauty of Parsec, and we're very passionate about elevating in particularly student voices, especially Stu student voices that are generally un hurt as well, to helping you improve student achievement. So now, when you're armed as a school leader, Rachael, with that information, how much more rich is that? Data Insights now, yeah, now you have the Insight of this is going on within 24 hours, 72 hours. You got the why behind it. Now it's like we can do something about it, like it's like you're, you're like excited, like I can, like actually make changes probably will change their trajectory of kids lives. I could help ks in the long term because of this.

It's an incredible Feeling, by the way, when you do that and we've seen Partners using the system like that and they do immediate changes in their system.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well, and I think about and you and I have talked about this before after No Child Left Behind, an Essa came around, which are the federal requirements that states have to meet. One of the specifics was in their accountability system, and almost every state in the country adopted this continuous Improvement mindset that came out of total quality management from Deming and other industri is where the focus, all of a sudden, was really on how do we get to the root cause of the issue, so that when we are making change, we're not basing that change on what we think we know best, but that we are actually getting to the end user, and that end user is the one who's driving the suggestions and the ideas for what has to happen within the system, and I think the in my previous experience in running these and facilitating this work for distri dists, the breakdown would often happen exactly at. What you're saying is that we go through this process, we try to get to the root cause, and the amount of time it would take to do empathy interviews, or the same students are the ones that are giving feedback, or the same families are the ones that are giving feedback. There hasn't been this mechanism that allows qualitative feedback at scale, and that's, I think, what I'm excited about. Exactly what you're saying is now not only can you do it at scale, but you can get to that deep root cause. And when we talk about that return on investments and schools and districts being good stewards of funds, now you can go confidently into putting actions in place so that to address that qu quantitative metric like chronic absenteeism, now you have the data behind from the students of the why they're missing school and the actions that you are putting in place.

Marry those two data sets together which, yeah, I think is just so powerful.

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, it's been so gamechanging, ing Rachels, you know, and I think, like when we, when you're in, like the school system, and you're wondering like why is it? Why did, like my fifth grade class, bomb the state assessment? All the other classes did really well, like what happened there, right, unpacking the that and peeling the onion, I call it right like where you're trying to really get at the heart of what it accounts for. The results does take a lot of time and with par real shortcuts, some of that right Y, and it allows you to capture these things in ways that, like, you can get those voices authentically and then, like, actually Implement some changes and then you could rinse and repeat meaning, like you could literally iter it and do and check to make sure it shifted experiences. You were hoping it would right and you can check on that very quickly too. That's the other piece of it that I think is, I would argue, is just as important.

So, yeah, and the other thing is this, like again going back to kind of that Getting Naked. You know, and so can you, we know, that with a tool like real it's very powerful, but it's only as powerful as kids feeling like they could share authentically their voices. It's only as powerful as Educators in the system feeling like they can be their true cell, they can be vulnerable, they can right, and I think that's really speaks to the educational leaders that are utilizing the system. The ones that are jumping on trying to use the system are the ones that are already trying to do this, to begin with in very rudimentary ways, so they see this system as a force multiplier. So, if you're an educational leader that isn't like about that real is not for you, right? Yeah, because it's about the wanting to really authentically hear the voices of your students, of your Educators, in your system.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. And, like you said, I mean not everybody's pursuing that or wanting to do that exactly, which it's a tough place to be, because I don't think we will see change until we are able to engage. So it, yeah, I completely agree. Well, Baba, I just want to say thank you for joining me today and I really do appreciate and I can't say this enough this whole idea of Getting Naked, being vulnerable, and I know I said this in the first episode, but I'm going to say it again that comes from your leadership as our CEO and our organization, and it continues to drive not only our core internal value but the way we engage with partners and the products that we put forward. So thank you for your leadership in all in this space and I am sure he will be back on the podcast again, but hopefully it's not for another name change.

Babatunde Ilori: Yeah, hopefully. Well, thank you, Rachael, this is fun.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] All right, bye.

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This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.