Objectives and Results

Broadspectrum has introduced a crowdsourced forecasting capability to several hundred employees from multiple functions and levels in its Government Defense Practice. Led by its Chief Executive of Government Services and Outsourcing, the unit launched a crowdsourced forecasting program that regularly asks employees about a range of outcomes related to its business, competitive intelligence, and industry trends.

Using our crowdsourced forecasting platform, Cultivate Forecasts, the program immediately began generating:

• Quantitative and qualitative forecasts from individual employees;
• An aggregate ongoing probabilistic forecast;
• Accuracy data for individual and aggregate forecasts; and
• Feedback to individuals and the organization about their performance.

The value generated from these outputs was significant.

• Captured ground truth for strategic planning.
• Provided real-time, aggregated forecasts.
• Increased transparency in decisions.
• Improved collaboration across teams.
• Increased accuracy of forecasts.

Cultivate Labs’ Approach

Cultivate Labs provided the software and consulting services to guide Broadspectrum through our methodology to ensure they gained strategic value from the signals the crowdsourced forecasts provided.

1. Solicit forecast questions

Each month, the company focused on a few key issues to elicit forecasts.

2. Solicit forecasts & discussion

Broadspectrum launched its crowdsourced forecasting program during a week-long onsite roadshow across offices in Melbourne and Sydney. Cultivate, along with the Chief Executive and the project team, jointly facilitated meetings with both the leadership teams and their teams to obtain buy-in and introduce the program. After the launch, the company published at least two new questions per week to keep people coming back to the platform.

3. Integrate forecasts into existing decision process

Cultivate facilitated bi-weekly status meetings with the project team to provide updates on participation, trends in key forecasting areas, and assist in crafting new forecasting questions. Project managers and team leaders were also involved to incite action within local teams. The teams used the outputs from the crowd as input for major strategic decisions.

4. Provide feedback about forecasts

The Chief Executive sent monthly memos to recognize the top forecasters and most active participants in a given month and highlighted interesting trends in the forecasts – making it clear senior executives were acknowledging and reacting to the crowd’s input. Other members of the leadership team used Yammer to proliferate and comment on results.