Beyond Surveys and Focus Groups

A 90-minute session facilitated for 25—75+ people where insight, engagement, and ownership are created together—so you can make better, faster, more trusted decisions when the picture is unclear.

You could run a survey.
You could try a few focus groups.

But sometimes these are not enough.

When the picture is incomplete and the stakes are high:

  • You don’t fully trust what you’re hearing

  • You know what assumptions are shaping decisions

  • And whatever you decide will impact people you haven’t heard from yet

You don’t just need more input.
You need a clearer, shared understanding of what’s real. 

The Problem with Traditional Approaches

Surveys and focus groups have their place—but they often fall short in moments like this.

  • Surveys generate data—but flatten nuance and context

  • Focus groups go deeper—but only with a small subset of voices (if they go well)

  • Both can feel slow, extractive, and disconnected from action

  • And when results come back, stakeholders often ask: “Do we trust this?”

Meanwhile:

  • People are fatigued with Y.A.S. (Yet Another Survey)

  • Energy fades

  • And the insights don’t always translate into movement—or event clarity.

What’s Different About PopUpThinkTank

This isn’t just a way to gather input.
It’s a way to generate shared understanding—together, in real time.

In a single 90-minute session, we work with you to bring together:

  • 25–50+ stakeholders, teammates, and/or leaders 

  • Across roles, functions, and perspectives

And instead of collecting feedback about the system—
you invite people into it.

What happens:

  • Insight is surfaced live—not extracted later

  • Patterns, tensions, and contradictions become visible (sooner is always better)

  • People see how the input is generated—so they trust it

  • And the people who care most begin to emerge 

It works because people don’t just share ideas and give input.
They experience the insight together.

5 Things You Walk Away With

After a PopUpThinkTank session, leaders consistently have:

1. A clearer picture of what’s actually happening

Not just what people say—but how it’s experienced across the system: insights, experiments, and connections. 

2. Insight you can stand behind

Because stakeholders saw how it was generated, not just how it was summarized. This creates trust. And trust creates movement. 

3. Language you can use immediately

To communicate upward, outward, and across with credibility—ready-to-go communications to share up, down, and across. 

4. Early alignment—not just feedback

People begin to see themselves in the problem and the path forward, not as consumers but as co-creators and owners. 

5. The people who want to carry it forward

Champions emerge naturally—not assigned later. Whether it’s early adopters or forming a new task force, find the people with energy and motivation to go first. 

A Real Example: $6.7B Construction Company with 5,000 Employees 

Mortenson Construction came in with a familiar challenge:

They had invested in an “Effective Meetings” initiative—but didn’t have a clear, trusted picture of what was actually happening in meetings across the organization.

All they had was hearsay. They considered a survey. The considered a focus group. But they needed something different.  

What they left with:

  • A clearer, more honest picture of reality

  • Insight they could confidently share across the organization

  • Early alignment—not just data

  • And the people who wanted to help carry the work forward

👉 Read the full case study >
See our approach and what emerged. 

Use This When You’re Asking Questions Like…

  • “Should we continue, scale, or rethink this initiative?”

  • “What’s actually happening on the ground vs. what we think?”

  • “Why isn’t this landing across the organization?”

  • “What are we missing—and who haven’t we heard from yet?”

  • “How do we move forward without creating more resistance?”

  • “We need input—but we also need people aligned before we act”

Or more simply:

“We’re making a decision that affects a lot of people—and we don’t fully trust what we know yet.”

Why It Works

Most approaches separate:

  • Insight gathering 

  • Ideation and brainstorming

  • Engagement building 

PopUpThinkTank brings them together.

It’s designed around:

  • A real, lived tension (not a hypothetical problem)

  • A shared stake (participants see themselves in it)

  • A structured experience (fast, focused, and energizing)

  • An open process (visible, participatory, trusted)

Because in growing and complex organizations:

Insight doesn’t create alignment.
Shared experience does.

A Better Starting Point

The best way to discover whether a PopUpThinkTank is right for your situation isn’t a high-pressure sales call.

It’s the Session Builder—a short (~3 mins), guided experience designed to help you:

  • Clarify the moment you’re in

  • Surface what’s actually at stake

  • See what a well-designed session could unlock

Start with the Session Builder
Opens in a new tab. Select “Discovery” to explore how this could work in your context.