Surveys are a good thing; if done properly
Throughout our careers as business leaders, it was always of the utmost importance to solicit feedback from employees, customers and users. Surveys, focus groups, third party reviews, town halls and the like, are powerful ways to obtain a deeper understanding, be aware of gaps and opportunities, validate or modify business priorities and set future direction. Feedback tools that are well crafted and built to provide detailed, honest and open opinions on critical topics help organizations to improve and be more relevant to customers.
So, a recent article on Huntsville Doppler, MAHC seeking public input on short-term priorities with strategic planning survey, caught our interest. It appeared that MAHC is reaching out to its user community to ensure that they understand its views, opinions, concerns and priorities. So, it was with some optimism we dove into the online survey, ready to provide our input. Wow, were we disappointed!
Beginning with the introduction page — “Please help shape the future of Muskoka Algonquin Health Care!”, with input to their “Strategic Plan” or “roadmap for the next three years”, meaning input to set “short-term direction and priorities”. Further confusing guidance is given stating this is different from their “future planning for 15+ years out”, which obviously refers to the hospital capital planning initiative. A further description of it being both “visionary and actionable” caps off this totally confusing set of mixed terminology and disconnected timeframes. An aside, in most businesses a “Strategic Plan” looks beyond a three-year horizon. In slow-moving healthcare, longer planning horizons are a reality. Go to the survey here.
Given the past seven years of controversy surrounding our hospital’s future/redevelopment, are they seriously asking users for input restricted to just the next three years? We know redevelopment always intersects with organizational forward strategic planning. Wouldn’t this be a wonderful opportunity for hospital user and ratepayers to provide their opinions and views on both short term and key longer-term issues and priorities?
Sadly, the survey goes downhill from there. The subsequent six questions will provide little meaningful community input, either short or long term:
- The first question asks at which site you work/use most often
- The second question asks you to self-identify from a list of 11 different group types, four of which are internal to MAHC itself. Gaining meaningful input from such a diverse audience-set with a simple short survey is impossible.
- The third question originally asked for your three top “likes” from a list provided – but was relevant only to people working at MAHC. Then that question disappeared and was replaced by a general question on user satisfaction.. Then it seemed the question flipped between the two different questions a few more times.
- The fourth question, “What is special about MAHC?” looks self-serving at best, and not useful for planning.
- The fifth survey question contained a limited list of priorities from which three are selected – all so high level it’s impossible to tell what they mean, leaving interpretation wide open. (e.g. specialized services, improved facilities, new technology, etc).
The little that will be gleaned from this survey is unlikely to be actionable on a three-year time-horizon and will be disconnected from the biggest community concerns – near term funding shortfall impacts on services, and longer-term hospital redevelopment. At best the survey is an inadequate “box-ticking” exercise in public relations. At worst, it signals a continued lack of understanding of how to connect to and understand the community’s issues, needs and priorities.
Having received significant articulate feedback from the large Facebook advocacy group ‘Listen to the People’, Huntsville Town Council (and others), public presentations and many others speaking out in our community on their capital planning, you would think the MAHC board/senior management would understand how to properly engage and interact with the user community? We were hopeful that good planning and community engagement capabilities at MAHC were improving. Sadly, this survey suggests these hopes were misplaced. This doesn’t bode well for the critical ongoing capital planning work.
On this survey, our advice to MAHC is: if you do not yet understand the views and priorities of your community, and are serious about it, you need to do a much better job than this effort suggests.
Ross Maund is a career senior corporate executive and (former) MAHC director
Dave Wilkin is a technology and business executive and (former) MAHC director
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