Should we survey them? Gathering great group feedback
Engaging stakeholders in a strategic planning process is critical but can be daunting. The task of generating input from dozens, hundreds, even thousands of individuals through focus groups and surveys might seem either like herding cats or like sending a message in a bottle across a vast ocean and waiting to see who will reply.
For those being surveyed or focus-grouped, ill-conceived experiences can feel frustrating or stale: Someone is dominating the conversation. None of the answer boxes align with my views.
Gathering great group feedback requires first understanding how the dimensions of time and relationships impact the project.
We explored this concept in a recent meeting with higher education institution leaders who are embarking on a strategic planning process. They’d come to us as thought partners and experts in community engagement, recognizing that for a strategic planning process to be successful, the process itself had to be strategic and engender the relationships needed to carry out the work. We are helping them not only map out the phases of planning, but what engagement might look like across a number of groups.
Here’s a simple visualization of engagements plotted across time and relationship intensity:
Sometimes, the answer to the age-old “Should we send a survey?” question is a wholehearted “YES!” (See our suggestions for getting more out of surveys.) But if you know you have lots of open-ended questions and are looking to generate ideas while building connections, maybe a World Cafe-style small group event would be a better fit. Or, perhaps your organization already has spreadsheets full of quantitative information, and you want large groups of people to respond with their interpretations and observations. You might consider hosting a data walk to display the information and ask for feedback.
To determine your engagement methodology, ask:
What kind of timeline are we operating on?
What kind of facilitative resources do we have available?
Are we in a phase for generating ideas or responding to options?
Will stakeholders want time to privately reflect, or publicly participate?
In the comments: We’d love to hear about great methods for gathering group feedback that you’d experienced as a participant or facilitator.