A few challenged that I encountered during my data collection and analyzation stage were:
Ensuring that I am gathering enough voices. Diverse perspectives are so important, especially in a large organization. I was very conscientious about this fact and spent considerable time creating my focus groups with multiple crew and contractors, leaders and managers, trainers and onboarders, all the while ensuring that I had a mix of tenures, teams, and cross site representation of the division. I likely completed more focus groups than I needed to, especially since the participants were sharing the same adherence story again and again. I should have recognized that and perhaps not completed the last one or two, but they were already scheduled. Ultimately though, focus groups are incredible engaging for our crew and when they get the change to share their voices, opinions, ideas, and feedback, they greatly get the chance to be a part of the solution – so no regrets for me for giving that extra time to the teams.
- Analyzing and Affinitizing the voices. Summarizing large amounts of data can often prove to be challenging and definitely was for my adherence focus groups. I gathered a lot of voices and had hundreds of direct quotes, responses, ideas, innovations, etc. Affinitizing those thoughts and finding the best way to summarize, document, communicate, and move into next steps can be a bit daunting. I think an important lesson is knowing your audience and what kind of communication is preferred and desired. I made sure that I asked directly to each of my business partners regarding their desired communication methods. This helped greatly. I also looked back at my prior experiences with this senior leadership team, which led me to choose a Mural board as my main visual when I met and communicated with them. On my board, I included quotes, ideas, themes, and everything was color coded, making it very easy to read, even if I was not present (very important). I also added some additional visuals – circles, arrows, highlights – to even better stress a theme or finding. This was very effective and my senior team was very pleased with my deliverable. However, I am an internal consultant and my original coding for the focus group assignment was not up to par had I been an external consultant. I re-reviewed my comments, utilized an in vivo coding methodology (using the participants own words) and created categories to simplify and best tell my focus group story.