I recently completed a nine-month online project where I dealt with my own students, the teachers I was training, and the teachers' students. At the end of the project, the client conducted a survey to gauge the feelings of the participants. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, except for one negative comment. This is what the client decided to focus on. Changes were requested.
I remember working at a very popular English camp over a decade ago that was run during the summer and winter holidays by one of the top universities in South Korea. Students from all over the country attended the camp and enjoyed the experience. Each camp often had between 80 and 100 students. At one of the camps, two students complained that they were bored and there was too much free time. The camp director panicked and completely revised the next camp's schedule to keep the campers "busy" until 8pm. The campers hated that next camp and word spread that the camp was too much work and no fun. Registration for the subsequent camp was too low to hold it and the camp was cancelled. It never recovered, all because 2% of the participants complained.
Too often, management chooses to ignore the stakeholders who are satisfied and focus on the complainers. If something isn't perfect, things need to be tinkered with. I'm not saying that no complaints are valid or justified, just that they need to be taken with a grain of salt. When over 95% percent of the people surveyed are happy, the product or service is pretty damned good! It's a shame that more managers don't recognize this. Instead, they want to tweak and fiddle with that highly successful product or service in search of perfection. Unfortunately, those changes will often do more harm than good. Managers need to focus on the things that are truly broken, not the things that aren't one or two people's cup of tea.
I remember working at a very popular English camp over a decade ago that was run during the summer and winter holidays by one of the top universities in South Korea. Students from all over the country attended the camp and enjoyed the experience. Each camp often had between 80 and 100 students. At one of the camps, two students complained that they were bored and there was too much free time. The camp director panicked and completely revised the next camp's schedule to keep the campers "busy" until 8pm. The campers hated that next camp and word spread that the camp was too much work and no fun. Registration for the subsequent camp was too low to hold it and the camp was cancelled. It never recovered, all because 2% of the participants complained.
Too often, management chooses to ignore the stakeholders who are satisfied and focus on the complainers. If something isn't perfect, things need to be tinkered with. I'm not saying that no complaints are valid or justified, just that they need to be taken with a grain of salt. When over 95% percent of the people surveyed are happy, the product or service is pretty damned good! It's a shame that more managers don't recognize this. Instead, they want to tweak and fiddle with that highly successful product or service in search of perfection. Unfortunately, those changes will often do more harm than good. Managers need to focus on the things that are truly broken, not the things that aren't one or two people's cup of tea.
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