In my previous post, I shared an overview of what I thought was the biggest gem to come out of a recent Performance Management conference for local government. Now on to a presentation that left me scratching my head...
"The Dud" was a puzzling presentation that came from a major city mayor’s office official. It asked a very intriguing question: Is there a real relationship between citizen satisfaction scores and the outputs and activities governments pursue? In other words, do people become happier with their government when the right things are done?
His initial example looked at the relationship between citizen satisfaction of the police department with the reduction in the crime rate. The chart and data showed that the crime rate seemed to have little impact on satisfaction. So, his question of, “do satisfaction scores matter?” really popped with this slide.
However, it made me wonder why there is a presumed connection in this example? Most people never interact with the police. Personally, I don’t connect my satisfaction with police to the crime rate (if I was a robbery victim, for example, and was visited by a courteous, responsive officer who followed up on my report, I would be very "satisfied" with the police, despite the rate of criminal activity).
The presentation went on to give more similar examples of apparent disconnects between satisfaction scores and efforts to address them. As it progressed, it occurred to me that a few items were missing from either his presentation and/or the city’s actual assessment of the issues.
- There was no discussion of any Pareto-type analysis (i.e. the 80/20 rule) to determine what are the major drivers of satisfaction.
It would have been helpful to see why people rated police high or low in any given survey. What were the main issues or reasons that were cited? - There is a clear separation between a) satisfaction ratings based
on citizen perceptions of services and b) satisfaction ratings of
citizens recently utilizing a service.
I think someone who hasn’t used police services in years is only providing a vague perception, which can be media and PR driven.
Someone who was recently burglarized and needed detectives to come on-site for a crime scene analysis would have very specific and experience-based comments for the police.
For all governments pursuing surveys as a way to align resources to citizen outcomes, it is very important to understand what really drives satisfaction and to delineate between broad, perception-based satisfaction and experience-based satisfaction.
So was the presentation really a "dud"?
It did ask some intriguing questions, which in my opinion
were misguided. And it definitely got me thinking about the bigger picture. And isn't that why we go to conferences?
So, I’m looking forward to my next event, and while I’m always looking for the next gem, I’m also keeping an open mind to those duds, as mistakes can be just as enlightening.
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