Better Listening Through Better Simulations
I was meeting with my co-conspirator, Erin Milbeck Wilcox, last month when the topic of Focus Groups came up. I was aghast to learn that Erin was leading focus groups in her work as an evaluator at The Detroit Institute of Art Museums (“Et tu, Erin?”). Once I regained consciousness, Erin convinced me that hers was not a cardinal sin — “Focus Groups” is a broad term, and sometimes we need to use familiar words as a shortcut to understanding. I’ll call Listening Sessions “interviews”, for example, to convey the idea of a one-to-one interaction even though a listening session isn’t an interview.
I tend to view focus groups the way a parent views a child’s nose-picking habit: It’s a behavior that serves a purpose but must be stopped as soon as possible. And, parent-like, I may be too quick to jump to a “stop that!” response when I hear an organization planning to put humans in a room and prod them for answers.
So, this Thursday, May 9, Erin will join Rosie Siemer and me to discuss Focus Groups in Research Office Hours. You’re invited to RSVP and attend.
The event got me thinking about Focus Groups (and every other form of listening) as simulations.
A simulation can be more or less realistic, and maybe we can assess whether a focus group is a more or less effective approach based on its performance as a simulation.
Why is it helpful to evaluate listening efforts as simulations?
A museum listens to humans so that it can make better choices.* Choices can be big (Should we invest in supporting this new audience segment?) or small (Do they know we’re open on Mondays now that we updated the website?).
To make better choices, people within the organization must understand how people make decisions. The organization needs to know how people think and feel in relation to their goals because how people think and feel is what informs their decision-making.
So, we need to understand how people think and feel, but asking them directly is risky because they often don’t know.
(Aside: I’m both appreciative and skeptical of the five whys because “the conscious mind thinks it’s the Oval Office when in reality it’s the press office”.** As much as we’d like to believe that our conscious minds are responsible for the choices we make, human consciousness may actually have evolved as a way to justify or make sense of our decisions after the fact. This function may be even more pronounced in a focus group where we feel subtle social pressure to present ourselves in whatever way we think will help us go less noticed in the group.)
If we can simulate the moment when a person is thinking thoughts and feeling feelings about a particular goal that matters to them, then we can get a more reliable view of how we can support them.
There are two ways to simulate an experience through listening:
stories (memory = past simulation)
models (present simulation)
Listening through stories
Story-based listening invites a person to simulate their past experience using words. This is what we do in listening sessions. Listening sessions are always one-to-one, never in groups, because we want a level of detail from participants that is hard to get in a group setting. We’re trying to get someone to picture for us how they approach a particular goal that’s important to them by giving very specific information about what they thought and felt in the past.
In a group, a person's inner critic is too present to get the necessary information. Surrounded by six or 10 strangers, it will be much harder to allow yourself to vocalize fleeting thoughts and feelings. But those momentary experiences were the very things that guided the person’s behavior — They’re the keys that unlock the barriers and opportunities for the organization. A listening session isn’t therapy, but there’s a reason psychologists treat patients individually and not in groups. It’s hard enough getting people to be honest with themselves individually (the press office is powerful), much less surrounded by their peers.
Listening through models
But there are times when we make decisions together, and this is when it can make sense to bring people together for group listening. For example, caregivers often make decisions together. If a museum wants to improve enrollment in a summer camp program, it will want to understand how parents decide on summer activities for their children. Talking to parents together may be a better approach to listening because it’s a more accurate simulation of how that decision is made.
But what happens when you do a focus group with parents? Your simulation breaks down because parents decide together in pairs, but they don’t do that in a group of parents. You may still be tempted to bring a group of parents together because you want to save time, but by searching for efficiencies you wind up undermining the purpose and value of the listening. You’ll hear less valuable — perhaps even misleading — comments from the people you’re listening to because parenting decisions are deeply connected to one’s identity and self-worth.
Takeaway: Start with “What are we simulating?”
If you’re considering listening to groups of people, there are many good questions to ask before you begin. It’s always good to ask things like:
Why are we listening?
What will change as a result of this listening?
What will not change? (In other words, what are we holding so dear that we’re scarcely aware that we won’t change it? And why is that sacred thing so sacred?)
Who should we listen to (and who should we exclude to ensure we don’t confuse ourselves)?
These are questions that can make or break any learning effort.
Another question you can add to your list is: How can we best simulate the decision we’re trying to understand?
Will placing people in a group setting make for a better or worse simulation of the inner thinking and feelings that people experience as they try to make progress toward their goal?
What simulations are you hosting at your museum? As always, feel free to reply to today’s letter and let me know how it’s going.
Kyle
P.S. We have two more Research Office Hours sessions coming up this summer/fall season that will focus on our past theme of Mapping: RSVP for Opportunity Mapping in August and Assumption Mapping in October. I hope to see you then.
*I sometimes notice museum folks making the case for listening by framing it as a good unto itself. The gist is that museums should listen to “communities” (often undefined or based on demographics) because … I don’t know. It signals a degree of care or interest? That argument, however well-intended, is flimsy and may actually fuel inauthentic and performative listening — “Look! We did a survey because we care!” If you’re advocating for more listening in your museum, I’m with you. And I encourage you to frame your argument as a way to drive better outcomes for the museum (i.e., yes, we care about our “communities”, and we need to understand them better to fulfill our mission).
**I read this in Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland who was quoting Jonathan Haidt.
