GETTING THE MOST OUT OF A FOCUS GROUP

You may have had this experience before.

You are in a group that is discussing a serious matter of business, social issues, goals and objectives for an organization, etc. 

It is decided that the ideas that come our of the discussion should be captured for future consideration. If the group is rather large, it might be broken down to small separate groups which will allow everyone to have a better chance to participate and express their ideas.

Typically, there will be a recorder for each small group listing the points made on a flip chart for later sharing with all the other groups.

When all of the small groups have completed their discussions, the large group will re-form and someone from each group will orally describe the highlights of  his/her group. While this is happening, another person is summarizing those presentations perhaps on a larger chart or smart board.

Quite often, this final summary will be printed up and sent out to the participants for their reference. 

I wonder if you have had the same feeling as I have had in these groups.

I look at this final summary. Then I think back to the great discussion that we had in that initial small group. There is usually little resemblance between what I remember of our discussion, to the sparse, disconnected, scattered phrases and diagrams in that final summary.

What has happened is that the rich ideas expressed by the discussants have been reduced to a few key words, interpreted with varying degrees of accuracy by the recorders, re-interpreted by the group reporters and then by the final reporter and recorder.

The end product is usually, I would argue always, a faint shadow of the original. The richness is lost, the meaning is at least somewhat distorted, the passion and excitement of the original expression is lost.

What a shame! If the organizers were sincere in wanting to capture the ideas and views of the group, they have to be disappointed in the "pablum" that usually comes out of this multi-filtered process,

I have developed a solution for this problem. I have used this system and it works. It involves a lot of work and considerable specialized skill but the end result is worth it. My clients were ecstatic about the rich report that emerged. In fact, the report that comes out of it is usually considered richer than what was derived by being part of the group.

That may be hard to believe, but if you know about the process, you will understand why that is so.

If you are interested in finding our about this, please look for my next Blog entry which describes my methodology.

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Brock Vodden