Overcoming resistance to uncomfortable things

Over the last year, I’ve been working with a mentor. I have spoken about this experience in a few media interviews and podcasts, but the short version is working with someone who has “walked the path before you” is a really helpful way to make progress both in work and in life.

Most of what we discussed was personal - the intersection between home life and work. But there was one strategic work-related thing we spoke about on a few occasions.

For years, I have collected qualitative data from people who Emerson Health has worked with, and their words are plastered all over the website if you want to know what they say. There is some beautiful nuance in there. Of course, these comments have a depth of emotion, but are not measurable in any quantitative sense. And sometimes, we need some number facts, to go with our feeling facts.

My mentor challenged me to find a way to measure the impact that arises from the work we do.

Immediately, I felt resistance. Resistance to numbers, resistance to things with hard edges, resistance to imperfect data collection, and to the possibility the data would tell a story I didn’t want to hear. Plus, I was hooked on the idea of building a great big collection of (perfect) data that might be able to form a piece of research and add to the body of knowledge for how we can effect change in health systems.

But done is better than perfect, and I needed to start somewhere.

So this week, we added a ‘pre’ survey for our workshop participants to complete so we could see if there were any changes in our ‘post’ survey.?

And (drum roll) here is the first piece of quantitative data I have collected EVER to measure impact.?You can see that having this level of transparency is actually a helpful thing to have.

What I have learned is just even having an 'imperfect go' if you're feeling resistant to a new idea is a wonderful way to get started. And simply build from there.