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Health & Fitness

Gettin' Satisfaction in Lake Forest

  “I can't get no satisfaction
   I can't get no satisfaction
  'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
   I can't get no, I can't get no

   When I'm drivin' in my car
   And the man comes on the radio
   He's tellin' me more and more
   About some useless information
   Supposed to drive my imagination

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   I can't get no, oh no, no, no
   Hey, hey, hey, that's what I say…”

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The Rolling Stones couldn’t get no satisfaction, but it seems that residents of California get plenty of satisfaction when they respond to questionnaires. Every few months of so, staff or one of the Council members says with great pride that our biennial survey indicates we are doing a great job and people are very satisfied. The comment usually comes in response to criticism by a resident, but occasionally it occurs spontaneously. References to the survey results also show up often in staff reports. The problem, of course, in relying upon someone you pay to do an assessment of how well you’re doing, is that there is a tendency for the person to tell you what you want to hear, and in that way insure continued employment. Outside the business world, it’s a rare consultant who can come into a government or nonprofit organization, tell them how badly they are doing, and expect to be re-hired. For businesses, bad news is critical to continued growth, because they have a bottom line (profit and loss) that is relatively easy to measure. But government agencies and nonprofit agencies often do not have such a clear bottom line, so bad news doesn’t necessarily have an upside, especially if that bad news is to be shared with their directors and members. Perhaps we get so much satisfaction because we pay for it?

For several years I worked for the American Hospital Association as an accreditor for hospitals, and after that I spent several years working as a management consultant doing surveys for multi-billion dollar companies. I also spent a decade working as a University Professor where our survey research had no sponsor apart from the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Having worked all three sides of the fence, I can assure you that the differences are palpable. Hence I decided to spend some time and look at the results of our latest Satisfaction survey, and then the work being done by this same agency when they go to other cities.  I wanted to see how wide the range was in the types of results being reported. We all know there are big differences in cities, so I wanted to see whether or not these differences were reflected in the results being reported. Mostly I wanted to see how well we were doing in comparison with other cities, and whether or not what was being reported was a true indicator of how well we were doing, or an artefact of the research process itself.

When Timothy McLarney (Founder and President of True North Research, the company that is paid to do the survey) appeared at our City Council meeting in 2012 to present the results of his "satisfaction" survey, he said "This report card is as good as you can hope to get". That sounded pretty good, and City officials were quick to publicize the results and to quote from what City Manager Dunek calls our "report card". But my investigation reveals that McLarney is prone to hyperbole and maybe Lake Forest is not "as good as you can hope for". Here’s a small sample of McLarney’s comments to cities as he makes his way up and down the coast, doing surveys, reporting outstanding results, and cashing checks.

"we are in the top 10 percent of any of the cities in California that he has ever surveyed, and in some areas he has never seen numbers this high." DANA POINT

"Aliso Viejo residents are among the most satisfied resident groups that True North has encountered…" ALISO VIEJO

"These are amazing scores, some of the best I’ve ever seen…" LAGUNA NIGUEL

"San Carlos is one of the Top Cities in the State when it comes to satisfaction with City Services and Programs." SAN CARLOS

Hmmm.

Can everyone be the best?

If Lake Forest is "as good as you can hope" and Laguna Niguel is "some of the best", are we better than Aliso Viejo who are "among the most satisfied" or San Carlos who are "one of the top 10"?

When McLarney calls Laguna Niguel’s City Manager "one smokin’ dude" does that imply that our City Manager is merely a puffer?

If Aliso Viejo "basically got straight As" and "these are the kinds of results that all cities strive for", does that mean it’s better to strive or better to hope, since we were “as good as you can hope for”?

I hope you get the point. McLarney’s hyperbole is widely spread among the cities that pay him to do surveys, and while it’s nice to be told you are the best, apparently in McLarney’s universe “the best" is a pretty wide pond.

Putting aside McLarney’s deserved enthusiasm for the people who write him checks, let’s look at some data I found while searching the web for any city that True North did a survey for in the past few years. I found - Aliso Viejo (2013), Apple Valley (2011) Beverly Hills (2013), Dana Point (2009), Glendora (2012), Indian Wells (2009), Laguna Niguel (2011), La Mesa (2013), Mission Viejo (2011), San Carlos (2012), and Thousand Oaks (2013). Not every City asks the same questions, so the results don’t always include all 11 cities.

Next time we’ll look at the data.

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