Written by I was hired to synthesise the results of a pulse survey. I followed my usual process. Collate the data, find the patterns, shape it into something useful, quick wins, insights around employee satisfaction and needs. The final output was a corporate strategy and a feedback report for the executive leadership team, and I had a solid process for pulling it all together.
I read through working group meeting notes, pulse survey data and one-on-one interviews. The rating scale questions and structured data arrive already organised in a large spreadsheet. I was building the picture the way the survey was designed.
There is one text cell to capture the fill-in-the-blank question at the end.
“Is there anything else you would like us to know?”
The responses were painting a very detailed and expanded picture of the data captured in the rest of the survey. There was more than expected. It was very structured comments about culture. Specific, articulate observations about what was happening inside this organisation, written in the real language of the people living it.
What emerged in that open question was more revealing than everything that had come before it. The survey conveyed structured data on key markers. The fill-in-the-blank told me what people felt. In the gap between the two things was the real work.
I had to synthesise the findings that needed to reach the executive leadership team. And the authentic communication captured in the last question changed my whole presentation. The biggest key themes and learnings were now framed in their own language.
It pointed to something much bigger than one survey in one organisation.
The Filter Problem
Let’s step back from unpacking the survey findings. By the time any problem reaches the people with the authority to act on it, it has been through a collection of processes and people. Each step up a communication ladder is one more gap between the person directly affected by the problem.
For example, an entry-level staff member notices a gap in a system where customers are not getting the support they need. This staff member mentions it to their team leader. The team leader raises it with their manager, framed in a way that is relevant to that week’s priorities. The manager includes a version of it in their monthly report. The report lands on a desk two floors up, where it becomes a data point in a broader picture.
Information changes as it travels further from its point of origin. This isn’t driven by negligence or internal politics, but by the natural friction of the communication chain. As an observation is passed along, it is constantly reframed, interpreted, and edited until it feels like a different statement entirely. This process polishes away the rough edges and forces it into conforming to existing corporate narratives. By the time these distorted observations reach the leadership level, they are unrecognisable. Strategies and solutions contain a fundamental disconnect that is embedded in any changes from the very start.
The person who saw it first and felt it most clearly is not in that conversation. And their original framing of the problem has been reshaped by many hands.
The Survey Trap
Even the most thoughtfully constructed surveys possess inherent limitations.
Typically, surveys are built upon specific measurement theories or executive perspectives. As a result, frontline staff are rarely consulted on their primary concerns; instead, they are asked to provide feedback on pre-determined topics designed to inform a strategy that is already in place. Not to shape it.
Employees find themselves forced to express their experiences through an unfamiliar lens:
“I feel psychologically safe in my team.” (Scale of 1–10)
“My organisation communicates change effectively.” (Agree/Disagree)
While these metrics have their place, the vocabulary isn’t theirs. When a fundamental problem isn’t understood by the architects of the survey, it simply won’t appear in the framework—and consequently, it remains invisible in the final results. Authentic insight only emerges when staff can share information on their own terms.
This brings us back to that final fill-in-the-blank question.
What Gets Lost
The filtering process strips away more than data. It removes texture, timing, and the quality of knowing that exists before a problem gets sanitised for a boardroom presentation.
Entry-level and frontline staff are often the first to feel when something is shifting. They are closest to the customer, the community, and the day-to-day reality of how a policy or process actually works. They do not always have the formal language for what they are observing. But what they do have is the unprocessed version of the truth.
By the time that perspective lands on the desk of someone with the authority to act, it has been through too many hands. The organisation loses the early signal that could have changed the strategy. The employee loses the experience of being heard. And the communications team is left trying to build trust without the full picture.
It is hard work. No one knows it better than the people doing it.
We Can Improve
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about communications teams being brought in too late. The observation that sparked it was not a research report or a client debrief. It was LinkedIn.
I had been reading posts from comms professionals, not the polished thought leadership kind, but the frustrated kind. The ones where people are just saying what is true. Strategy gets finalised in a boardroom, a glossy document gets produced, and then comms gets handed the document and told to make people care about it. By that point, the story has already hardened. The assumptions are set. And the communications team has to somehow make something land that was never built with its audience in mind.
What struck me was the language people were using. Nobody was quoting frameworks or citing engagement models. They were saying things like “we get handed this thing” and “we have to basically unpick it.” That is the unprocessed version of the problem. That is the story before it got translated.
I wrote the article in response to those words, not my own theory of what the problem was. And it resonated, because it was built from the real version of the problem rather than a tidied-up summary of it.
That is what becomes possible when you hear something before it has been processed.
We Are Listening
Most attempts to hear from employees are still surveys in disguise. They are structured around what leadership already suspects the problem might be, and they ask people to respond within that structure. Even when the intentions are good and the design is thoughtful, the frame is still someone else’s frame.
I have tried different approaches over the years. Most of them still fell into the same trap. The format changed, but the dynamic did not. People were still being asked to fit their experience into a container that was not built for it.
This is why I wanted to build something different.
What if the whole survey were fill-in-the-blank? And what if it was delivered as a fun, gamified challenge that people actually wanted to participate in?
The Storytelling Challenge
I want to help organisations listen, understand and act. Via a simple format.
“I felt like I most belong when __________________ and it changes how I ____________.”
Fill-in-the-blank prompts do not lead anyone anywhere predetermined. They are open doors. They give people just enough of a foothold to begin without putting vocabulary in their mouths or asking them to rate their lived experience against a concept someone else defined. What comes back is the authentic version. The actual language people reach for when they are describing what matters to them, with all the texture still in it, before it gets smoothed out on the way upstairs.
This is the idea behind the Storytelling Challenge, an employee engagement experience built around story prompts that invite people to share in their own words, at their own pace, across themes that matter to organisations right now: belonging, identity, recognition, values, wellbeing, growth, change, and purpose. It is not a survey. It is a season of storytelling, and it runs inside a purpose-built platform that does something most listening tools cannot.
It makes the qualitative data useful in real time.
As stories come in, the dashboard organises and surfaces what is emerging across the organisation. The authentic themes, the keywords, the phrases people actually use to describe their experience. Nothing gets filtered through a reporting structure. This is a true snapshot, building a comprehensive picture as the stories unfold.
Organisations are investing in connecting with their employees. It is important to invest in the conditions to gather authentic answers.
That is what the Storytelling Challenge is for.
If you want to hear what your people are saying, let’s talk. Choose your time zone – Australia or EU/USA.
Narrative Strategy and Storytelling for Organisations 