Listening to the people closest to the problem

At the center of this story is a question the management team could no longer ignore: our hospital information system has been in use at two hospitals for years — why hasn’t it been developed or sold to other hospitals? Instead of guessing, the leadership chose to ask the people who work on the product and with clients every day.

Setting up a simple listening exercise

The company framed the problem in straightforward terms and published it using an online listening tool. Employees were invited to respond quickly from their phones by scanning a QR code. No long surveys, no forced meetings — just an invitation to tell the truth about the barriers they saw.

What employees actually said

Responses poured in, and they were honest and varied. Many pointed to marketing: there were no marketing tools or materials to support promotion, the marketing function lacked people who understood the system, and there was no clear marketing structure to drive outreach. Others raised operational issues: the marketing team did not move actively to find or nurture prospects, and there was little in the way of regular visits, negotiation or relationship building.

People also called out capacity problems. Several comments described human resources as not being optimal — weak supervision, tendency to delay or deprioritize the product, and a general lack of initiative when there was no immediate task. Training gaps surfaced as well: staff lacked sufficient knowledge about hospital processes and about hospital information systems, which made it harder to convince potential clients.

Budget constraints were mentioned repeatedly. Without enough marketing budget, staff felt unable to run campaigns or travel to meet prospects. A smaller set of voices raised product concerns: the system could benefit from additional features and better customization so it could compete with other solutions. Finally, some respondents described an institutional complacency, saying long‑standing problems had been allowed to persist without visible management follow‑up.

Turning noisy feedback into useful themes

The platform consolidated the many responses into coherent themes using AI, grouping similar comments into nine clear topics. That step mattered because it turned scattered, emotional comments into digestible themes managers could discuss without getting lost in detail.

Ranking together — employees and management side by side

Rather than have managers decide priorities alone, the exercise invited both staff and leaders to rank the grouped issues together. This shared ranking revealed where perceptions aligned and where they diverged. Some problems were seen as urgent by both sides, while others turned out to be blindspots — important to employees but less visible to management, or vice versa.

What came out of the exercise

The final view offered more than a list. It gave the company a prioritized roadmap: practical items like creating marketing materials, building a clearer marketing structure and budget, training staff on hospital workflows, and stepping up client outreach; alongside longer term items such as product feature development and stronger managerial oversight of old problems. The neatest outcome was clarity — instead of guessing, the organization now had a shared understanding of what to tackle first.

Reflections from the team

People noted that the most valuable part of the process wasn’t the technology behind it, but the way it changed a conversation. Employees felt heard because their raw experiences were gathered privately and then summarized fairly. Managers appreciated being confronted with grounded perspectives rather than assumptions. Both sides left the exercise with a clearer sense of responsibility: marketing and leadership needed to step up, and operations needed to close capability gaps.

Closing thought

A listening exercise like this doesn’t fix everything overnight. But when a company wants to scale a product beyond its initial customers, honest, organized input from the people who make and sell the product is a necessary first step. This approach gave the organization practical priorities and a way to monitor progress without getting distracted by noise.