Skip to content

Blog post

What was the role of improvement during COVID-19? Help us interpret the findings from Q’s insight survey

Find out more about the emergent findings by reading our latest working paper.

Back in August, we launched our annual collective insight survey. We wanted to understand from Q members which improvement tools, methods, approaches and mindsets you found most useful or challenging to apply throughout the pandemic.

We heard about the experiences of over 200 members (a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to respond). It is crucial that we all learn the right lessons from this period of unprecedented change so that we can support and practice more effective improvement in the future. As such we are now asking you to help us interpret the findings further.

Do the findings resonate with you?

From the wide range of responses, we have drafted a working paper that draws out thirteen key lessons for improvement. As we continue to refine our analysis, we’d really value your reflections on the emergent findings.

We are especially keen to get your thoughts on some of the more tentative findings, including:

  • Was a ‘crisis standard’ of improvement applied? Was it effective and was a higher standard possible?
  • We argue that to move beyond the methods-mindset tension that can exist in the community, it is more useful to characterise the role of improvement as functioning like a ‘muscle’. Were improvement methods, mindsets or your improvement ‘muscles’ most important in supporting positive change during COVID-19?
  • The paper ends by looking to the future: what do you see as the key implications and recommendations for improvement policy and practice in the years ahead?

Read the working paper

Get in touch

Share your thoughts in the comments, join the conversation on Twitter or get in touch directly by email.

Leave a comment

If you have a Q account please log in before posting your comment.

Read our comments policy before posting your comment.

This will not be publicly visible