We get why surveys are popular. They’re tidy. They’re quick. Easy to circulate. And even better, they generate a spreadsheet full of responses for you. But we’d be lying if we said they were always worthwhile.
Why? Because real engagement goes deeper than ticking a box.
Before we get any further, we want to take a moment to tell you it’s okay if you’ve been doing surveys. It’s okay! They’re great for certain things. But they’re often not the best fit for deep community engagement.
Organisations are often afraid of asking for feedback because of what it might bring. Will it make you look like you don’t know what you’re doing? Will it spark a backlash or invite negative comments?
The truth is that not engaging properly is the bigger risk.
When you skip the hard conversations, you end up paying for it later through delays and pushback. Or worse, it leads to a solution no one actually wants. That’s expensive, and it ruins trust.
The good news? It doesn’t take a fancy schmancy, months-long engagement process to get it right. Even five honest, face-to-face conversations will tell you more than a shallow, closed-question survey ever will.
Here’s an example that’ll blow your socks off.
Selwyn is the fastest-growing district in Aotearoa. Its population has nearly tripled since 2000. With growth like that, the council needed a long-term Area Plan. But they also knew the community was tired of being “consulted” and felt they weren’t being listened to.
Instead of defaulting to the usual tools, Selwyn District Council decided to do something different. They partnered with us.
Together, we veered away from the standard “come to this public meeting” or “fill in this survey” approach. Instead, we took engagement on the road, into schools, onto the street, online, on video – anywhere people were already active.
It was honest, creative, and human. And it worked.
The result?
- 600+ face-to-face conversations
- 133,000 video views of local community voices
- 250+ tamariki reached through schools
- 1,000+ crowd-mapped points and ideas
- real feedback from real people
Workshops filled up. Groups that historically had low engagement shared their ideas. The community offered their thoughts and started to believe they were being heard. How good is that?!!
Best of all, it’s not out of reach. Here’s where you come in.
Take up the challenge. If you’re a council or organisation in Aotearoa that genuinely wants to gather the kind of feedback that will help you move forward, step away from the surveys.
Instead, start having real conversations, including the hard ones.
Because when you take the time to do engagement properly, people notice. They tell you what’s important. They contribute. They challenge assumptions. And they become part of the solution. That’s what real engagement looks like.
You won’t find that in your survey spreadsheet.
Want to see what it looked like in practice?
👉 Explore the Selwyn case study
