Interview notes — simulated

Simulated data. These six interviews are fictional, constructed for portfolio purposes. They were written to be realistically messy — incomplete sentences, contradictions, and one thread that does not fit the main pattern. All names are fictional.

Method note: in a real engagement these would be transcribed recordings, coded against the causal buckets (environment, process, skill, motivation/consequences, other). Here the notes are presented as analysis-ready summaries; the coding appears in the root-cause analysis.

Interview 1 — Manager M1 (new manager)

Clinic: Birchwood. Role: Nurse Unit Manager. Promoted 8 months ago from senior nurse; 14 direct reports. Previously a peer of most of her team.

“Honestly? I haven’t done one-on-ones. I keep meaning to. There’s no slot in my week where it fits — I’m on the floor 90% of my shift, and when I’m not, I’m doing rosters and incident reports.

The last time I gave someone feedback… it was about Priya’s handovers, actually — no, wait, that’s not me, that’s the Harborview side. Sorry, the last time was Jordan, he was double-booking follow-ups. I told him at the desk, in front of the admin assistant, ‘you’ve got to fix the bookings.’ He was fine about it. I think? It’s hard, they all used to be my colleagues.

Training? I got two days of orientation: finance systems, incident reporting, the award and rostering rules. Nothing about managing people. I asked if there was a management course and there’s a waitlist for next year.

What am I measured on? Patients per day, wait times, incident closure rate. Roster cost. Team development — no, that’s not on it.”

Coded: environment (no time/space for 1:1s), skill (avoids hard conversations; gave public, vague feedback), motivation (scorecard has no team-development items).

Interview 2 — Manager M2 (experienced manager)

Clinic: Fairhaven. Role: Clinic Manager, 11 years in role. 13 direct reports.

“I do meet everyone, every week. Quick stand-up style, five minutes each while I do my rounds. We go through the day’s list, any leave, any equipment problems.

Feedback? I give feedback constantly. Constantly. If something’s wrong I say it there and then.

[Shown the pulse data: his team’s ‘useful feedback’ scores are among the lowest, 2.1/5] — huh. Well. Maybe ‘useful’ is the wrong word. If the patient flow is the problem, what do people want from me, a pep talk?

Reviews are fine, we do them every year, it’s a form on the intranet, mostly ratings, takes twenty minutes.

Measured on: wait times, throughput, budget variance. Same as every clinic manager.”

Coded: environment/process (meetings exist but are task round-ups, not feedback), skill (equates task direction with feedback), motivation (throughput metrics). Contradiction noted: believes he gives constant feedback; his team’s survey scores disagree. This contradiction is a finding, not noise: the form of his meetings doesn’t match what staff experience as feedback.

Interview 3 — Manager M3 (overloaded span)

Clinic: Kestrel. Role: Allied Health Manager. 18 direct reports across two sites (high end of the org’s spans).

“Eighteen. Eighteen reports and two sites. You do the math on a weekly one-on-one — that’s a part-time job. I meet with people when something breaks, honestly.

The new grads are the ones who struggle and the ones who leave. We had two leave inside three months this year. Both said the same thing in exit — ‘no idea how I was doing’. I wasn’t surprised. Nobody sits with them.

There’s supposed to be a policy about one-on-ones? I’ve never seen it. [HR later confirmed a policy exists; it says meetings are ‘encouraged’.]

If I had a template, a slot in the calendar, and maybe eight fewer reports… the template part, that’s easy. The other two, that’s you asking the COO for things.”

Coded: environment (span of control, no time), process (no cadence/template), skill (knows what good looks like — can describe it — but cannot do it at current span), motivation (n/a — willing).

Interview 4 — Staff S1 (nurse, 2 years)

Clinic: Harborview. Role: Registered Nurse.

“Feedback — like, actual feedback? [laughs] The review form, once a year. She reads out my ratings, I initial it. There’s a comments box but it’s optional and nobody writes in it, so.

Day to day, you hear about it if something’s wrong, usually second-hand. ‘Word is the handovers are slipping.’ From who? From everyone, from the group chat.

The useful feedback I’ve gotten here came from the clinical educator, not my manager — she watched me do an ECG once and told me exactly what I did well and what to fix. Took ten minutes. Why can’t it be like that?

Would I stay? My friend left Betterton [another fictional clinic] because she felt invisible. I’m not there yet. The 2pm-to-10pm agency across town pays the same and they do monthly check-ins. Actually they do.”

Coded: process (annual review is the only formal point), environment (no 1:1 structure), motivation for managers implied. Retention risk linked to feedback in the staff member’s own words.

Interview 5 — Staff S2 (new hire, 6 weeks in)

Clinic: Dockside. Role: Medical Assistant.

“Six weeks in. Nobody’s sat me down, like, properly. My buddy on the floor shows me stuff, which is great, but there’s no ‘here’s how you’re doing’ conversation. I asked my manager in week two if we could do a check-in and she said ‘let’s wait until you’re through compliance training’, and that’s next month sometime?

At my last job we had a thirty-day review, sixty-day, ninety-day. Here I genuinely don’t know if I’m doing well. I like the team. I’m keeping my options open. Don’t put my name in anything.”

Coded: environment/process (no onboarding feedback structure), links directly to the 90-day turnover metric.

Interview 6 — HR business partner (HR1)

“The policy — yes, there’s a one-on-one policy. Two pages, 2022, it says managers ‘are encouraged to hold regular one-on-one meetings’. ‘Regular’ is never defined, there’s no template, and nothing is tracked. It was written before the expansion, when the average manager had six or seven reports.

The review form: five competency ratings, one optional comments box. We’ve talked about revising it for two years. It needs the ops directors to agree, and they won’t without the COO.

The email series in 2024 — we bought a content pack, sent six emails. Open rate was tracked, that’s all. Something like 30% opened the first one.

What would I fix? The scorecards. While ‘team development’ is worth nothing on a manager’s scorecard and throughput is worth everything, you’re asking people to do things their job doesn’t ask them to do. But scorecards are set by operations, not HR. That’s a COO conversation, and nobody’s had it.

One thing that doesn’t fit, and you should know: Cedar Point. Small teams, a manager who does weekly one-on-ones, everyone likes her — and their feedback scores are just as bad. I don’t know what that’s about. Maybe worth a look before you blame everything on spans of control.”

Coded: process (policy vague, untracked), motivation (scorecard misalignment — HR names it directly), plus the doesn’t-fit thread: Cedar Point, which also appears in the survey analysis.

Cross-interview signals

Signal	Where it shows up
One-on-ones are rare and unstructured	M1 (none), M2 (task round-ups), M3 (none), S1, S2, HR1 (policy vague)
Annual review is the only formal feedback point, ratings only	M2, S1, HR1
New managers get no people-management support	M1, HR1
Managers are measured on throughput, not team development	M1, M2, M3, HR1
Feedback absence is named by staff as a reason to leave	S1, S2, M3 (exit anecdotes)
Meeting ≠ feedback: structure and content matter	M2 contradiction, HR1’s Cedar Point thread
Span of control has crept up	M3 (18), HR1 (policy written for 6–7), org chart review

Next: the pulse survey data and analysis tests these signals against numbers, including Cedar Point.