– “I don’t like that picture.”
– “Nothing moves on the site.”
– “We need to allow patients to search for doctors by their first name.”
– “My specialty needs to be on the home page.”
– “My clinic needs to be on the home page.”

My point isn’t that the effort is useless. But the vast majority of people we’re trying to engage don’t “get it.” They think they do, and that makes it dangerous.

The trick is asking the right questions and properly setting expectations. Few people go to a symphony and come home thinking they can write one themselves. Everybody who uses the web is an expert, though, and very few really are.

We need to approach leaders and internal stakeholders with a definitive plan and substantial data to back up that plan. Otherwise, you’ll get embroiled in a debate over how useful it would be for doctors to find colleagues they met at a cocktail party by their first name.