Research made simple
Okay ... I'm guilty of writing a headline with a false promise. If you've had any exposure to a research project you'll know it's rarely simple, easy or quick.
But a strategy that's simple and in place from the beginning goes a long way to making the rest of the journey a whole lot easier. You'll begin with a good idea of what you are trying to achieve, why, and how best to get it done.
So here's five and a half essential elements to help you reach communication research nirvana.
Essential Element #1: Know why you want to do the research
Too often at Image 7 Group we see research that has been conducted to justify a decision. Regardless of whether the decision is the right one, research conducted this way is seldom truly useful. So what are valid reasons 'why'? Try these: "We want to use what we learn to change our direction and set our goals," or "We want to check that our team members understand the messages we send," or "We want to know what our clients think of our new approach to on-site service." Now is a good time to get buy-in from your peers and management.
Essential Element #2: Decide the scope of the research
For example: Which communication issues should we research? How can we increase the sense of 'ownership' of the survey? How will we encourage response to our survey? How will we feed the results and analysis back to the teams and managers?
Essential Element #2.5: Do the research
This is such big topic on its own we'll save it for a future article. [So we'll only give it half value as an Essential Element]
Essential Element #3: Interpret the results
Spend time on this step. Don't jump to conclusions too quickly. The golden nuggets don't always lie on the surface. Decide what the implications are. Determine how you could turn your analysis into actionable items.
Essential Element #4: Report the results
Remember that you've been working on this research for some time now. You'll probably be excited about your findings. But the implications may be far reaching and even threatening to people or departments who believe they've been doing a good job. So reporting at multiple levels often works best. Compact summaries for management, more detail for the managers at implementation level and easy-to-digest reports for team members.
Essential Element #5: Set sensible targets for next time
Before you forget all the nuance of what you learned about the research process, write it down. Set yourself some sensible targets to improve upon in your next research project, but always calculate and demonstrate - if possible.
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