Perfectly executed and statistically valid survey results won’t help you unless you actually do something based on the results. The trick is to design the survey and your business processes to enable action. Here are a few tips for doing so.

What questions will help us to determine results and make changes?
This is the most important of the three: considering what questions will best help you to improve the program, service or product about which you are gathering data.

If you offer a training seminar, is the satisfaction of the attendee during the event the most important aspect or are the improved outcomes they create on their job using this new knowledge? Probably the latter, although it is much more common to survey the former.

Who can best answer those questions for us?
Following what to ask is then who to ask it. Continuing the example above, if the key metric is improved job performance, then the right people to ask about that are probably the supervisors or managers of the people attending the event rather than those who were there.

It can often be extra work to identify and contact those who can actually answer your questions but it is critical if you want data that is valuable and enables you to take action.

Build in time and resources for analysis and action.
Even when you ask the right people the right questions, you won’t get anywhere unless you build in time and resources to really go through the results.

Who can make decisions about what to do? Who can best analyze the results and recommend alternatives and changes if warranted? Put time on their calendars before the surveys goes out so they will convene to review results and make decisions.

If you do the above you’ll be much more likely to improve the quality of whatever it is you are surveying about.

In a post I wrote earlier this month about pre-requisites to knowledge sharing, Ellen asked about what do when the same old question keeps popping up even if it has been resolved or hashed over ad nauseam in the past.

This question highlights what the title of this post sums up: there is a difference between rehashing the invention of the wheel vs. learning about how to use it.

Many knowledge sharing/capture/management/what-have-you efforts are developed specifically to avoid reinventing the wheel. What is often overlooked is that you then have to educate new members to the effort about what has been covered in the past. Often, the only way to do this is when the question arises. Rather than getting in a twist about someone asking about wheels, view it as an opportunity to connect them with what has already been discussed/developed about wheels.

The Strobist blog gives a good example of how to deal with this. This blog has coalesced a community of flash photography aficionados who interact via the blog comments and their Flickr group. Many newbies join this group every day. David Hobby, who writes the blog, has written a document called Lighting 101 that covers the basics of off-camera flash lighting. New participants are gently and quickly directed to it so they can then interact with some knowledge in the broader community. Same thing can be done in other environments as well.

Methods for guiding people to these foundational resources are quite varied and include everything from very prominent links, tailored local search engine results and members of the community acting as knowledge sherpas.

Even when your wheel has been invented, there is still a big need for others to learn about how to use it. Make sure that is addressed in your efforts.