Transforming Surveys into Leadership Tools

Additionally, giving away an iPod once a month is just enough incentive to get people to fill them out. In the end, electronic data collection not only saves tons of administrative time and cost, but also yields better comments and more objective data.

Finally, customization is a challenge. I’ve been in rooms where the learning subsets argued over a five-point or seven-point scale, or whether they’ll refer to the teacher of a course as a facilitator or instructor on the form. The key is to reach a consensus with a standard set of questions. Smart survey tools can account for tweaks in verbiage or scale and still maintain data aggregation and consistency. Further, these tools can do conditional or course-specific questions to provide some flexibility.

Try this: Ask the entire team to just use a standard smart sheet for three months, then come back with changes they wanted before. In my experience, nobody comes back with changes 75 percent or more of the time. So, be flexible but firm in revisions.

Conclusion
Surveys make great leadership tools if done right and on a regular basis with the right tools to collect and analyze the data. They are excellent sources of business intelligence for the resource-strapped organization and help make data-driven decisions. They’re not perfect, but neither is anything in business.