How to Really Know What People Want

"The central problem of our age," mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested, "is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty."

In today's complex and ever-changing world, certainty, most certainly, will elude you. You just can't reasonably expect to have all the information you need to make perfect decisions. But, of course, you certainly can access and possess lots of information—probably more than you want.

The key to having good information: Obtaining unfiltered data and insights from the people most important to your leadership—the constituents your operation exists to serve.

Formal surveys and other manifestations of remote control information gathering are always deficient. The best strategy to augment data from report-form information gathering—talk to people! Yourself.

Learn by Listening

Visit or call people you are in business to serve—whether they are internal or external to your organization—and ask them probing questions that printed or scripted surveys or other research reports simply cannot.

Examples:

What's the benefit you most value from our organization?

What would you truly miss if someone forced you to stop doing business with us?

What's the biggest opportunity to provide you with value that we're missing?

If we were to abandon all our traditions and reinvent what we provide you from scratch, what would you want the new stuff to look like?

If you could change one thing about the way we serve you, what would that be?

Don't Defer

You could commission a professional facilitator to conduct focus groups that get at such questions, but don't do that at the expense of your own first-hand intelligence gathering. No hired hand cares about the issues the way you do or has the insight to probe for more information after hearing the respondents' first off-the-cuff remarks.

Listen to your important constituents with an open, inquiring mind and a busy pen in hand. You likely will be both encouraged and disheartened by what you hear. But you need to hear all of it. After all, it's what people are really thinking-and acting on-anyway.

In addition to obtaining insights that will help you plan for and respond to continuously unfolding events, reaching out to your constituents is an important symbolic act of leadership. It increases your visibility, and it communicates your personal commitment to serving them responsively.

Lead by listening. Personally. Actively. Frequently.

Lead Well® helps organizations to improve measurable results by developing their current and future leaders. For more information, please contact us. By phone, toll-free in the USA: 1-888-LeadWell (532-3935), or 1-609-716-9490. By email, Info@LeadWell.com.

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Don Blohowiak, a management consultant and popular conference speaker, is the author of several business books. The executive director of the Lead Well® Institute in Princeton, NJ, he may be reached at http://www.LeadWell.com/.

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