We're told to listen. To customers. To employees.
But we assume that's enough.
This clip from Yes, Prime Minister will show you what I mean.
Sir Humphrey makes rigging a survey look easy.
Because it is.
But you don't have to be trying to manipulate a survey to get misleading results.
Even the most well-intentioned customer questionnaire or employee engagement survey can lead you astray. Not because the questions are loaded.
But because what people say and what people do are often two completely different things.
We're not great at knowing our own minds. We're even worse at articulating them.
So we've got two problems.
The questions might be inadvertently rigged. The answers might be inadvertently misleading.
Behavioural science has known this for decades.
The unconscious drivers of our behaviour – context, habit, social pressure, cognitive shortcuts – don't show up in survey responses.
They show up in what we actually do.
If you're building strategy on what people tell you they want, you might be solving for the answer rather than the problem.
Listening matters.
But it's one input, not the only input.
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