3 questions you should never ask in a survey.
As we learn more about how the mind actually works, we should update how we ask questions in surveys. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: People can give you an answer…
The Proven Method Fortune 500s Use — Now for Cities
Are You Fixing the Wrong Problems in Your City? Every city survey tells a story—but are you sure you’re reading it right? Too often, leaders chase the lowest scores from
When Spanish Backfires
“It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” — Parker Pen’s English slogan “It won’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant.” — Parker Pen’s Spanish slogan That’s
Timing is Everything
It's always a challenge to get insights to the top of the company. But here's a sure-fire way. Get in the annual planning meeting. Offer to share the top 3-4 insights from the last year.
How City Management influences satisfaction and quality of life
In our last newsletter, we introduced the Civic Analytical Framework—a tool designed to help communities better understand what truly drives resident satisfaction. Most traditional community surveys focus heavily on city
What’s driving your residents’ satisfaction (or frustration) with your community?
Hint –it’s not just about how well your city delivers its services. When it comes to resident satisfaction, most people immediately think of how well a city delivers its services.
Do you trust your benchmarks?
A better way to benchmark within your community surveys Benchmarks are invaluable when conducting a community survey. They provide insights into your community’s standing compared to others. For instance, you
Is your community like Buffalo, NY?
Too many firms specializing in community surveys use the same boilerplate survey for all of their clients or with just a few adjustments.
But you’re not like Buffalo, NY. Your community has its own unique strengths, challenges, opportunities, and brand identity.
The best way to survey underserved, minority, or disadvantaged residents in your city satisfaction surveys.
We understand that communities and cities are concerned about understanding the needs of their minority and disadvantaged residents. They want to be confident that they are included in their city
Gold Standard Benchmarking For City Satisfaction Surveys
The use of benchmarks within a City Satisfaction Survey can be very useful. Benchmarks are an excellent method of comparing your city to those similarly situated, capturing and tracking data
Best Practices For Analyzing Community Satisfaction Studies
How do you decide where to put your resources? The lowest scoring metric? What if that is not important? This video reveals best practices for analyzing community satisfaction data and provides clear insights into the optimal places to invest resources.
A Better Metric Than Satisfaction
Satisfaction is an old metric—and not very useful. In short, it is a low threshold. Do we want our communities to be merely satisfied or love our communities as much as you do? We recommend an alternative that has been used around the globe in the largest, best-run organizations. It's time to introduce this to communities.
5-Steps to Trust Your Community Data
Do you truly trust your community survey data? Does your city council question the results? This video shares just 5 steps True North includes to ensure you can trust your data.
A Better Approach For Improved Community Surveys
While others use boilerplate surveys and reports, we customize our approach for your community. You are not like all other communities. We will work with you to create a study that addresses your needs.
Discover the unstated reasons why your customers leave
Learn the real, unstated reasons why customers leave. Traditional research approaches leave us with rational, logical reasons for attrition. But we know that humans make decisions subconsciously and emotionally and justify them rationally. We want to get to the real reasons why they leave.
Rapid Review
When you need a fast, more predictive, and lower-cost way to evaluate lots of product ideas, features, or messages.
Stop Doing Bad Brand Studies
How we measure brands has not changed in decades. Yet we have learned so much about how humans make decisions and evaluate brands, and it doesn’t look anything like we measure brands.
I Told You So
Daniel Kahneman’s last book “Noise” confirms what we have been saying -- humans make comparisons between options and make choices. They don’t compare things in isolation on a set of scales. They make choices. So why are typical market research questionnaires filled with scales?
Download our New Product Development System Diagram
Developing new products is expensive. Not just the dollars that are spent but the huge amount of internal time it swallows up. In spite of management enthusiasm, most products fail.
Your brain is lazy – and that’s why your marketing is not working
Your brain is lazy. Wait—don’t click away! That’s not an insult; it’s just a fact. My brain is lazy (especially before coffee), your brain is lazy, and your consumers’ brains
How to create effective messages
As consumers, being selfish can pay off. It’s practically the point! As we browse products and try to decide on a purchase, we’re constantly asking the question, “What’s in it
The 5 Biggest Problems with Scales
Consumers don’t make decisions on a 5-point scale – they make choices. Several problems exist with traditional scales. Did you know the Likert scale is almost 90 years old? This isn’t your father’s scale; this is your grandfather’s scale. We can do better.
Fail Fast – An Internal Screening System For New Product Development
In the brainstorming phase of a project or new endeavor, there’s the old adage that says: There’s no such thing as a bad idea! While this is true at the most
Project Scoping Checklist
Hi everyone, Here’s a project scoping checklist you can use. This has literally been 10+ years in the making. I created a checklist of questions for our initial meeting with
Earn Trust – The Formula to Help You Get There
Earning Trust is the most important thing we can do. Without trust, a superbly designed, executed, and analyzed study is meaningless. Without trust it will not be accepted and acted
The CEO Is A Person Too
The top of the organization makes the really big decisions. And of course we want them to use our insights when making these decisions. Unfortunately, many times our reports are
Don’t Just Tell Them — Make Your Case
Do you have a great idea, suggestion, or recommendation you want to offer to management? Those of us in market research or other “staff” functions often have a unique opportunity
Share your insights at the right time and place
Are you reporting your strategic results when the company is focused on execution? An approach to getting heard is to sync your results with your company’s planning cycle. Get on
Have A Point of View
We all understand that senior management values decisiveness. So why are many of our documents or presentations filled with qualifiers – “perhaps,” “tend to,” “may be,” “90 percent level of
Who Are You?
As research professionals, we evaluate a brand’s position in the market. We help firms identify how and where to position themselves, how to differentiate themselves from others, and we measure
If You Were Boss
“If I were in charge of my organization, what would I do based on the information I have?” That’s a question each of us as researchers should consistently ask ourselves.
How To Push Your Idea Up The Ladder
Let’s say you have a great idea for your management. You’ve identified something the company should really consider. How do you move it up the ladder so that it gets
Solutions
