Have you ever witnessed someone having difficulty determining the answer to a puzzle? There are a number of different types of puzzles that people use to challenge and entertain themselves—jigsaw puzzles, crossword, and Sudoku puzzles, to name a few. People approach puzzles differently. With jigsaw puzzles, some people begin by sorting the pieces into two piles—pieces that go on the perimeter and those that go on the inside. Once this task is accomplished the person may try to get all of the perimeter pieces in place before filling in the rest of the puzzle. Other people may begin by trying to locate and connect pieces for a focal object in the picture. Individuals also take different approaches to solving crossword puzzles. Do you begin with the items going down or across? Do you take each hint in order, refusing to move on to the next until you’ve solved it, or do you skip over the challenging ones and go back to them at the end? There is no right or wrong way to proceed as long as you ultimately reach your objective—solving the puzzle.

Human behavior can also be a puzzle of sorts and a very fascinating one at that. Everyone plays amateur psychologist from time-to-time, trying to figure out why people behave the way they do, especially when they behave in ways that we do not expect. Social scientists spend their entire careers trying to better understand behavior. Like other types of puzzles, it can be challenging to try to solve the puzzle of human behavior and also very rewarding. In business, human beings (both customers and employees) are crucial to our success and solving the human factor puzzle can have a positive impact on our bottom line—profits.

Q: But how do you go about solving the human factor puzzle to increase profits?

A: The answer is simple—scientific surveys.

In Irving, Texas on April 7, 2010, Texas Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys for 38 seasons, was destroyed. Over 20,000 people came to watch the implosion that demolished the stadium. Many more watched on television and online. The Cowboys moved to their new state-of-the-art facility in Arlington, Texas after the 2008 season. After their move, Irving officials decided that the land the stadium sat on was more valuable than the stadium itself and the decision was made to tear Texas Stadium down. While many fans were saddened by its demise, the fact was that the stadium no longer met the needs of consumers so it was destroyed and the fans, like the players, have moved on.
 
Moving on is a part of life. Every day people discard and destroy objects that are no longer meeting their needs; things that have outlived their usefulness. Our possessions are not the only things vulnerable to being discarded or destroyed; businesses are at risk as well. If enough of our customers perceive that the products or services we provide are not meeting their needs, they will turn elsewhere and we can find ourselves in an inescapable position. Of course, this is something we all want to avoid and the good news is that it is not difficult to determine whether our customers believe we are adequately meeting their needs. Through customer surveys, we can gain information about what our customers want and also discover the key drivers of their behavior.

Most of us like to be liked. We tend to present ourselves in a favorable light; we do not like to appear ill-informed or ill-prepared. So, when we are asked to participate in an online questionnaire, we are eager to please, to provide useful information.

On the other hand, others of us may not trust those gathering the information. We want to know how the information we provide will be used, where and to whom it will be disseminated. We need to trust that our answers will not be attached to us or adversely affect us in any way before sharing things about our personal behaviors, opinions or attitudes.

In survey research, social desirability is the tendency of some people to respond in a way that is socially acceptable, a response different than their non-socially acceptable answer would be. They may report attending church more often than they actually do, smoking less, and exercising more. They stretch the truth to make themselves look good in the eyes of those asking the questions.

Every two years athletes from all over the world gather to compete in either the summer or winter Olympic Games. They all come with the same goal in mind—to beat the competition and win a medal, preferably a gold one. As spectators watch the games in person or on television, they are seeing the end result of a process that involved years of preparation. It reminds me of the process that those of us in business experience as we use customer and employee surveys and strive to improve our businesses to achieve “best in class” standing. In this paper I will describe the similarities in the processes of “going for the gold” in the competitive environments of the Olympic Games and business.

First, what is a process? A process involves taking inputs and converting them into outputs. An Olympic athlete exercises and practices various movements and then puts these movements together to create a performance. An organization repetitively takes its resources and uses them in a reliable, consistent way to achieve its business goals. Many of the most successful organizations engage in business process management (BPM), a structured approach to analyze and continually improve fundamental activities and major elements of a company’s operation. According to Mohamed Zairi, author of “Business Process Management: A Boundaryless Approach to Modern Competitiveness,” an article published in the Business Process Management Journal, BPM is an approach to competitiveness that involves a continuous focus on customers, quality improvement, and striving for best in class standing. Utilizing BPM can help an organization go for the gold and achieve business success.

When designing questionnaires, the order of items on the questionnaire creates a context, or meaning, for the entire questionnaire. Items placed early on in the questionnaire effect the way in which people respond to later questions.

“Each item will be interpreted by respondents within the context of the questionnaire, previous questions and the wording of each item,” notes Gregory G. Holyk, University of Illinois at Chicago, in the Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods.

To ensure positive use of context in questionnaires, it is important that you clearly define the purpose of the questionnaire. Start writing drafts of items to be included on the questionnaire – items that directly relate to the purpose of the questionnaire. The next step is to put items into a meaningful format (e.g. open-ended, multiple choice, etc.) and order. The order in which items appear can bias people’s thinking and, thus, their responses to your questions.