Creating a Compelling Results Report

To upskill change managers in interpreting survey data, Mira has recorded a short video on common pitfalls she has come across regarding this topic. She sends the link to Paul, because she thinks this input might be relevant for him. Watch the learning nugget Mira has provided!

Once you are clear about the messages you extract out of your data, the next step is to compile the results report. Adhering to the following recommendations helps you to get the right messages across.

Start the creation of the results report with the definition of your target groups. One target group are the survey participants, who should receive feedback regarding the survey results in any case. Furthermore, the report is usually distributed to additional stakeholders, like the project leadership team, the project sponsor, the steering committee, or the top management and executives of relevant business units impacted by the cloud project. If consultants from different consulting companies are involved in the project delivery, it may be useful to also share the relevant survey results with them.

Most survey platforms provide results dashboards with all the survey data that allow team members to filter the data and dig in as deeply as they want on a "do it yourself" basis. Besides dashboards, slide presentations are a common format for communicating survey results. For very important topics, it may be worth investing time and effort in creating two versions of the results – one concise version for presenting the results and one detailed version for individual reading. Creating a management summary with a brief and self-explanatory overview of the key results and insights is highly recommended.

After having spent a lot of time analyzing and visualizing the survey data, you are probably proud of all the insights that were detected. Nevertheless, you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) present all your data and insights! Being too specific in your messaging might lead to an information overload for recipients. Therefore, concentrate on the meaningful and actionable results that provide answers to your initial questions. This helps to derive follow-up activities. If you think that in-depth analyses and insights can be valuable and should also be given attention, you can include them in an appendix and thus make them accessible for interested readers.

Sometimes, the analysis of survey data provides clear direction for follow-up activities. The change manager can already think of concrete measures and integrate respective suggestions into the results report. In other cases, the survey data may indicate action areas requiring further discussion with other experts, e.g., project team members, process and technical experts, or business leaders. The results reports should then contain a proposal for the next alignment steps with the relevant experts to agree on the path forward.

Try to step into the shoes of your target group when developing the storyline. Instead of just listing all your insights, structure the content in a logical order that is easy for the recipient to follow. Start with generic information on the purpose of your data collection, the approach and the survey participants. Then focus on your overall insights, providing the big picture, for example overall patterns in your data and key results. Only then go into details and show more specific information. Ideally, the results report tells the story of your data collection and analysis, going step by step through the entire process. The following chart shows an exemplary structure for a results report.

Before sending out the results report, ensure feedback is captured. After having spent some time with the data collection and aggregation, it is good to have somebody not involved with the process to check if the content is correct and easy to understand. Ideally, you also align with the project lead to make sure the suggested activities go in the right direction. In addition, the project lead might have further ideas or messages that can be integrated.