It was Day 2 of the Front End of Innovation conference — a three-day immersion in innovation, strategy, and emerging tech in Boston, MA. The pre-lunch breakout session is no doubt a tricky slot to hold attention. Let’s be real… the coffee buzz is gone, our brains are sufficiently on overload, and we’re wondering if we can manage to be first in the lunch line.
I decided to drop into a 15-minute lightning talk and was delighted to hear a phrase that snapped me right back to focus: “say-do-gap.” Popularized by advertising legend David Ogilvy, the “say-do-gap” refers to the disconnect between what people say, what they think, and what they actually do. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the world of surveys.
We’ve all been there! We stand up a survey, ask a series of questions, wait (impatiently) for our respondents to answer, and then we act on what they say — betting time, money, and resources on their feedback. And then, without warning,
That shiny new feature flops
The training series no one attends
NPS scores soar, but your customers churn weeks later
Our team morale slips, money feels like it walked right out the door, unproductivity soars and we’re left wondering what went wrong.
The answer? Your approach to survey design might be broken. Perhaps your respondents rushed, told you what they thought you wanted to hear (social desirability bias anyone??), they held back, they checked the box… and yet you took their responses as truth and made decisions based on surface-level input.
This is why it’s time to revolutionize our approach to survey design.
As leaders, we are hungry for intelligence about our teams, customers, shareholders, future, etc. But to unlock true intelligence — and the data storytelling needed to shape precise decisions — we need to do the hard part. That means slowing down, thoughtfully designing questions that unlock real insight, and intentionally shaping an approach to capturing authentic, raw insight. It means refusing to rush and refusing to be lazy.
After all, if we want true feedback and to close the say-do-gap, we need to earn the right to feedback by asking game-changing, wow questions. Ready to break away from survey mediocrity? Here are 3 tips to get started:
Related Reading: Master the Art of Questioning in the Age of AI
Ask Questions That Signal You Actually Care
Inauthenticity is easy to spot… especially in a world flooded with AI-generated content. Generic survey prompts like “Do you feel valued as an employee?” or “How satisfied are you with our product?” don’t invite honesty. In fact, they often invite disengagement.
To earn real insight and unlock true data storytelling firepower, you need to prove you’ve put care into the ask. At SQA Group, we’re brought in when companies realize their surveys are producing surface insights, seeped in bias, and reeking of a compliance check box. One of the first questions we ask our clients is: “How do you want someone to feel while taking your survey.” The answers we’re listening for sound like:
- “Wow, someone actually thought about these questions before sending them.”
- “I appreciate being invited to reflect and not just select amongst a likert scale.”
- “I feel seen — this survey is asking me about me and what I care about.”
- This is different from any survey I’ve ever taken before!”
From there, we leverage design thinking and futures frameworks to build surveys that open up the door to possibility. No templates or auto-generated questions. Just humans crafting meaningful questions for other humans to answer.
Build Questions Around What You’re Willing to Change
This step is important. As a team you need to understand what actions you are willing to take and what agency you want your stakeholders to have in decision making.
For example, if you are not going to revisit your compensation strategy this year, don’t ask about it. If you don’t yet have the budget to digitize your customer experience, leave questions about digital experience in the parking lot until next year.
A solid survey, with clear action afterward, sends a resounding message to your stakeholders that, “we asked, you answered, we acted.” Bonus points if you can communicate to your stakeholders the specific actions you took based on their feedback (consider sharing this via company Town Halls, customer eNews messages, social media posts, etc.).
Remember, every question should align with your appetite to act because action is what makes people trust that their voice matters.
Think of Surveys as Revenue Opportunities
When done right, surveys can go far beyond gauging sentiment; they can become goldmines for revenue-driving intelligence. When designed intentionally, they can reveal hidden risks, untapped innovations, overlooked differentiators, market shifts, and unmet needs. They become your early warning system and your opportunity radar.
That’s why survey design deserves to sit at the strategy table — not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate exercise in insight generation. Start by identifying the hypotheses you want to test. What assumptions are you operating under? What truths do you need to validate, refute, or evolve?
Then go one step further: map out the actions you’re ready to take depending on what the data storytelling shows. If you’re not prepared to act on a topic, don’t ask about it (remember what we discussed above!).
Great survey design is intentional, visionary, and thoughtful. It can tell you far more than where you are today. It can show you where you can head next.
It’s not that we as businesses and leaders have a feedback problem. It’s that we have a design problem.
In a world where leaders are craving truth, we can’t afford to keep settling for surface-level answers. And that means we have to put the work in to asking better questions, acting faster, and signaling to our stakeholders that we’re listening for real.
Ready to level up your next pulse check? Unlock our free one-pager with 3 powerful, human-centered questions to embed in your next survey. The future of insight starts with a better ask.