Why are you doing this anyway?

How do you know if an idea – or a product, platform, feature - is any good? As a researcher, my first recommendation to anyone who asks (and sometimes those who didn’t) is that you should probably do some research.

This advice is only somewhat helpful, because it leaves out a crucial first step – understanding the strategic goals underlying your research and what fundamental questions you need to answer. Too often, a research project is undertaken with an enthusiasm that unfortunately skips over this first step, fueled by a sense of urgency to get a project underway.

Because just thinking about what you are going to do doesn’t really feel like you are doing anything. (And it probably feels worse when you are paying someone else to do the thinking.)

Here’s the problem though. Research without a strategic foundation is aimless.

There are a few things you need to figure out conceptually to guide your research:

What do you want to know?

An obscure philosopher made famous by his appearance in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure once said “the only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” This is probably a good starting point. What do you want to know – is it something about your product? Consumer behavior? The marketplace in general? All of the above?

Knowing what you want to know guides how you go about researching and understanding it. All too often, the approach is “we want to know everything” and what you end up with is research without direction and data that fails to address a tangible question.

Why do you want to know it?

When you put this question to a real person, it is usually uncomfortable. It can feel accusatory or defiant. But here’s the problem – it is a question that if left unanswered throws you right back into aimlessness.

If you want to fill an existing gap in knowledge, then it is important to think about and account for the things you do know. If you want to test an assumption then your starting point is different than if you’re engaging in a bench marking project. It is important to align goals – what you want to get out of a research project – with the “why” of the project.

What are you going to do with it?

Occasionally, the impulse to start doing something outweighs the rationale for doing it. Then you end up with a set of findings or insights asking yourself “now what?” That is neither a good feeling to have nor a good place to be.

Knowing how you want to disseminate your research - who you want to communicate those findings to, how you want the final product to look – is necessary to fully maximize the impact of your work. Otherwise, the threat of inertia sets in and you run the risk of failing to capitalize on the value of your insights.

Sometimes these relatively simple questions become stumbling blocks. However, it is certainly better to address them at the beginning of a project than while it is happening. Or worse, at the end.

If these are problems you find yourself or your organization struggling with, let’s have a conversation and get your insights back on track.