7 Rules for impactful & actionable research

If we want to be treated as strategic advisors we need to become more effective allies. We need to make it easy to act on our deliverables.

Most research deliverables are condemned to be forgotten and not implemented. When you present your work you’ll hear stakeholders responding “how interesting” and “this is helpful”… then nothing happens.

Unfortunately it’s because researchers are set up to fail:

• Research outputs are treated as a data point vs. an essential milestone
• Budget too limited to deliver results with a high level of confidence
• Lack of buy-in to act on results (aka disengaged stakeholders)

While systemic factors like these feel unsurmountable, there’s work that we as researchers can do to have more influence. We need to ensure that what we’re delivering is impactful & actionable.

We’ve put together these 7 rules based on PH1’s consulting projects prioritizing product roadmaps for Spotify, Mozilla, Bell, Dell, David Suzuki Foundation, University of Waterloo, and many more:

1. Understand the purpose of your project: Problem definition or solutioning
2. Prioritize which business & product questions are critical to project success
3. Collect leadership’s point of view & use it as a frame of reference throughout your deliverables
4. No matter how qualitative of a study it is, create KPIs to easily communicate results
5. Decide what deliverables to make by mapping backwards from the decisions the project needs to inform
6. Edit deliverable slides mercilessly and communicate for impact & shareability
7. Build a business case for what to do with the research

7 Rules for Impactful & Actionable Research

If we want to be treated as strategic advisors we need to become more effective allies. We can’t work like we’re in a 4 x 100 meter relay team passing the baton to other teams to run away with. Your job should not end by handing off your work.

It might not feel like it but we’re actually part of an ecosystem that relies on feedback and guidance to help others be more productive & make customers happier. This is the foundation of service design.

Imagine the kitchen staff at a fine dining restaurant. They need to listen to the front of house to be able to execute as effectively as possible. They might think that they don’t need to hear what customers think. But that’s critical to catching bugs, missed opportunities, and misconceptions before they become a hugely expensive issue.

Before we dive in how to make your work more impactful & actionable, let’s have a moment of blunt honesty about those systemic barriers. Product teams — just like kitchens — don’t think they need researchers advising them on how to improve processes & products.

This means researchers are in the uncomfortable position of not only needing to be better allies but also to be a salesman of why you even need to be included in the process. So expect this process to be taxing and tiring.

“Right now, we’re asking each individual researcher to be all of that. Be a great salesperson, be a good enabler, enable sales, service, support, and product design. You’re also doing the do — the good work of doing the research.”

Yakira Nuñez — VP of Research & Insights, Salesforce

Rule #1: Understand the purpose of your project: Problem definition or solutioning

What are you trying to solve? If you’re trying to understand the problem space your focus is collecting as much intelligence about context, considerations, and contradictions. If you’re trying to define a solution, your focus is on reactions, requirements, and restrictions. The methods and outputs will be completely different. And your research will be used completely differently.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of the double diamond, the design thinking process that’s the backbone of human-centred design.

If problem space: Your job is to explain the problem and relevant opportunities in a such a way that stakeholders can decide how/if to proceed. Your goal is support in the building of a business case.

If creating potential solutions: Your job is to detail a path forward for a potential product/design, including explaining why previous designs had positive or negative outcomes. Your goal is to support in prioritizing the roadmap.

Rule #2: Prioritize which business & product questions are critical to project success

Scope creep is normal. You’ll be asked to research far more than should be allowable. Humour it. Those are value-adds that will help stakeholders feel more invested in your work.

But to be impactful & actionable you need to know what matters to your business and product leaders. All too often, people make the mistake of focusing too much on the content of their argument and not enough on how they deliver that message. Avoid getting too caught up in presenting data (signals) and focus on convincing them by aligning to what matters (success factors & strategy).

Tell a stakeholder about a user’s product reaction and they’ll likely forget about it; tell them something that impacts the validity of their strategy and you’ll get their attention. Part of your (often unadvertised) responsibility is extracting what’s important from stakeholders.

Rule #3: Collect leadership’s point of view & use it as a frame of reference throughout your deliverables

Your deliverables shouldn’t be about presenting data, they should be about answering the brief. And like we discussed in rule 2, your brief is littered with easter eggs about what actually matters to leadership.

The reality is that your work is equal parts a design project and a change management projects. If stakeholders don’t feel heard throughout your process and outcomes, they’re likely to add friction to any progress.

Stakeholder engagement is critical to strategic projects and it should be a keystone of your work if you want to have more impact up and down your organization.

What they want and need must be highlighted within your deliverables. Success depends not only on what users want but also what your teammates need/want. This isn’t to say that your deliverables need to turn into fluff pieces that appease leadership, they should address their needs with evidence in support or against their points of view.

Rule 4: No matter how qualitative of a study you’re running, create KPIs to easily communicate results

Effective deliverables aren’t about presenting data, they’re about conveying easy-to-understand insights. So why should quantitative research have a monopoly on ease-of-comprehension?

Just like academic researchers code themes so they can be quantified, product researchers can quantify many different types of responses and findings.

Our team likes to include ranking and scoring exercises as part of interviews:

• If problem space: Quantify problem triggers, intensity, frequency.
• If creating potential solutions: Quantify preferences, intentions, and perceptions.

Doing this may add more effort but it will result in easier-to-comprehend results because you can present data tables and highlight something that’s performing well or poorly.

Rule #5: Decide what deliverables to make by mapping backwards from the decisions the project needs to inform

Every project is unique and the deliverables should be bespoke. Feel free to reuse templates and parts of decks. But always customize based on what decisions the project needs to inform.

If you consider the purpose of the project from the perspective of your key stakeholders, you can map backwards and predict which top-level answers are needed, plus the subsequent proof/context to build a case to others.

Thinking from the perspective of next steps helps ensure that your deliverables include what’s necessary to be impactful & actionable.

Here are how our team’s deliverables vary according to different outcomes:

• Understand problems: Profile problem, answer assumptions, factors to consider, evaluate opportunities
• Understand segments: Profile segments, compare segments, prioritize segments, recommend needs/actions
• Test existing products: Evaluation of product, feature/interaction spotlight, result by segment, prioritized areas to improve
• Prioritize & score: Profile options, scoring matrix, segmentation analysis, recommend idea to proceed with
• Evaluate new ideas: Profile ideas, prioritize ideas, positive/negative signals, recommend next steps

Rule #6: Edit deliverable slides mercilessly and communicate for impact & shareability

When it comes to creating deliverables think of yourself less as a researcher and more like a TED Talk speaker. They enthrall with your narrative and leave a mark on the audience by applying psychological guidelines. Most important is Emphasize connection over content.

More content and data don’t make your presentation easier to connect with. They make your points harder to follow and less convincing. Here is an example of how our presentations evolved from 2019 to 2023.

Edit mercilessly & communicate for shareability. Remember, if you create a presentation of 20+ slides, it doesn’t matter because only 1–3 slides will get socialized. Slides needs to convince in isolation of the deck. Slides should act as a teaser to convince stakeholders that they need to seek out your report.

Your impulse will be to over-communicate. Avoid it at all costs. And constantly triage data to the appendix. Important ideas should be communicated in the most appropriate format: visuals, comparison tables, deltas, etc. Think of your report as a UI that has to be universally accessible and usable.

Rule 7: Build a business case for what to do with the research

From a leadership perspective, the ultimate deliverable maps out what to do, explains why, details possible customer satisfaction lift, predicts expected cost/return, and risks. They want a business case for what to do based on the learnings.

That’s the holy grail and as you get more comfortable selling in projects to leadership, you should be trying to add scope and phases to enable this full spectrum level of analysis. Here’s how you typical build a business case.

But as a researcher we’re often crunched under limited scope. Regardless, your deliverables should answer the following:

1. Why did the business need do this research?
2. What did we do to ensure we should have confidence in the results & recommendations?
3. Why should the business invest in these recommendations? How do they align to our vision and strategy?
4. Which recommendations are highest priority and why?
5. How should these insights be implemented?
6. What are risks to the business and to implementation?
7. If you don’t have a high level of confidence in the results, what are the next steps to gain a high enough level of confidence?

I hope these rules for making your research more impactful & actionable help you and your organizations. If you ever have questions, please contact me.

Arpy Dragffy is the founder & Principal Strategist at Vancouver-based PH1 Research. He consults teams on how to prioritize their product/service roadmaps using mixed methods research & stakeholder engagement strategies. Clients have included Spotify, Mozilla, National Football League, TELUS, Bell, University of Waterloo, Government of Canada, and more.