Becoming TRUSTed Business Partners: Practical Tips to Research Leadership

Most conferences I attend showcase the newest and shiniest research toys, but only a few devote time to discuss our impact as Consumer Insights (CI) professionals. With increasing market fragmentation, this conversation deserves its own space, more than ever!

According to a 2017 Boston Consulting Group article, 75% of business leaders consider Consumer Insights (CI) as a top priority and critical to accelerating growth. However, only 20% of the CI functions are perceived to be strategic partners or sources of competitive advantage.

Why is there such a big gap in perceived importance and impact? The two top reasons are lack of budget and headcount, which are hardly surprising. The third reason is probably the most crucial and insidious - lack of influence. Without strong influence, CI teams are relegated to service providers with no direct control of budgets and priorities, and limited, tactical impact.  No wonder CI dollars and headcounts are going down despite the claim that it’s a top priority!

So how do we break this vicious cycle and get a proper seat at the table?

Reflecting on my close to 20 years of experience pivoting the insights functions I led, from service providers to strategic business partners, I realized that strategic influence is built on strong thought leadership. I call this simply as Research Leadership. My reflections are supported by BCG and IPSOS’s research on the same topic.

My approach to Research Leadership has 5 dimensions and can be summed up into what I call the TRUST framework.    

1. Technology

Technology is NO LONGER just an option. However, it’s not just using technology for technology’s sake. More than ever, we need to get the basics such as great problem statement framing, deep observation, and critical thinking, absolutely right. Only then should we begin applying innovative technology tools to get to deeper insights and/or better efficiency, in ways traditional tools can’t.

In addition, in the book The Technology Fallacy, the authors recommended hiring both for procedural skills, i.e., hard, how to do it skills, with strategic skills, i.e., what for skills. The strategic skills can only come from experience and deep expertise, and help in the effective and creative application of technology to business problems.

This implies that we need to aggressively build digital literacy among the more senior members of our teams, who are oftentimes traditional researchers but have the critical strategic skills, and hire specialists to execute more technical jobs like analytics, simulation and modeling, use of hardware etc.

In my teams, I find ways to pair up technology specialists with experienced, strategy-oriented senior members to execute projects where a technology component will be crucial to find novel insights. 

2. Relationships

BCG recommends that CI functions integrate into the business teams, immersing them in the daily business realities. This allows research teams to be constantly in tune with the unstated assumptions behind research briefs, and develop the ability to pivot research based on evolving business needs.

Also, in organizations with multiple insight functions like those I’ve been in, these functions need to find a way to join up, and create a stronger influence and credibility across the enterprise. In my experience, this means literally pooling dollars and people and jointly executing a few high visibility projects, complementing each other’s expertise.   

More importantly, we need to recognize that Research is an expense item that needs constantly demonstrate strong ROI. As such, tracking our spends and performance is key to ensuring that budgets are allocated to the most critical projects, and outcomes and learnings are documented. In my own teams, we automated the tracking process to minimize effort and encourage better compliance.

Typical performance metrics include number of projects impacted by our insights, final consumer test results, and in-market performance and the like. Progress and results are constantly communicated through regular newsletters and senior stakeholder reviews. 

3. Unique Insights

Different companies define insights slightly differently. For innovations, I find Clay Christensen’s Jobs to be Done theory the most practical and most useful in unlocking unique insights. The real advantage however comes not from how insights are defined, but from the processes employed to get to them. Also, though most welcome, we don’t need more money or resources to get to better and unique insights - they actually limit our ability to get there sometimes! But we do need time and focus. 

Getting to unique insights is hard and messy. It takes equal doses of hard work, the right set of skills, iteration, creativity, collaborative effort, and a disciplined approach. This humbling realization reframes our roles as not just researchers and the ONLY source of insights, but also connectors with all other sources of insights across the organization, expert cross-functional facilitators to drive alignment, and experimenters to continue to evolve insights as new learnings come.

The last point on experimentation is very important. In fact, Kantar Vermeer’s Insights2020 study showed that overperforming insights teams are 4x more likely to embrace experimentation than underperformers. Example of experiments I did that generated the best outcomes include talking to extreme consumers, bringing in behavioral and systems 1 approaches and experts, and working with smaller agencies applying agile and design thinking methods in their proposals.

4. Storytelling

Getting to great, unique insights is not the end of the story. The next step is to translate them into relatable, action-inspiring stories. The same Insights2020 survey also showed that overperformers are viewed as great storytellers 2x more than underperformers.

Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCES framework offer practical tips for communicating with impact and stickiness. In summary:

• S – simple – zone in on the most important key messages
• U – unexpected – break from ordinary, hold interest
• C- concrete – translation information to something people can see, feel, touch etc.
• C- credible – reasons to believe, facts & figures, endorsement, anecdotes
• E- emotional – why should people care to listen, let alone act
• S – stories – simulate the information for people to experience

Here are a few examples of how I’ve personally applied the SUCCESs model in my teams:

• Be very intentional in using narration, visuals, and data in creating decks. Brent Dykes’ Effective Data Storytelling goes deep into how these can be leveraged for specific communication objectives.
• Whenever possible, bring the consumers to the conversation. We now have tools like Voxpopme to easily curate consumer videos that help communicate our data and insights much more effectively than charts and numbers ever could. Also, the cost and effort of producing sizzle videos have now significantly reduced, making them a viable way to land key messages to a broader audience.
• Practising sales pitches through Dragon’s Den / Shark Tank style debriefs of insights and ideas, especially in a workshop setting.

5. Talent

As with all successful transformations, having the right people profiles is key. I had approached building my insights teams in two ways:

• First, I look beyond functional skills and try to get a good sense of soft skills from potential hires. I also actively develop and reward such skills from current team members. Clay Christensen’s innovator’s DNA, i.e., networking, experimenting, observing, questioning, and associating, is a good place to start for developing the talent profiles we want to build in our research teams.
• Second, I bring in a healthy mix of artists – visionaries and creative ‘what’s possible’ thinkers – with soldiers – excellent, pragmatic ‘show me the money’ executors – and organize them according to the changing needs of the business. I find that mixing these multiple talents in key projects elevate the results.

I know the TRUST framework works. And Harvard Business Review’s case study of Unilever’s CMI function supports my assertion with data. Let’s go over it through the lens of the TRUST framework.

Technology – CMI built a global marketing information system aggregating, interpreting, and disseminating otherwise disparate information from sales, marketing, call center, social media etc., making it the one source of truth for both operational and strategic business discussions. It also employs predictive analytics by partnering with Google and Razorfish to leverage real-time media monitoring to anticipate hairstyle trends.

Relationships – CMI reports directly to C-suite and controls its own budget. They collaborate daily with partners as they mirror their partners’ org structures and are integrated in the business planning processes. They are incentivized based on business unit performance, and therefore act as business owners themselves.

Unique Insights – Unilever formalized experimentation with the launch of the Foundry, which started as a marketing technology incubator. Through these, technologies like Discuss.io, a consumer connection platform, was brought into the company. Also, they rolled out the People Voice program, which 30,000 of its employees participate in, recognizing that insights can come anywhere from the organization who are much closer to the consumers they serve.

Storytelling – CMI embraces the ”Show, Don’t Tell” philosophy and employs Ted-Style talks and other experiential approaches like imageries and vignettes, rather than charts and tables. For example, to land to executives what elderly consumers struggle with when using their products, they had them wear old-age simulators.

Talent – CMI hires for talent demonstrating more than just functional skills. They look for action-orientation, communication, persuasion, facilitation, and leadership. They also actively seek and develop whole brain talent with programs like Upping your Elvis to push people out of their default thinking styles and engage them in creative problem solving with others, OR CMI academy where their business acumen and business partnering skills are trained.

As a final note, it’s worth recognizing that transforming research functions to trusted business partner is difficult and slow, but ultimately very rewarding for research function leaders and teams. I hope that TRUST framework provides a clear pathway for transforming research teams to secure a seat at the table.