GreenBook Future List Spotlight: Julia Görnandt

Outside of insights, what are your passions and interests?

Older than my passion for understanding consumer behavior is my passion for pottery. I have been doing pottery since I was a child. I started off with various hand-building techniques, e.g. sculptures. Later on, I discovered the fun of throwing on a wheel. During the pandemic, I finally took the step to set up my own small pottery studio at home. Throwing bowls and cups on the wheel is just the perfect balance to market research: Besides challenging your mind (stay focused!) you actually create some tangible with your hands.

Besides pottery, I could not live without spending time outside. Going for a long walk no matter what weather it is, hikes during holidays, or gardening after work and on the weekends.

 

Since starting your career in MRX, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

My greatest accomplishment by far is setting up an entire office in a new location/country from scratch. I moved to Berlin and SKIM Berlin literally was a one-woman show at the beginning. Sketching a go-to-market strategy, business development, marketing, finding a suitable office space, making clients happy on ongoing projects, tracking the business success, hiring new team members, and more – all of a sudden all these topics were my responsibility. I am very grateful that of course I had a strong SKIM ‘mothership’ in the back and got a lot of support from various people along the road. 2.5 years later we are a team of 8 smart SKIMmers in Berlin and counting – and I am glad to say that our continuous growth in people is rooted in successful business growth as well.

 

When did you know you wanted to enter a career in insights, and what inspired you?

consumer insights sparked already before finishing highschool. I was fascinated from polls: I curiously studied graphs from polls in newspapers and magazines and pondered over the described people's behavior, and what possible motivations for the behavior and attitudes could be. Even more fascinating were results and analysis of elections. I admired (and still admire) the German TV host Jörg Schönenborn who - on election nights - is presenting the election results but even more though the movements of voters from one to another party, their agreement with certain promises or topics, demographic analysis and more. Even though I am really enjoying trying to understand consumer behavior, who knows if I might apply for the successor of Jörg Schönenborn once his position becomes vacant ;-) "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":769,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0}">My interest in consumer insights sparked already before finishing high school. I was fascinated by polls: I curiously studied graphs from polls in newspapers and magazines and pondered over the described people’s behavior, and what possible motivations for the behavior and attitudes could be. Even more fascinating were the results and analysis of elections. I admired (and still admire) the German TV host Jörg Schönenborn who – on election nights – is presenting the election results but even more through the movements of voters from one to another party, their agreement with certain promises or topics, demographic analysis, and more. Even though I am really enjoying trying to understand consumer behavior, who knows if I might apply for the successor of Jörg Schönenborn once his position becomes vacant 😉

 

What advice do you have for folks hoping to start a career in insights?

First of all, stay curious! Stay curious to understand why people make certain decisions, be motivated to dig deeper to grasp the full picture and the underlying motivations, and be open-minded. It might be that your hypotheses do not turn out to be true and the insights are very different from what you expected.

Secondly, don’t reinvent the wheel and be brave enough to be inspired by other research fields as well. For example, academic research of psychology or sociology has been studying human behavior for many (more) years. These insights are a super valuable source of information. They can enrich market research insights very much and can help to explain certain preferences or behavior patterns.

Thirdly, just give it a try and start a career in insights. You won’t regret it! 🙂

 

What do you think the key characteristics or qualities of a leader are? How does this play into MRX?

Integrity and transparency so that a leader’s action, statements, and vision are credible, relatable and something people can rely on.

On top a leader should show strong empathy with others: This starts with listening to others and truly understanding their matters. But it spans to grasping the needs, e.g. development needs, of others and helping them to grow.

More specifically I believe that supporting personal growth is most effective and sustainable if you help people to help themselves, i.e. give them the tools to take the next step, help them being self-aware and self-conscious, and being able to clearly formulate their needs towards others. Empathy for me also includes a cross-cultural understanding or at least the awareness that cross-cultural differences and nuances exist and should be accounted for.

Other key qualities are the ability to initiate actions/thinking/any kind of movements in others since they are striving for a common goal. As a leader, you help to bring this vision to life and make everyone understand how their contribution contributes to the bigger goal.

 

Where do you see the future of insights heading in the next 10 years?

The trends from the last years will continue to stay relevant in the coming decade. Two main ones for me are 1) the fusion of different types of insights (or information or data) and 2) the consistent, and maybe growing, need for insights consultancy.

The combination and fusion of different sources of insights are becoming more and more relevant since more and more data is being generated. Each source/dataset is focusing on a specific aspect and therefore has a specific strength. However, each source also comes with specific limitations. Only by bringing various insights together and by leveling them up we will achieve a comprehensive picture and achieve real actionable insights. How to combine and fuse them? For some that will literally mean using advanced methodologies and algorithms to fuse them. On other occasions, it will mean to level up the different insights so that the final results are greater than the sum of the individual insights.

Secondly, the growing and faster availability of data will require strong insights people who can bring meaning to the data, i.e. connecting the dots of different insights, linking it back to the real (business) life, translating the insights into clear business decisions, and socializing the insights and next steps among key decision-makers.