Put People First: Invest in Skill Development for Growth

Technology dominated this year’s GRIT report, but if you skimmed over “skills emphasized for staff development,” you might miss that the leaders in tech provided clear insights into emerging survival strategies with their responses.

In the technology segment, more than 70 percent of leaders say they prioritize innovation and expertise by investing in skill development. Can you say the same of your business or the businesses you serve?

There is zero doubt we have an insatiable desire to up-level our staff, but does that desire for skill development correlate to action?

Few businesses can afford to pay mere lip service to investing in skill development around “market research expertise” and “innovative focus.” Tech is leading the charge, but market researchers who hope to survive what’s next in business had better upskill the teams that are meant to carry their businesses through the impending recession.

When assessing trends to determine our future, I look at how we got here.

Three Trends in Market Research Supplier Firms that Led to Flawed Practices

• Most MR firms grew up quickly from small businesses to massive teams.
• We’ve had a tendency to be Jane-and-Jack of all trades, serving a wide variety of customer needs and hiring generalists.
• We’ve been largely project-based, making it difficult for our teams to come up for air and spend time on skill development.

While these trends got us here today, they are not sustainable with the recent explosion of tools and technology. Instead, business leaders need to employ strategies that allow them to be agile and innovative for what’s next.

Emerging Strategies for Innovative Leaders (in Market Research and Beyond)

• Invest in your specialists; give subject matter experts time to build their skills meaningfully and share with the broader team.
• Focus your business, and you can focus your teams. It’s difficult to develop unique skills when serving too broad a customer base.
• Be disciplined about giving your teams space to learn and grow. Invest real money in training and create a safe place to make mistakes.

Your people are your greatest asset, and, as a business leader, you need to question if you are making the right level of investment in training and developing your teams for the future skills they need to carry your business through hard times. Investing in your staff is more than an employee retention tactic, it is a survival strategy.