How to Nurture Synthesis and Eradicate Business Conflicts with Insights

Conflicts are an unfortunate part of life. Whether they are borne from differing opinions, complex situations, or contrasting data, conflicts arise in many places in a business daily and stakeholders without insights have a challenge to overcome them.

In a perfect world, all stakeholders would turn to the insights team, or an insights resource centre where they can find the insights stored. However, this is not a perfect world. One of the largest challenges that insight experts face is that of stakeholder engagement – getting stakeholders to pay attention to insights, to seek out research experts for advice or project commissions, to really take customer insights into account in each decision they make is proving nigh on impossible when research budgets are continually slashed and stakeholders get lucky when making decisions more on ‘experience’ or gut feelings rather than solid data.

This is a particular conflict that stakeholders and insight experts do battle on regularly. The reality is far from what business professionals are taught - in business studies, marketing courses, and more, they are taught to seek out the one true vision of the customer through market research data and insights. To create a synthesis within the organization based on the one true view of the customer.

Conflicts are a pain, but they also open many opportunities to reinforce or reinstate this synthesis, so understanding which conflicts are presenting as barriers to organizational synthesis is vital to overcoming them and taking advantage of those opportunities.

Barriers to Organizational Synthesis

There are many barriers an organization could face in the search for synthesis, including out of date policies and processes and a ‘traditionalist’ corporate culture. But arguably, two of the largest barriers that insight teams face are organizational silos and conflicting data.

Organizational Silos

This is a challenge as old as time, as teams who specialize in areas work in those areas and do not believe that others will be able to provide value. Or that they could provide value to other teams. If they are in line with business objectives, why should they open up their processes and strategies to the scrutiny of others? As long as their decisions are backed by the data they generate or hold in their team, they do not need to collaborate with other teams who do not possess the ‘right’ knowledge.

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But these silos can also form unconsciously, through a general lack of communication, no processes to spark collaboration and a system that separates teams almost uncaringly. However, it happens, these silos create internal team conflicts, possessiveness and an aversion to change. Without getting rid of these silos, there can never be an organizational synthesis, a one true view of the customer, or business direction, objectives and future.

For these silos to be broken down, there needs to be a company-wide shift in mentality, policies, processes and communication strategies. There needs to be roots laid in the foundations, technology systems erected to democratize access to information and facilitate collaboration on all levels. Transparency, teamwork, and shared insights and values will allow the organization to evolve naturally and stay relevant.

Conflicting Data

For all the challenges that insight experts face, one of the least likely obstacles we think about is what to do when there is just too much data. With obstacles such as choice paralysis being one of the most discussed challenges that comes along with too much data, there is one that doesn’t get the limelight it deserves as one of the factors hindering organizational synthesis and Customer Salience – conflicting data.

Alongside the impacts from those silos, data being generated in all those areas from differing sources are more than likely to lead to conflicting views on customers, and thus conflicting strategies directing each team in a different direction and an organization that only gets in its own way.

Conflicting data occurs more often than insight experts like to admit, and this presents the challenge of keeping stakeholders’ faith in insights, while also explaining how conflicting data arose and how they will deal with it. With the trend of research budgets slashed even further in the previous couple of years, conflicting data is the last thing insight experts need when it casts doubt in the mind of stakeholders and hinders any progress until the ‘truth’ of the matter is found – thus slowing down decision-making and insights activation, and casting a bad light on the insight professionals involved.

So, when conflicting data emerges what can insight teams do to continue to manage the one true view of the customer in their organization? Imbue Customer Salience at all levels and attempt to eradicate silos.

Cultivating Customer Salience

Having one true view of the customer across an entire organization is the best road to success. It is taught in courses across the business acumen, but only sometimes is it followed in practice.

This one view, this undeniable Customer Salience imbued in working practices, mindsets and all decisions and conversations will be tough to get off the ground, but with the right methods and right people employing those methods, a customer-salient culture is entirely possible. So how would insight experts help this happen?

Debunking Customer Myths and Conflicts

The transition from a culture of silos to a culture of Customer Salience will be slow, likely with some resistance along the way. These resistances will come in the form of myths and conflicts that have been embedded for some time, but need to be steadily debunked if the transition is to be a success.

Regular events such as interactive workshops, group ‘therapy’ sessions, and lunch & learns that involve groups of stakeholders from a variety of teams will help shed new light to these myths and conflicts, and will likely uncover more as time goes on. With these events spearheaded by insight experts and other resources to guide them, insight teams can override the previous organizational psychology guide stakeholders to the truth.

While higher-level aspects like optimizing cross-team workflows isn’t something that the insight team can do themselves per se, they can certainly advise these actions within the events outlined above, to encourage collaborations and influence wider organizational changes that support Customer Salience into being.

Become Just One Port of Call for All Things Insights

With the organizational silos and conflicting historical data to contend with, being a one-stop shop for ‘official’ curated insights would give the organization a chance to sort through insights and correct any of the myths identified above with a better degree of certainty.

This authority over insights will allow insight experts the chance to be there for stakeholders when they need new insights, or have customer-related queries, or even know that there is a place leave comments on contexts behind each conflicting data set uncovered. Understanding why one data set is conflicting with others might also reveal other new insights that inform decisions in teams across the organization. Conflicting does not mean it is not usable at all.

Creating Dedicated Insight Communication Channels

Lastly, all of this will mean nothing if stakeholders do not listen to insight experts in the first place. So, communicating on stakeholder level, platform and tone, is crucial. This might mean laying down new communication channels, creating and placing insight advocates in all teams across the organization, creating new resources such as toolkits and insight pipelines so stakeholders know where to go to access official insights. Once these plans are in action, stakeholders can use them to better understand their customers and gain more salience for strategy building and everyday execution.