CMB’s Morgan Williams on Qual Research, Ops, and AI

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, Karen Lynch sits down with Morgan Williams, Director of Qualitative Insights and Strategy Operations at CMB and a 2026 GreenBook Future List honoree. Morgan shares her career journey from advertising and quantitative research into qualitative insights, and explains how curiosity, empathy, and a “can-do” mindset shaped her path.

The conversation explores the role of strategy operations in research, how qualitative teams can better support stakeholders, and why the future of insights may become more human, not less, as AI takes on more friction-filled tasks. Morgan also reflects on resilience, mentorship, and the joy that keeps researchers connected to the people behind the data. It’s a thoughtful, energizing discussion about leadership, research design, and what it means to truly help clients make better decisions.

Key Discussion Points:

• Morgan’s path from advertising and quantitative research into qualitative insights
• What strategy operations means in a research environment and why it matters
• How qualitative researchers can amplify the voice of the consumer for stakeholders
• Why “speed anxiety” and trust are universal across industries
• How AI can reduce bottlenecks and create more space for human judgment and insight

Resources & Links:

• CMB
• GreenBook Future List
• IIEX Events

You can reach out to Morgan Williams on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Morgan Williams for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I am your host today, Karen Lynch. I’m so happy to be here with all of you, and with our guest. You know, spoiler alert, today is another recording with one of our 2026 Greenbook Future List Honorees, so I’m really excited about that. But first and foremost, I’m excited to introduce you all to Morgan Williams. She is Director of Qualitative Insights and Strategy Operations at CMB. She’s, you know, got a background that spans marketing and some quantitative research, even though she’s presently standing firmly in qualitative research, which, if you know me at all, you know that’s something I’m excited about. Morgan has worked, you know, with brands like Chase and Citi and Fidelity—we’ll have to talk about finance there, right?—anyway, LinkedIn, Disney, Mattel, Nickelodeon, like, some really great brands. She also mentors undergraduates, she’s a guest lecturer at university. There’s so much in her bio that makes her, you know, a standout Future List Honoree as well. But we’re going to get into all that. First, I need to take a pause and say, Morgan, welcome to the Greenbook Podcast. 

Morgan: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.

Karen: And I’m so happy you were here as well. So, you know, I just gave everybody a lot about you. So, this is the point in the show where I say, why don’t you introduce yourself to the audience, you know, in a way that you see fit, so that they can get to know you a little bit better? 

Morgan: Absolutely. Yeah, so I’m Morgan. As Karen mentioned, there’s so much about me that I don’t often know where to begin when someone says, tell me about yourself, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. So, I’m multifaceted, right? That’s how I look at myself, how I move through my days. Yes, by day, I am a Qualitative Insights and Strategy Operations Director, but I also I spend a lot of my free time outside in the world, whether that’s in the community, mentoring, lecturing, as you heard from Karen, it could be fishing, it could be birding, maybe gardening, right? A lot of who I am and how I show up in my day comes from the world around me and not necessarily the work I do at the desk. So, beyond what I do in my day and some of those things, I really am someone who’s just happy to show up and have conversations with people. And I think that’s what makes opportunities like this so great, is getting to not just say, “Hello, nice to meet you and I am Morgan,” but really, over the course of discussion, get to explain and show a bit about that.

Karen: I love that. Thank you so much. And you know, I was just—I’m a mentor myself, and I was just reading about, kind of, a question to kick off a mentorship session, for example, that is, you know, quite frankly, point blank, asking, “How are you showing up today?” And when we first got on the call, and, you know, we’re doing our thing, I’m like, that’s actually a perfect situation where we’re kind of like saying, “How are you showing up today?” So, I asked you, Morgan, how are you showing up today for this podcast?

Morgan: laugh]. You know, I am so glad it’s a beautiful, sunny Friday. I’m in Southeast Georgia. It’s just one of those days that feels really nice and it makes you feel good, so I’m showing up just full of positive energy, excitement and just also glad it’s the weekend [laugh].

Karen: [laugh]. For real, and I am going to literally, like, reach through the airwaves and pull all of that energy in because I’m in the northeast and it is not that warm and not that sunny. But you know, so appreciative of your energy because it’s exactly what I needed today on a Friday afternoon when we’re recording this. So, thank you. Now, let’s get into some specifics because obviously I want to talk about qualitative insights, and I want to talk about strategy and strategy ops and what that means, but really, I’m curious as to how you even found yourself in this space. So, tell us a little bit about your career journey, kind of how you got to where you are right now?

Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it’s such a fun story to tell because it’s really—I don’t know, and we hear that a lot, right, in market research: “I didn’t know I wanted to be in this career.” And the same applies to me. Nowadays, some of the students I mentor actually know about consumer insights, they know it’s a career path. Seven, ten years ago, when I was graduating, I didn’t. And the way that I found myself here, really the inclination, I guess, towards research started in college. I was really struggling with SPSS and statistics, and why do we need to know this, right? And there was a part about qualitative, and it was an optional add-on to an assignment I’d been given. And I went on a hike with these people that we were studying and interviewing and surveying, and I went above and beyond in that respect and I got kudos. It was an optional thing, but it really showed me that I might not understand this right now, but research has a place for me. I kind of set that down. I said, I want to be in the ad world. I want to be part of what you see getting made creatively on TV and media. And I went and worked in the advertising world for a short stint. I was doing social media strategy. And I kept asking myself, as I’m preparing these metric reports, like, what are we doing with this, right? Like, what’s the point of tracking this data? Who is the decision maker? Or on the flip side, right, if we’re getting data to build a creative brief around, whose data is this? What does it mean? And so, I started doing informational interviews, and I found market research. I asked people, “What do you like about this world? What do you not like about this world?” And accidentally moderated a ton of people in the process, not knowing that. I started my career in market research, in the quantitative side of things, and it was fun, but I could tell it wasn’t playing into my strengths, and that’s really what led me to qual and what I feel is the start of my true market research career, right? I had a lot of boots-on-the-ground training early career in quant, but where I felt I am a researcher properly, and that I have a career being built in this space, was when I found qualitative research and I started to project manage and understand what that looked like. I went to RIVA, I leveled up my game, and then it just felt natural. And from there, that’s how I’ve landed in the role I am today. So, there’s a lot of micro-stories within that. I could tell you about the startup that I did, I could tell you about the side jobs where I was hustling and driving for Lyft and bartending and all those things, but the story of my career is just saying, “I don’t know what else is there,” and just being curious enough to pursue that question.

Karen: I love that. You are, interestingly, I’m reminded—I was going to say you are not the first person to tell me that they conducted informational interviews to help them find their career path. You are the second. So, there was a Future List Honoree, and I’m not going to remember who they were, but I think it was either 2025 cohort or 2024 cohort where they said something similar. They talked to, you know, a dozen or so people when they were in their final year of the program, just to start to say, “What do you see? What do you like about the different things?” And they were informational interviews to explore the playing field and discovered that actually what she liked was the process of doing that, was of conducting these interviews. And so, it’s interesting to me because maybe there’s more people that do you know informational interviews to find their path, but they are pointed to a path, whereas there is a qualitative researcher who’s like, “Actually, what I like is the process I just underwent.” Fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Morgan: Of course, of course.

Karen: So, I want to ask you this. Now, you know, the reason you’re really here and even on our radar is because you were named to the cohort of Future List Honorees. You know, it’s a very specific process. I’ve been saying it, you know, on some of these other recordings, where people are nominated, and then the nominees fill out an application, and then the applicants are put before a panel of judges, and the judges do scoring, and then, you know, the cream of the crop does rise to the top of this list. And it is, you know, repeated every year that the people who end up on it, I’m like, “Yep, that person belongs here.” So congratulations, again. Talk to me about what it felt like, A, to find out you were nominated because that’s sort of step one is, you’re like, I was nominated, and then, of course, step B is, and I was chosen.

Morgan: [laugh]. Well, I was nominated, almost got missed as a phishing attempt [laugh] because we’re so vigilant nowadays about what’s coming through our inbox that I almost missed it. And I’m so grateful to the person who nominated me to say, like, “Did you get this? It’s real. It’s a thing.” And once I clicked in and I understood what was being asked of me, elated is the word, right? Excited. And probably not for the reasons people think. Obviously the first impressions, excitement, elation, but I had just gone through some of the most challenging years of my life. I’ve not been feeling like I’ve been showing up the way that a Future List Honoree might. I’m struggling with the loss of my dad unexpectedly about a year-and-a-half ago and since then, I’ve been really trying to figure out, am I doing a good job? I don’t feel like I’m doing as good as I once did. Where’s that motivation? Where’s how I showed up? And yet, despite that, I know that I had buckled in and pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and I got to show up for my team. I got to show up for our clients and myself, honestly. And then this news came. I had taken a week off at the start of the year to just reset. I had a rough year last year and I took the first week of 2026 to pause, to just reset. I did a lot of fishing, a lot of birding, a lot of hands in the dirt. And the news came right at the end of that week of really grounding myself, resetting my priorities. And so, it wasn’t just about being nominated and feeling like, okay, there’s a belief in me that isn’t here right now and in myself, but around me. I have that support, that recognition that a career isn’t built in a good year or a bad year, a career is built of making good, strategic decisions for myself, for my team, for others, and showing up for my community, even when I might not feel that I know how to do that. And so ultimately, when I got selected, I just—I was driving, I had to pull over. And I was just, like, I called everyone I knew. I called my mom, I called my husband. I was just so excited and unexpected. So, it was one thing to be nominated, and the giddiness of just someone seeing me, even when I wasn’t able to see myself in those moments, but then to be selected, wow, my little corner of research just feels so much bigger. So, I’m just, I’m so excited.

Karen: Thank you first of all for sharing that story. It probably will stay with me for a long time that you were so candid about this. I am sorry for the year that you had, I am sorry for your loss, but I’m so grateful that you shared that. I think a lot of people, when they have this experience, they do what you did, which is, you know this, I don’t know that I’m worthy of this right now. And it is everybody that gets on this list, I can tell you are worthy of this, you have done some amazing work, and you have amazing skills and an amazing mindset that had you stand out, first of all, to the person that nominated you, and second of all, to the judges themselves. You know, and I think part of that—and actually I was going to ask you about this—is part of this is your attitude, your spirit, you bring it. You can feel it on this, you know, in this conversation that we’re having. But you have this can-do attitude, this, I’m going to do this, or this optimism, or this something else, this energy towards making something happen that seems unmistakable to me. So, tell us more about where that came from for you.

Morgan: Yeah, you know, I’ve heard it called a can-do attitude, I’ve heard it called a sunny mindset, I’ve heard myself called a ray of sunshine, if I dare go that far. But you know, it’s something inside of me that I grew up with. You know, my parents modeled this behavior. My mom and dad own a local business here, and they were known as the MacGyvers. That’s not our last name. That’s not anything to do with what we—we’re not handymen by trade, but that mentality is how I grew up, right? Like, there is a solution. How might we find it? And along the way, how might we bring people together, create alignment, and create some joy, to be honest, right? Like, the thing that I show up with, can-do attitude, sure. It’s really just wanting [laugh] to make a connection, wanting to create real, kind of, I’m looking at you’re looking at me, we’re having a dialog. It’s not a person on a two-line and an email that you need to send out, right? Like really understanding that we’re all here for a reason, and making that worthwhile. And an easy way to do that is to smile, to care about people, and honestly just say, “How are we going to get this?” And, you know, leading a team really pushed that can-do attitude, especially on the heels of the story I was sharing about losing my dad. I was like, I have a team behind me, and I can’t even get out of bed today, right? Like, those moments are real. And I come back to that attitude because it’s not that hard, right? So, an ethos I have in myself is, is it less than five minutes? Give it a chance, right? And so, that mentality of, can I reset? Can I show up for others, even if I need to take a five minute beat, that’s why we all show up, or hope to show up, right? No one wants to talk to someone grumpy, and that’s really simplified and boiled down, but it’s true, right? If you smile, if you make an intention to show up, you often receive that energy and more.

Karen: Love this so much. First of all, here’s what I can relate to. I believe—we share a belief that there’s a solution to every problem. You just have to find it. Like, I just don’t believe there’s such a thing as an unsolvable problem. No, there are probably many possible solutions; you just have to find them and then figure out how to make it happen. So, you know, ‘how to’ is, like, my favorite stem starter, right? How do we do this? How might we do this? You know, like, there’s a way. I know there’s a way. To a fault, some in my family might say it’s like, “Mom, you know, stop it.” Anyway, so I share that with you, but also, you know, when you say, like, take a beat, right now, especially, we are particularly busy here at Greenbook as we gear up to our busiest event season, and the idea of taking a beat, the idea of saying, I need to mindfully switch gears. I need to mindfully say, I need to go get water, right, before I go to my next meeting, I need to, you know, I need to just go step outside, which I’m not really doing right now because it’s too damn cold, but you know, I need to step outside, I need to sit and pet my dog, I need to, you know, visit with my cat, something to kind of be back into the center of who I am so that I can show up better on the next call, it’s critical that we do, that. We can’t just keep running and doing and running and doing without taking a minute to just, who am I again? Oh, that’s right, I’m somebody who shows up this way. So, I love this conversation [laugh]. 

Morgan: Yeah, especially when you think about the virtual world, right? Like it’s so easy—and I’m guilty of it, I think we all are—booked calendar. I’m booked from 8:30 to 5:30. And it’s almost like this adrenaline, right? You communicate that to other people. Your spouse probably knows that that’s your schedule, your parents, your friends, right? Like, we bleed this unnecessary unconscious anxiety around what we have to do. And yes, we have to do it. That’s our job, and we all have to show up for our job, but the moments of grounding taking a beat. We talked about, before the podcast starts, I stand at my standing desk because there’s more fluidity physically to step away when I need it, to grab that water instead of saying, “I should have done that three calls ago.” So, it’s the little things that become easy.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. By the way, putting it out there to the world that is the habit that I need to change. By the time this episode airs, which I think is in several weeks, I’m going to have more of a standing desk habit. I’m going to get there. Going to get there. You’re inspiring me [laugh].

Morgan: I’ll follow up with you. I’ll hold you accountable.

Karen: I know, right? Oh, no. You feel like you would be a perfect accountability partner for that. So, I am down with that. All right, Morgan, so here’s what I want to do. I want to talk a little bit about something else that you talk about in your work, which is kind of, you know—and many, many researchers feel the same—but you know, our job is to amplify the voice of the customer or the consumer or the, you know, the person that we’re representing in insights, you know, to somebody further up for a stakeholder. So, tell me what that looks like for you because stakeholders often show up with their own point of view, and they often think, I know this person already, or I know this segment already, or this is not a new persona for us. So, what’s your philosophy around that representation? 

Morgan: Yeah, you know, I think that especially in qual—it’s true of all research, and the world of quant versus qual versus something else, or some sort of blended method, is collapsing, but there’s something really special—and I know you know this, Karen—about qual’s ability to really show you the voice of the consumer. So, in these situations, and especially when stakeholders do have a perspective, I don’t try to argue that, right? I might lend some hypotheses based on the larger world around them, but really, I use the voice of the consumer, and our team uses the voice of the consumer to expand on that perspective, maybe challenge those notions through the hypothesis that we planted early in the research design. But the best way to do this lately that I’ve seen is the voice of the consumer, literally, whether it’s an audio note in a report, whether it’s a sizzle reel, that it’s easier to get five minutes of C-suite time than 30 minutes to present a deck, right? So actually, showing and telling is a lot simpler than we often think it is, and the distance is rarely between the data and the stakeholder; it’s the way in which we interpret that and making sure that it’s simple, that it’s clear. It really shouldn’t feel like you’re reading an academic report. It should feel like I now have three bullets I can take into a meeting tomorrow. And that’s really what we’re trying to do, is if, let’s say, Becky, our participant number one from focus group number one of 12 said something really compelling. I’m going to reiterate Becky’s points as a verbal quote when I present. And then now they remember Becky and they have that story.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think all too often we might say, you know, kind of, “33-year-old female,” you know, but I love just giving her a name also because now I already, in my head, I’m like, oh, Becky. Tell me more about Becky [laugh].

Morgan: Exactly. And that’s exactly the power of qual is, if they sit backroom, even better because now you can say, “Oh, I remember Becky. She’s that mom of three who lives in Florida, and this is her si”—it humanizes that person. So, the voice of the consumer is an actual consumer, in a lot of cases, that we sanitize. And we think that’s helping. It’s protecting their anonymity, right? That’s important, but a first name could be anyone, and it lends to that humanizing factor.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Well, I love that. Thank you. So, I already have a feel for kind of who you are as a qualitative researcher, but I do want to, kind of, talk about, like, the other part of your job, right, so this strategy part of your job. So, let’s go there and kind of talk to me about that duality, right? You have qualitative insights, you have strategy, and not just strategy, but strategy operations. Talk to us. What does that really mean for those of us who are trying to understand it?

Morgan: You know what’s really awesome is that I work somewhere, that this job title exists for me because of my unique skill sets and we were able to identify a really nice crossroads where I can use strategy and insights, right? I came from a researcher-moderator-project manager background. I have those skills to lend a hand. But also strategy operations, that operations piece is really where I wanted to be in my career. Like I mentioned earlier, I didn’t mean to become a qual researcher. It very much is just who I am really, right? Like, qual is a personality type. And I digress for a moment, but you may know from RIVA, the ‘Universal Positive Regard’ tactic is really just how I live my life, as I’m sure you figured out. But what that means is I found a position where I said, I want to try something new. I want to try something—at first that was qual, then it was moderating, then it was, I have an MBA and I know how to do this operation stuff. Can I try? And I was given permission to. And so, long answer to what really is operations is, systems that keep people moving. How can we staff? How do we strategically scope and design and manage the work that we do efficiently so that our people can show up their best selves, is really at the heart of it?

Karen: Yeah, and you know, it’s funny because we talk a lot about, kind of, operations in—we have a small bus—Greenbook is a small business, we talk a lot about kind of operations and process and procedure. And I think, like, what does that actually, kind of, look like when it comes to, you know, like, the qualitative aspect of the research business? Or is it just across all your research? You know, are you doing it just for the other qualitative researchers or are you looking company-wide? Like, talk to us about, you know, the details there?

Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. I will say operations generally is defined as process and procedure and rules and compliance and the blending of all those things. And that’s how I came into operations, learning, right? I know qual deeply, but I didn’t know the business of operations. So, I learned that just enough to be dangerous and ask why, and maybe break some rules, so I’m sorry to my fellow ops team who’s listening. I currently only do the qual operations, but it’s because there’s a unique need in qual. If you’ve ever done qual, sat in on qual, you know that there’s a pace and a lot of overlapping little things. And that operational need looks very different than, say, a linear segmentation project. And so, for me, ops is the infrastructure that supports a project or quietly kills the momentum that we have to support more projects. And so, my goal in ops is really to empower people, right? Like, to me, operations functionally as staffing, it’s profitability, it’s team management, it’s capacity and utilizations and things that are very typical in an ops space. But what’s different for me is I leverage those things as tools for empowerment and decision making. I bring the team in the same way I was brought in. I didn’t know about this world. I was project staff. Let me just execute. But understanding what it means to operate a market insights consultancy is very different than being staffed on the end work that we do. And bringing our team along earlier—talking about just the qualitative team—allowing them to see the pipeline, allowing them more visibility into what I’m asking of them on a specific scope, across project scopes has made them feel that they have that seat at the table, that they are in more control or empowered of what’s on their plate. And to me, that’s what strategy operations is. It’s really about blending those two things so that, yes, there’s systems and frameworks in place, but not so much so that we take away what feels like the ability to show up yourself and show up with confidence that you know what’s going on in the world around you.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. I love that so much, and I hope that it’s inspiring to somebody out there who might, you know, be, kind of, a qualitative researcher on a team, and be kind of looking, maybe it’s a team that’s looking to grow, and they don’t think that they have the chops for that. You know, when I was a full-time qualitative researcher for, you know, like two decades—three decades? A lot of decades—and I took a position at a company that wanted me to, kind of, grow a qualitative department at the organization. Because I knew how to do so much because, when I had first gotten my degree, I started as, you know, a field director. I was somebody who wrote screeners and I was somebody who coordinated, you know, like, the facility details. I did more confirmation letters than, like—to this day, I’m like, if I write another confirmation letter—like, I knew how to do all of these things. And then, of course, I brought them into my own business. So, I was then doing some other business things, right? And then when it came time to take this position, doing this, kind of, departmentally, I was like, I have all those skills, right? I learned them from the ground up when I was learning how to be a qualitative researcher, then I was self-employed, and now I just have to, like, multiply it a little bit and look at it holistically across the department. And it was a great, kind of, career path for me, right, to take it into not just executing qual, but then having that higher operational view. So, I hope it’s inspirational to other people. Do you have any, like, pro tips for people who might want to be going there next?

Morgan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first, raise your hand and ask. I don’t think that operations is the shiny thing people are thinking about, right? Like when you’re in a moderator role, at least for me, it was very much about being on the road and talking with clients, being backroom. And I loved that, but for me, there was a nagging feeling of, but I have a skill; I haven’t written an Excel formula in five months. Why? I have these things that are going stale. I want to use them. And so, at first, it started by just helping, right? Raising my hand to say, can I help staff? Like, I want to understand that process? Okay, can I help with capacity? Okay, I’m staffing. I should have a lens in this. And so, it really was, just ask. If you have an interest, operations is such a welcoming space, I've learned both internally at the company, working cross-functionally with other business units at CMB, but also the broader operations space. It’s a really welcoming place. Something that I would give as advice to anyone interested is this analogy I’ve used a few times in the classes that I adjunct for, which is a chess tournament. To me, strategy operations is like going to a chess tournament where there’s a lot of people coordinating a lot of decisions in front of them, but what makes it strategy ops, instead of just a traditional operational structure—the decision in front of you—is, let’s say those spectators at the tournament are now your stakeholders, and those stakeholders can walk by to any of those boards and move pieces around. That’s client timelines, that’s cancelations, that might be scope additions. It could be anything, but knowing that you’re not just looking at the decision in front of you and looking across the board and others’ boards, if that inspires you, if that’s exciting as a problem to solve, then you’ll probably like strategy ops. 

Karen: Yeah, that’s really cool. And I love that analogy. And of course, in my head, I just took a little mental vacation to, you know, to a park where people are playing chess at public tables, and I am so right there with you. Thank you. I love a good metaphor [laugh]. 

Morgan: [laugh]. It sticks out though, because we all know what, you know, the seriousness of a chess tournament. And I think there’s something to that where business operations is quite serious. Research, for us in it, is quite fun. And so, to me, it’s like recognizing those two spaces, but in a place where also the third dimension is stakeholders. And that’s rarely accounted for in modern ops—or in traditional ops I should say. 

Karen: Yeah, and I think say one more thing in support of that, there’s, there is such a need for—this is probably provocative on some level—but there’s such a need for empathy for the stakeholders and what they’re going through, and the mental decision making and pressure and in all of the things that they’re going through that we are in service to as researchers. I think that there’s so many people that kind of focus on having empathy for the customer or the consumer, and I am a hundred percent on board for that, but I think it comes at a cost to empathy for our stakeholders and what they’re going through and the complexity of the decision making. So anyway, I imagine that’s part of where you come in, right, is you’re like, “Yes, I also am feeling for these other people.” [laugh].

Morgan: Yeah, and how to make their—you know, if the sales team is our stakeholder group, how do we make their lives easier, right? We need them to go sell things. What can I do in operations to bridge what happens in the handoff and be a better partner in that way?

Karen: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So, another skill set you have, and here now I’m just singing your praises, but—and this is like, sort of, from the CMB website because, you know, I do some research—that you’re well versed in traditional and digital methodologies, right? So, you know, thinking about, you know, again, your repertoire of all these different methodologies, and thinking about, you know, the stakeholders that you are in service to, like, what are some of your thoughts around choosing the right message or the right method for a certain objective, or, you know, a kind of aligning on, you know, something, how do you choose from your toolkit? Like, what are some thoughts that you have around how you do what you do?

Morgan: Yeah. You know, methodology selection and design is quite difficult nowadays, especially like we talked about the blended where is it quant? Is it qual? Is it qual-y quant? Like, what is this ambiguous business decision? And so, I ground myself in what are we trying to learn? I had a mentor years and years ago who said, “So, what?”—in fact, they said, “So, f-ing what”—but it really drove home to me the point, like, that is what the C-suite is after, right? Like, so what? Why do I care? Why did I pay for this? And I think when we think about method design—especially so guilty of it myself, I’m sure others are—we hear the client say, let’s do some interviews to understand. And so, we scope interviews. But do we need to, right? And so, to your question about what makes the methodology, it’s kind of a blend of what we hear and what we know. Sometimes they say, “We’re doing interviews.” Okay, we’ll scope some interviews. And then sometimes it’s, “Actually, it would be really helpful, instead of interviews, to maybe do triads. Let’s, you know, make some healthy discomfort in that room and get that tension up in a way that we can really uncover layer two and three of the onion.” But methodology selection, I think, in this current world and the future places that we’re all going in the insights industry is, it should be fluid. Sell the business decision scope at large—who’s your audience? What are their needs?—and then through the design process, how might we determine the best course of action, whether it’s combinations of interviews and maybe a survey, maybe it’s a multi-method qual. But I think because I started my career in qual in 2020, I’m very partial to creative ways to solve for any business need with qual, unless you really need statistical validation. So, I’ll get off my high horse there. But I do think there’s a qual method for almost all business problems. 

Karen: I, I, I—you’re probably not going to get an argument for me on that one. But what also, you know, just struck me as you’re talking about, you know, the questions you might have for stakeholders before you go about the work you’re doing feels a little full circle because you almost sounded like you were doing, like, an informational interview in your brain of your stakeholder to really understand them. Isn’t that a wonderful approach for a researcher to take, is my very first interview on this initiative is to interview you, the stakeholder, and to really understand you? Anyway, that’s just something that I made up, and if I had my own business, I would be, like, step one, informational interview with—guess what?—you. So, I would be building that into my operations. But here I am not doing that anymore.

Morgan: What’s beautiful about that is the qualitative skill set moderators active listening, right? What I hear as a trained moderator, wholly outside of the research function at this point, for the most part, if I’m sitting on a scoping call or a kickoff call, I hear things that they may not even realize they just closed and we bring it back on the guide walk through. “Hey, we heard you say you need this need; we’ve addressed it in this section. Oh, you didn’t think we heard you, right?” Like, those moments make a big impact because it’s about that part—the grounding of, what are we trying to achieve? So, what? Why are we here?

Karen: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that. So, now I want to ask you because, again, I teased everybody with some of the big brands that you’ve worked on, and, you know, I don’t say those lightly because, like, as I said, like, you’ve worked in finance and entertainment, and also, by the way, like, tech platforms. So, there’s this part of me that’s, like, radically different, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker, right, for anybody who works in one category. What are the patterns you’ve noticed in different industries and how they apply to your work?

Morgan: Oh, man. I mean, I think the first is the speed anxiety is real for every industry, right? Speed to insight, speed to decision making, speed to whatever. It’s universal. That is the world that I came into, right? Like I said, qualitative research, for me, started in 2020 and so I’ve always noticed that speed anxiety. And to me, that’s a common theme for a generalist like myself, who may have not gone into specialization that actually created specialization in the process. Because they’re nervous because they’re anxious, you’re immediately invested. I want to solve your problem. I want to help you. How do I do this? And so, you know, the speed, the internal alignment is always a struggle, no matter the industry. There’s so many stakeholders that we balance on our side that they’re balancing. Gosh, add an agency to that, and you’ve got a party. So, there’s just a lot to factor in, regardless of the industry. Some are more laissez faire than others, but the tension of stakeholders is always there. And then there’s also trust, right? Like, it doesn’t matter what industry you work in, whether you’re talking about consumer trust, insights trust, decision-making trust, partner trust, trust is there, and I think that theme and that pattern is so important for us as researchers to remember because that’s why—again, I was saying earlier, it’s not about just working with someone because we have a problem to solve and we are all paid to do that. Great, but it’s really showing up for that person. I see you, I hear you, I want to help you. And that is universal of good partners, regardless of the industry where you play.

Karen: So, I want to go back to something you said, which is a phrase I haven’t heard before, and my brain would like to noodle on it for a while with you, which is speed anxiety. So, I mean, it feels like an intuitive thing to say, but yet, you know, as qualitative researchers, we can’t let the thing that seems intuitive just hang out there, right? We need to say, “Tell me more about speed anxiety.”

Morgan: Wow, speed anxiety, it could be, “I need an RFP later,” right? “Just email me some specs. We got to get going.” It could be, “I need a decision for a meeting next week.” Or it could be, “We are rolling out a creative launch in two months, and I have a multi-method need.” Like, it looks different depending on the scope, of course, but the macro view of speed anxiety is what we all feel in our day-to-day: deadlines, competing pressures, we talked about the adrenaline of a busy calendar and what that feels like to us. Imagine what it feels like client side when they’re actually rolling out decisions, rolling out strategy. We’re just helping them get there, right? So, that anxiety, it looks big and small, but it’s rare that I don’t see it, and that’s why I say it’s universal. Everyone has priorities, and we’re all competing with those priorities internally, externally, everything. And the anxiety really comes from, can I trust you? Can you help me? And that’s the other macro themes I talked about.

Karen: It’s interesting. The can you help me part is really interesting because it’s not overtly said in that way, right? And I think that I used to say there was a mantra that a friend of mine, you know, who was also a qualitative researcher, you know, used to say all the time, like, her job is to make, you know, her clients look good to their bosses, right? So, client-side researcher, I want them to look good for their bosses. We’ve moved so far beyond that, right, because this is not about looking good. It’s about really helping them to decide something, or helping them to recommend something or helping them to, you know, like, not just keep their jobs, but like, nail their jobs, you know, show their expertise. Like, it’s a big deal to help them. “Can you help me?” is a very powerful way of looking at your relationship with your clients.

Morgan: I mean, it’s exactly that, right? If you do all of this work to make the sales, design the research, execute, and it’s a PDF that sits in someone’s folder, it’s an archive, it’s not an insight, right? Like that happens, and that’s okay. Sometimes we have those needs where we just need to record this data, but when someone says—most often—“Can you help me?” There’s a meeting, there’s a decision at the end of that. And back to what I was saying earlier is, you really have to be in tune. And it’s okay, I want the future of and current state of our researchers in this industry to know it’s okay to have an opinion, and that’s what we’re paid for, right? It’s one thing to present insights—or present findings rather, right—like, “Here’s a summary of findings. Go help yourself.” But then here are some compelling insights to take into your meeting next week. That’s how we help you.

Karen: Yeah, that’s great. Yes, I love that. Thank you so much. So, because you have this ability to, kind of, project out there what you think the future would be, that’s how that’s always how we wrap anyway we start talking about the future, you know, as if we all have a crystal ball. But I’d love to get some thoughts. But I want to ask you a couple things because you do have this ops lens. Like, when you think about insights teams, how do the insights teams in the future operate?

Morgan: Oh, my gosh. Well, they don’t look like they do today, and I’m still forming in my brain, what that means as someone who runs the qualitative operations. Like, what does that break for me? What does that create for me? But in the future of insights, it looks like a bunch of really smart people making collective decisions in research, right? And so, for me, operationally, that looks like probably breaking down the structures and frameworks that exist today and rethinking that to say, why do we do that? What serves our? What are our needs? We know time anxiety. We know trust is a factor. Here time means we need speed. We need fungibility. Trust means we need account relationships and deepening that right? So, there’s a lot of the macro that we talked about through this discussion that is the future, we just haven’t yet really figured out what that looks like. But I can tell you it’s fungible, I can tell you that it’s smart and it’s opinionated.

Karen: I love that. I love that. So, then laddering up to the future of the insights industry, right? So, that might be what it looks like within an organization. How do you see it looking in the industry with an industry lens? What’s the future of insights?

Morgan: Well, as your Friday afternoon fortune teller, I will say it looks more human to me. It looks, like, more human and less AI. And not in the way that we’re talking about today, right? AI is very important. It helps speed to insights, it helps synthesis and recruit speed, and so many things that we all know and talk about, and actually, we’ll talk a lot more about it at IIEX, if you’ve looked at the agenda, but something, for me, the future isn’t yet talking about, is the way in which AI will allow us to make research more human again. We clear up the friction. We clear up the bottlenecks that have historically caused a six-week timeline instead of a three-week timeline, so that we don’t hide behind the synthesis. We have more time now to say the ‘so what?’ To say ‘what matters?’ And that, I think, is really going to be the future. You can’t hide behind GPT output anymore. People are smart. You can read right through when you see it, so now it’s about having an opinion, having a seat at the table, building that trust, and doing so at speed.

Karen: Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much. Because it is, in my opinion, you’re not negating the value of, you know, faster synthesis, which anybody who’s ever been in qualitative knows that was a problem for us, too. Like we didn’t like how long it took for us to synthesize all of our qualitative da—

Morgan: You don’t like reading 20 transcripts? Really? 

Karen: We didn’t like that [laugh]. There’s not one of us that loves sitting with transcripts. And no amount of color coding was going to help. There’s no amount. I’m sorry.

Morgan: I loved when you could control-find, though. That was our first AI [laugh].

Karen: Yes, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, so I love that you’re not negating the value of where there can be an AI assist, right? Like, we can get some help to the work that we do and the value that we add to it, but the real thinking, the real human perspective, is what is going to help move the needle for some of these people that we can help in the field. So—

Morgan: Yeah, and I—

Karen: I love this conversation.

Morgan: I know. I’m so glad that we’ve just kind of pulled the different threads as we’ve gone on. And you know, one thing I’ll add to what you’re saying is AI usage today is the Wild West in a lot of ways. We’re starting to build the new frontier, but we’re still experimenting. Fast-failing should happen. That’s okay. We’re researchers, experimentation is healthy. And—talking about taking a beat earlier—something I’ve been trying to do a lot of is not just thinking where it can help me get faster, get smarter, whatever. Also, do I need it? Right? That responsible AI usage piece is something new for me that I have learned to address within myself and also raise that question to others is, “Do I need to be bored for five minutes? Do I need to go touch grass and think about this problem or is AI truly going to help me do it faster, smarter, in a way that I may not be able to do in XYZ time?”

Karen: Yeah. What’s interesting is, I, just yesterday, was putting something into AI, and I knew it would take a while because I wanted it to do the thinking. So, you know, I selected the, like, ‘please do your serious thinking on this one,’ and that—I took my beat. I’m like, let me give you this task. I’m going to go take a beat. So, it actually freed me up to have a very human moment, which was again, downstairs, you know, like, with my animals, which I do every now and then for the—

Morgan: That’s awesome.

Karen: For all the benefits of having pets, like, yesterday, I needed one. But I put it to work first. I’m like, “Here you work on this because you don’t need a human moment.”

Morgan: And that’s the flip side of the coin. Exactly. It works both ways. Is it something I need to creatively execute and think through or can this thing do it so I can go love all my puppies [laugh].

Karen: [laugh]. Love on my puppies. Exactly, exactly. Oh, my goodness, Morgan, I could talk to you all day. Is there anything that, you know, we didn’t get to that you really hoped that we’d cover today?

Morgan: I know it sounds cliché, but because we’ve talked about it a few times, is something we don’t talk about enough in research is the joy, right? Like, when we have one on one conversations, it is so common to hear from other researchers, other insights professionals, “We’re lucky. We’re so lucky that this is the career path and the thing that we get to do and brag about doing to our family, friends, colleagues, whatever.” But in this day and age, everything’s getting automated, everything’s virtual, so you don’t see the amount of in person or virtual group discussions you once did. And so, a reminder to everyone is just find that joy and find that universal positive regard, or whatever that looks like for you and how you show up because you’ll get it back tenfold. 

Karen: You know, and just to build on it, too, we feel that when we’ve moderated, right? A hundred percent there are some interviews that you’ve done that will stay with you for your life, right? Some that, you know, there are moments, I mean, some, I could go back to moments that will stay with me from the ’90s, which is ridiculous when you think about it. But also, I think there’s a privilege of being in the back room and watching them, which I also had the opportunity to do when I had people on a team that did the qualitative and I was backrooming, I was like, “I’m backroom now,” you know? And thinking, I won’t feel as much joy since I’m not having the moments with people, but being, like, an observer to the moments, that was also powerful. And I understood what the clients, what they have the potential to feel like in the back if they are truly able to observe some of these moments. So, it’s a gift that you have as a researcher, but also a gift you give to your teams, to your, you know, brand-side colleagues, who may not see the vulnerability of a consumer, who may not have a mandate that they all have to, you know, have a consumer touchpoint in their jobs. But it is really a gift to see human moments in the work that we do and then represent them to the world. It really is.

Morgan: Absolutely, absolutely.

Karen: Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for joining me today [laugh].

Morgan: Of course, thank you for having me today. It’s such a pleasure to—you know, it’s funny. This is my very first podcast, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but not surprisingly, it felt pretty much like a great conversation, and that’s exactly what I am so glad that we had today and that you made time and space for this as well.

Karen: Well, thank you. And congratulations again for being a Future List Honoree. I look forward to seeing you at an event this year, so I’m quite excited about that.

Morgan: Yes. More to come as I figure out exactly what that all looks like. But I’m so excited and very much driving everyone crazy in my personal life, trying to figure out exactly what that speaking spot will look like, so I’m excited to share it with you all.

Karen: Yeah. Well, you are a star, and I know it will be great. 

Morgan: [laugh]. Thank you.

Karen: That’s our show for today, friends. Thank you so much to Big Bad Audio who, you know, cleans us up and makes us look good. To the broader audience, I appreciate you. Thank you to, you know, Brigette, who works tirelessly to produce the show and the Greenbook team for promoting it. But also thank you to you, our listeners, for showing up. We appreciate you. I certainly value you. And again, to Morgan, thank you so much for joining me.

Morgan: Absolutely. Thank you.

Karen: Bye-bye, all. We’ll see you next time on the Greenbook Podcast.