This week’s guest blog comes from Ian Lewis, Director, Research Impact Consulting at Cambiar.  Ian was an MREB member when he led the Consumer Research & Insights team at Time Inc.

The 2011 Cambiar Future of Research Study looked ahead to 2020 — tapping the perspectives of both corporate researchers and senior supplier executives.  It was presented at the Annual CASRO Conference October 2011.

Are we facing transformation?

Six in ten of corporate research leaders expect major transformation of the industry by 2020, with this being evident by 2015.  Corporate researchers believe that the leading supplier in 2020 is just as likely to be Google, Facebook or a company from outside the industry as it is to be one of the “old guard”!  

Fast forward to 2020 – what does it look like? Read More »

From à la mode To à la carte

Burgundy is apparently the new black this season. Or, as the luxury brand Salvatore Ferragamo calls it, “ox blood”, a less romantic shade but equally pricey. While the priests of high fashion tend to set the agenda, in research it’s the other way around with business partners dictating what is à la mode every season/quarter. Not infrequently, by the time market research scrambled to get a piece of research done as ordered, business partners’ interest has already shifted somewhere else.

Market research is certainly not blind to this constant lag in relevance and subsequent lack of influence.  Our survey of market researchers this year shows they are keenly aware of the gap between how many people in each function could benefit from MR’s insight and how many actually do. Without going into details in the graph below, let me direct your attention to one data point: MR estimates that 89% of sales people could benefit from MR’s insight yet is currently only able to influence 49%. This means 40 reps in 100 are deprived of some valuable MR information which could potentially help them cross-sell, up-sell or build better customer relationships, think of that in terms of lost revenue.

Our most progressive members bridge these knowledge gaps by following an “à la carte” approach instead – building a menu of foundational knowledge topics aimed at providing smart answers to non-strategic requests while deploying its best people to tackle strategic ad hoc items. The process of constructing such a platform could be simpler than you think:

• Select topics for long term, cross-functional/ cross-geographical relevance. It’s worth spending time finding overarching themes and identifying drivers for future growth. Alticor does it through a “top down + bottom up” approach while GM decides on topics based on whether it’s slotted for “Comprehensive Learnings” or the one-page “Customer Pulse”.
• Let business partners choose how much they want to read. Alticor’s strategic reports runs about 15-25 pages, yet allows skimming by highlighting key points and graphics. Alpha Company’s Foundational Knowledge Platform is in the style of a wiki, which is both broad and deep, but consists of bite-sized nuggets of info which makes it easy to use.
• Piggyback on existing channels for insight distribution. Since most of the work was done in choosing, reorganizing and repositioning content, little investment is needed on the distribution side. Intranets and newsletters are voted the most popular distribution channels, but secured drives are another option if access needs to be restricted. 

For many years I looked to Bill Lumbergh as my “what not to say” as a manager tutor.  (I’m gonna need you to…)

But we now have an updated list of phrases that should never pass a manger’s lips thanks to workplace expert Liz Ryan.  She recently blogged the 10 things only bad managers say.  Among the most groan-inducing:

• I’ll take it under advisement
• Who gave you permission to do that?
• In these times, you’re lucky to have a job at all

Most of the quotes Liz lists seem to show an under-appreciation (to say the least) of what folks bring to the team and company.  And for Research departments statements like these not only make people feel terrible about their workplace, they also have a direct impact on the quality of recommendations created.

We’ve run the numbers, and we know that more insightful teams foster an environment that:

• Builds personal commitment to a clear insight mandate
• Reinforces the sharing of hypotheses and judgments, not just proven conclusions
• Leads staff to self-directed learning rather than prescribe staff activities
• Engineers opportunities to build career momentum despite limited department size and budget

MREB members, to see what your group can do to improve productivity across the board, check out our work on fostering an environment that unleashes researchers’ potential.   And if you’d like to measure the impact your department has on internal partners’ decisions, contact us about deploying the Business Impact Diagnostic.

We all know the importance of asking the right questions. (Sir Francis Bacon’s assessment that “a prudent question is one half of wisdom” was surely an underestimate.) So, how do you train your line partners to ask the types of great questions that lead to great research insights?

You need to teach them to imagine knowledge that doesn’t yet exist and to focus on these unknowns in the research-scoping process. In other words, encourage your business partners to start thinking about IWIKs. What is an IWIK? No, it’s not a misspelling of one of George Lucas’ furry creations. It stands for “I Wish I Knew,” and it’s a great way of making sure you’re asking the right research questions.  

Because better data and better synthesis are often inadequate for producing differentiated insights, line partners must focus their questions on key drivers of consumer behavior so that we as researchers can collect the right information capable of propelling significant business impact.

MREB Members, read about how Eli Lilly successfully used the IWIK process to educate their line and ensure that key unknowns were translated into questions with high potential for differentiation.

With the recession leading to businesses moving beyond the confines of the company headquarters, we see companies exploring new ways to retain and continue tapping into their pool of experts. A strategic decision gaining ground is to allow employees to work remotely. Increasingly, research teams too are moving from co-located (located in one office) teams to geographically dispersed teams.

Dispersed team structures can offer huge benefits — efficiency, cost savings, and the ability to choose team members with the best skills, regardless of their location. While this structure has its advantages, ask any manager (even the most experienced) and you’ll hear – “managing a dispersed research team presents huge challenges.” Think – distrust and lack of visibility, gap in knowledge-sharing and, the absence of a feeling of a “team”.

Despite tackling these challenges with tried-and-tested solutions which involve senior leadership support, increased managerial time and org-wide investments (e.g., technology and training), managers still struggle to get the manager-team member equation right in a dispersed set-up.

Why is it that companies fail in spite of their best efforts? MREB’s study on Managing Dispersed Research Teams shows that there are hidden “softer” pitfalls that are overlooked by most managers. The secret lies in knowing what signs to watch out for and working consistently to getting to the bottom of them.

Take a closer look at what effective managers of dispersed research teams do differently, and how they realign their management approach on three key areas:

1. Improve Employee Engagement
2. Provide Career Support
3. Foster Knowledge Sharing

In their upcoming book The Challenger Sale, our colleagues at the Sales Executive Council upend traditional sales wisdom.  Surveying over 6,000 sales reps across geographies and industries, they identified 5 rep profiles:

1. The Hard Worker
2. The Problem Solver
3. The Challenger
4. The Relationship Builder
5. The Lone Wolf

And they found that reps in only one of these profiles consistently outperforms the others—the Challenger.  Challengers use their deep understanding their customers’ business to push their thinking and control the sales conversation.  And how do they gain this deep understanding?  Cue Research!

In a recent HBR blog, my colleagues Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson outlined how reps at W.W, Grainger changed their sales approach, going from asking the customer what’s keeping them up at night to focusing on a series of proprietary insights that Grainger has developed about the customers that prompt them to think differently about how to manage spending.  All of the sudden, the sales reps are able to show customers what SHOULD be keeping them up at night (and how Grainger can help them solve the problem).

Research is a great partner to help embed insight into the sales process, and many of you may see an uptick in interest from your sales team once The Challenger Sale is released on November 10.  So, where to start? 

MREB members, check out our essay on A New Research-Sales Partnership to read how progressive research departments drive revenue performance.  Then see how Condé Nast’s research team designed a comprehensive program that delivers consistent and effective sales support.

It was a real delight to see so many of our members at the Corporate Researchers Conference in Chicago September 21-23.  As I reflect on the event and continue to speak with several of you who joined us and our co-sponsors there, I’m struck by how practical and actionable the discussion was. 

I’d love to hear from you what you took away from the sessions.  To kick off the discussion, let me share a few of mine:

• Finbarr O’Neill, formerly a senior auto industry executive, now CEO of J.D. Power and Associates, spoke powerfully of executives’ need for “good enough, actionable information.” Our latest quantitative research confirms how business decision-makers are willing to trade off speed for accuracy of information, especially when they see a decision as urgent.  Leading companies like Motorola Mobility are using existing knowledge to respond quickly to urgent business questions, significantly increasing Research’s impact.  Click here for more detail.  
• Ian Lewis, our friend and longtime member at Time Inc., spoke insightfully of the consequences of information proliferation.  First, business partners suffer from “information fatigue.”  Second, survey research has lost its edge as a uniquely valuable resource.  This has profound implications for the role and priorities of the market research function. 
• Chris Frank from American Express and Paul Magnone from Openet shared a lot of great thinking on how to focus business dialogue on the essentials – and avoid the feeling of Drinking from the Fire Hose.  One of my favorite nuggets was the value of focusing any research inquiry on “essential questions.”  One way to think of these is to ask yourself (and your business partner) what “I wish I knew,” the one fact you wish you had or phenomenon you wish you could explain.  We’ve seen this technique successfully implemented at a number of companies.  Click here for more detail. 
• Last but not least, our member Jen Miff from Motorola Mobility, paired with the Board’s own Martha Mathers, shared her team’s staffing model, which enables greater focus on synthesis.  If you missed the session, hear this replay of Jen’s discussion of this practice during an MREB webinar last year. 

I hope these reflections are also interesting to those of you who missed the conference.  Perhaps we’ll see you there next year!

I’ll admit it; I procrastinate.  Case in point: when I saw this article on procrastination on HBR’s site my “to-do” list went out the door as I thought, “Wow, I should really blog on this topic.”  So here I am typing away rather than compiling a list of folks who I need to remind to participate in a survey. 

And indeed, it seems like I’m falling right into a common trap: putting off things you don’t like to do.  After all, who wants to visit their survey software interface and spend an hour copy/pasting personalized survey links?  So for those of us who put off what we don’t want to or are unsure about how to do, a few tips from Amy Gallo, contributing editor of Harvard Business Review:

• Chunk your deadlines to achieve small wins in ongoing projects
• Involve co-workers by asking for folks to help or review your work, or even by starting an anti-procrastination check-in pact with fellow delayers
• Start a work diary to track your progress each day

How do you prioritize your task list to get the right things done at the right time?  For information on how leading organizations prioritize their own agendas, check out our Prioritization Resource Center.  And if could benefit from peers’ thoughts on a project you’re trying to get off the ground, post a question on our Primary Research Forum. 

On that note…it’s time to send some emails.  I’ll be in Vovici if anyone needs me.

By Aaron Field

Steve Jobs’ untimely passing sparked a spate of well-meaning and mostly laudatory remembrances.  The memorialists talked about many admirable traits (many very close to my geeky heart) but one thing has bothered me in the coverage.

Jobs was a bad role model for modern companies.

Consider a couple of quotes:

“We didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not.”

“For something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

In essence he advised against customer research – relying instead on personal foresight. And it worked beautifully for Apple, Pixar, and Apple again. One can only envy his seemingly effortless understanding of our needs before we knew them.

I envy him. But I would not copy him.

Most products designed for and by the technical staff are dismal failures. Remember the Segway? Steve Jobs among others said it would revolutionize the modern city. To be fair the Segway (and surplus WWII amphibious vehicles) are revolutionizing novelty tourism . (Segways vs. Ducks)

The truth is that Jobs was a once in a generation talent. Not so much for technical know-how but for his uncanny insight into us.

But executives who are not Steve Jobs (i.e. everyone) need researchers who are business partners. They want real insight that can impact the business (not data reporting!). And it really does work. Customer-focused companies outperform their competitors.

In the end we can honor Jobs’ genius by recognizing its uniqueness – not by copying it.

We all know that the business questions are best answered when we examine multiple data sources.  As researchers, we have always worked to improve our knowledge management so that we can use existing information to help inform strategic decisions.  Over the years, we accumulate more and more information, making our existing knowledge more and more valuable to our companies, if only we had a systematic way of truly knowing what we have already learned.

To capitalize on your existing knowledge, you need to capture it and dedicate specific resources to synthesize it:

• Capture Existing Knowledge-you must acquire access to and organize information available throughout the organization (not just the information that Research manages) so that it can be integrated with research sources as these are applied to business needs.
• Synthesize Data-unlock the latent potential of past studies and organizational knowledge by implementing a formal synthesis process and integrating synthesis into researcher responsibilities.

For additional information on the synthesis process, take a look at these resources:

• Don’t Be Right, Be Interesting
• Knowing What we Know: 4 Steps to Begin a Synthesis Project
• Connecting the Dots—Using Kindergarten Tools to Build Narrative Synthesis
• 4 Steps to Selling Synthesis Insights

And tune back in soon for more information on communicating and embedding your knowledge throughout the organization.