Patience may be a virtue, but it’s one rarely seen in the corporate world. Executives have always wanted to have the information they need right when they realize they need it – and if they could have it before then, even better!

Exacerbating this desire for instant information are some recent developments.  First, executives report that the overall increased pace of change creating more truly urgent decisions – and it’s not the case that urgent decisions are less important than non-urgent ones.

Second, information seems to be everywhere. Need advice or information? You can ask Google, or maybe poll your friends with a Facebook status update. Now, you may wince to hear these sources in reference to a business decision (and rightly so!) but the point is that people expect to be able to access the information they need quickly – social media and the internet have trained us well.

MREB research into executives’ decision-making processes confirms that when faced with urgent decisions, they rely on their gut instinct when they can, or skim multiple sources and make the decision with what they can access quickly, regardless of the quality. Waiting for Research can be a drag.

We’ve seen Market Research functions tackle the challenge of informing urgent decisions two ways:

1. Improving their anticipation of urgent requests by focusing scoping on unarticulated and emerging needs;
2. Improving their reaction to urgent requests by aggregating existing knowledge into “good enough” information in a short time-frame.

MREB members, learn more about focusing Research scoping and execution for fast delivery.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve written about how to improve business impact when it comes to Research skills.  The first that we talked about was insight.  Sure, it’s important that Research functions generate sound insights that promise business impact.  But what if no one does anything with them?

At one of last year’s in-person member meetings, several heads of Research named insight activation as one of their most significant challenges.  And as we got deeper into discussion, here’s what they wanted to know: How do you know when you’ve gone far enough?  Who’s ultimately on the hook for ensuring insights are activated?  I’m not sure anyone will ever have the answer to that question – but we certainly have some points of view on increasing the likelihood that your business partners actually do something with the recommendations that you deliver:

• Screen your insights:  It’s easy to critique others’ insights – especially if your function’s done a good job building a common understanding of what good insight looks like.  When generating insights, ensure that you’re pressure testing your own work as well.  Test your insight output against a standard set of criteria that should be present in any strong insight similar to what we’ve seen members do at Lilly or Nestlé. 
• Create clear, targeted communications that tell business partners what to do with the insight: Make sure that business partners understand what the insight means for their world by creating prescriptive, targeted communications that highlight what the insight means for their function, product, or BU.  One of our insurance members has created a set of four simple filtering questions that enable researchers to cut to the chase when sharing insights with different stakeholders.
• Equip business partners to own the insight: Get the broader organization focused on insight by giving business partners easy-to-use tools , templates, and training to use as part of their day-to-day.  Some companies even work with Marketing to build insight competencies into cross-functional performance expectations.

Interested in learning more?  Join part two in our Next Generation of Research Skills Webinar series this upcoming week (Insight Skill Development).  We’ll cover insight generation and activation – and also highlight some new work we’ll be publishing later on this month.

How well do your business partners know your customers? They’re likely to say they understand them well – after all, years of experience builds a “gut instinct” that is valued in business leaders, and has probably served them well in situations over the years. But what about when that instinct is outdated, or just plain wrong? It’s hard to teach people when they think they have nothing to learn!

We’ve covered a few techniques for breaking your business partners’ pre-conceptions, but have one other idea to share.

One popular training technique, one that I’ve personally sat through in countless L&D courses, is teaching information, then asking the student to use that information in an exercise. This technique can be highly effective. Unfortunately, it fails when a student can complete the exercise based on what they already know – and can completely check out of the “learning” aspect.

A smart solution to this problem is to place the exercise in a new context, one where the “student” (sub in “executive”) can’t rely on what they already know. This effectively neutralizes their existing understanding and requires them to learn anew. 

Telecom NZ exemplified this approach in their segmentation workshop with executives. Sure, a telecommunications executive might be able to design a telecom product for young customers off the top of their head – without learning about the behaviors and attitudes of that segment – but can they design a cocktail for them without learning the same? (I might add – not only does this new context require executives to learn, it strikes me as a little more fun!) So think outside your industry!

MREB members, learn more about Telecom NZ’s workshop and other gut-busting experiences.

We have made it to part 4 of our 5-part series on skills that researchers can build to improve their business impact:

1. Insight
2. Business Problem Solving
3. Influence
4. Communication
5. Synthesis

Effective communication is about the audience and the goal, not the data.  The Extreme Presentation™ method, developed by Dr. Andrew Abela, has researchers move from finding the right problem to building compelling slides to ensure effective communication.  This approach integrates a few  essential elements of effective presentations:

• Logic
• Rhetoric
• Graphics
• Politics and Metrics

In addition to powerful presentations, you can bring voice-of-the-customer metrics to life through proactive outreach tactics.  Researchers at WellPoint use a knowledge marketing plan to drive action from insights by breaking down areas where beliefs need to change into specific teaching points and communicating them over time.  Using a publications calendar to organize release dates will connect existing insights to related corporate initiatives, providing the right information to the right people at the right time.

MREB members, read more about the Extreme Presentation™ method and how you can create an internal knowledge marketing campaign like WellPoint.

Over the past few weeks, YouTube has been overflowing with spin-offs of the viral video, Stuff* Girls Say. The original, based on the eponymous Twitter feed, inspired dozens of other satires, from Stuff People in DC Say (“Right, but where are you from originally?”), to Stuff* College Freshmen Say (“I’m either going to major in political science, psychology, business, or maybe pre-med.”), to my personal favorite, Stuff* Nobody Says (“Does anyone know how I can make Papyrus my default font?”). I’m still waiting for “Stuff Market Researchers Say”– we’ll leave the comments section open for your suggestions.

These videos are only intended to be humorous – stereotypes and sweeping generalizations are embraced and political correctness and cultural sensitivities are deliberately thrown aside. But in addition to provoking a knowing laugh (or righteous indignation), these videos also made me think about creative ways to collect, manage, and present knowledge about customers.

For Research to have the greatest impact on customer-related decisions, teams need to use effective communication strategies to engage their business partners. If your research team were to make a video titled “Stuff Our Customers Say,” what would it sound like? Would you need to adjust the way you think about segmentation? Not many of these Research videos would ever achieve YouTube fame, but our most progressive members are thinking differently about how to make existing information accessible to researchers and palatable to business partners.

Here’s an example of how Deloitte used video to highlight the many voices of its consumers. (Golf? Golf!)

MREB Members, read about how Heinz uses video to create an appetite for customer learning.

*This is a family friendly blog — the actual video titles all replace the word “stuff” with a more colorful 4 letter word beginning with S.

Snow removal is not Washington D.C.’s strong suit.  On Monday, all federal agencies enjoyed a two hour delayed opening because of a whopping 0.7 inches (1.8 cm) of snow that fell here over the weekend. Perhaps the city should forgo the plows and heavy machinery in favor of some of the tools featured in this article, which promise to make snow removal easier and safer.

With the importance of good tools (and the importance of good insight) in mind, the Market Research Executive Board has compiled some of our best insight generation exercises, worksheets, and practice guides into one easy-to-use toolkit. (The best part? Our tools carry little to no risk of back injury!)

Insight generation is one of the most important and most difficult tasks of any market research function.  MREB research has shown that a shift to make quality insight generation a priority is associated with a 70% increase in business impact. These 15 hands-on tools are designed to support you and your team in scoping and focusing your efforts, thinking creatively, and framing your insights in an actionable and impactful way. MREB members, access the toolkit here.

Time to continue our series on the 5 consultative skills that researchers should build to improve business impact:

1. Insight
2. Business Problem Solving
3. Influence
4. Communication
5. Synthesis

It’s time to talk Influence, a skill that can sometimes be overlooked in its importance.  But think about it: business partners weigh both rational and emotion criteria when making decisions– things like trust, stress, and relationships can be quite influential in business decisions. 

The problem is, we’re researchers.  And that means that, by definition, most of us naturally gravitate to rational analysis, so if given the choice we’d take training on insight generation or consultative business skills over emotional influencing skills any day.  We might assume that things like active listening and conflict resolution are internal traits that cannot be improved, but our research shows this isn’t true: you CAN become more emotional influential with the right focus.

We have seen a number of companies institute training and frameworks to improve researcher influence:

• ConAgra utilizes a two-day training session to make researchers more aware of the importance of influencing skills and the gaps in their own arsenal, and then provide frameworks, tools, and templates to apply influencing skills in their interactions.
• EMC² conducts peer review sessions (with clear expectations for the audience to learn and actively engage) to provide constructive criticism for upcoming research presentations and discussions.
• Nokia utilizes an engagement strategy that maps business partner relationships and power levels to improve recommendation adoption.  

MREB members, read more about these influence-building initiatives here.  And you can also access interactive versions of Nokia’s engagement tools.

A recent article in the Huffington Post explored the poor ability of people to predict the events of the future – a particularly popular pastime in early January, and getting a lot of press in 2012 especially with the shaky economy and upcoming election(not to mention the threat of the end of the world, according to the Mayans). The author asks this not of psychics or modern-day prophets, but of the experts – people who should be able to make balanced, accurate predictions.

The culprit he fingers? Confirmation bias, the tendency of people to look for and accept information that reinforces their existing beliefs, conveniently ignoring contradictory information. In the context of this discussion, it’s confirmation bias while researching – which the scientific method was created to counteract, and which market researchers are trained to avoid.

There’s another way that confirmation bias can get in the way of Market Research, though – while trying to get business partners to internalize customer information or insights, especially those that contradict their existing beliefs. People are likely to ignore or resist internalizing new information in these circumstances.

The key to getting past this tendency? To create multi-sensory, realistic, and engaging learning opportunities for business partners. While a data point on a powerpoint is easy to dismiss, not so is a customer in front of you demonstrating what this data point says. It’s those three characteristics that make immersive experiences so effective at changing people’s minds – creating visceral dissonance and then rebuilding their “gut” understanding.

MREB members, learn more about these “gut-busting” experiences and how companies like P&G and Alticor create them.

As researchers we spend a lot of time talking to a lot of different people in our organizations.  Working with IT to get access to the latest pieces of information, with our business partners to get our latest insight across, and with other researchers to prioritize our queues and coordinate next steps.  (I could go on…)

But what about the informal conversations with colleagues?  This week on CareerBliss communications and networking experts offered seven tips on improving your office rapport.  Some of my favorite small-talk tips include:

• Men can tease.  Women?  Not so much-as the article [kindly] puts it “…when men tease or insult each other, they come off as light-hearted and friendly; when women tease or insult each other, however, they come off mean-spirited.”  Noted.
• Talk sports-I know ladies, it looks like we’re batting 0-for-2 here, but this applies to us too (note my sports analogy usage-she shoots she scores!).  But seriously, the sports page headlines do have something for everyone.  For example, I quite dislike basketball, but today’s Washington Post gave me the feel-good story of the day: a 5’7’’ high school phenom who actually reduces crime in the city as he plays.  Oh, and if you need someone to talk hockey, I’m your girl! (Go Caps!)
• Confidence is Fundamental-to successful banter, you’ll need to assume that others are just as interested in chatting as you are.  Think of each conversation as a compliment, “I’m talking to you because you’re an interesting person.”
• Don’t be a one-chat wonder-pay attention during your daily run-ins so that you can follow-up on things the next time you see folks.  Get out those cell phones and make note of kids’ names and favorite out-of-work hobbies.

Around this time of the year, you see a proliferation of two types of articles: “Best of [this year]” and “Predictions for [next year].” I thought, why not jump on this bandwagon? So here, based on industry news, recent research, and conversations with members, are MREB’s Top 5 Trends to Watch Out For in 2012.

1. From Insight Consultant to Knowledge Inculcator: In a recent quant study, we surveyed decision-makers to uncover the characteristics of the information that they find valuable when making customer-facing decisions. What we found was pretty sobering – the decisions best informed by a consultative research process account for only 10% of the value of all decisions made at your company. The characteristics of valuable information, and experiences of leading Market Research functions, suggests a new impactful role for Research: increasing the customer acumen of the business. The “knowledge inculcator” engages organization-wide decision-makers with novel and contrarian knowledge to help them internalize the most essential information.
2. Synthesis improves corporate agility and knowledge: Support urgent decisions by creating new insights without spending time collecting data. Rather than launch new projects to address business needs, many functions devote formal time to synthesizing and updating existing information to create holistic, easily accessible knowledge for organizational use. This trend has been gaining steam for some years, and will only increase in the next – as business change speeds up and Research moves towards a currency of knowledge over data.
3. Broadening data inputs: We predict that traditional methodologies like focus groups and surveys will continue to decline as a percentage of your total data inputs. It’s not that they’ll be replaced by new methodologies – no matter what suppliers claim – but that more time will be spent integrating methodologies to get to deeper insight.
4. Big Data ≠ Big Action: Technological enhancements have made it easier than ever to collect data and the press has been (mostly) trumpeting the benefits that solid data will have for decisions. Unfortunately, access to ever-increasing quantities of data does not automatically equate to better decisions. The need for incorporating data analytics into traditional research, as well as smart analysis and business translation, will be more necessary than ever to turn information into actionable insights.
5. Emerging markets are for understanding, not offshoring: A continued focus on globalization will lead to more research on the consumers in emerging markets, but less staffing in them.  The gains from offshoring market research activities to countries like India have plateaued, with the challenges of managing an offshore team often stymieing the benefits.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you have a 6th trend – or a bone to pick with one of the above!