Editor’s note: Linda Fitzpatrick is president of Fitzpatrick Research Services Corp., West Nyack, N.Y.

We research folks are especially challenged by the pace of change because research, by its very nature, is slow. And slow is a tough sell these days.

We have less time to do more research. Budgets and resources are stretched. The businesses that we’re studying keep changing at a dizzying rate. How do we cope? By getting back to the basics. By digging deeper into our professional maturity - with judgment, integrity, courage, trust, along with having some fun once in awhile!

  • Judgment has always been the key ingredient in designing and using market research - and now more than ever because of the escalating pace of change in the businesses we study. Increasingly, our research takes snapshots of fast-moving targets, so the judgment component weighs heavier than ever. Let’s welcome every opportunity to convene our business team’s good judgement to craft effective research. But if things don’t work out as we’d hoped, let’s not blame the research. We know market research is as much art as science. Let the research help us gain perspective - we’re always too close to our own businesses. Challenge management to absorb all that’s learned into its growing judgment base - judgement that’s fluid and growing. Judgment that research feeds and nurtures.
  • Listening becomes even more important as we work to serve management folks who are endlessly bombarded with complicated demands as their businesses evolve. We need to always raise the bar on our own listening skills, challenging ourselves to take in and own the others’ point of view before we attempt to respond. Do we really appreciate how hard it is to listen profoundly? Do we notice our own lapses in listening, without judging or condemning ourselves? When are the lapses? Why do they happen then? Listening to our own reactions will help us hone these skills.

Perhaps we stop listening when management demands more or deeper research on issues that have been researched to death. Our challenge, then, is to continue to listen to figure out what isn’t working, why the answer sought isn’t the answer needed. At our highest level of professional maturity, we dig deep within ourselves to use patience and dedication to find the research that truly serves our management in these harried times.

  • Innovation - that is, being open to new and different ways of collecting and presenting information -- will help keep us fresh. It will help us have an ever-broadening set of tools to draw from to meet expanding needs. As we listen ever more carefully, we can target small bits of interesting research to inform judgment. Imagine that the marketing folks aren’t satisfied with that “researched-to-death” issue. Imagine you or other colleagues have a theory. Take a risk to get funds to check out your theory, through a few in-depth interviews or a quick Internet or omnibus survey. Do just enough to get some credibility for a new way of looking at the same old issues.

Market research folks are typically bright and curious by nature and we tend to have more tolerance for ambiguity than our marketing counterparts. This personality profile positions us well to crack open dogma and invite our colleagues to consider fresh ways of thinking which have credibility because they are research-based.

  • Integrity must guide the practitioner of research as well as the end user. We researchers must not do work we don’t believe in. We must not waste our company’s money on useless studies - the annual tracking study that hasn’t shown anything new in years, the focus groups to “test” a question we already know the answer to. Our surveys have to make sense. Our questions have to be clear and easy to answer. We must treat respondents and vendors in a respectful way. We must praise diligent effort even if the outcome isn’t what we hoped it would be. We must not tolerate lazy work or sloppy work. We must fight for the time and resources to do our work well. Some questionnaires need time for pre-testing -- maybe not just once, but two or three times. Good research takes time. Bad research wastes time.

Don’t tolerate petty tyrannies. Refuse to be micro-managed. If you hate your job, leave - or at least try to. Life is too good to waste. You’re too good to sell yourself short. Remember, there’s a labor shortage out there. You’re the most important research tool: do your best, and insist on being valued.

Be authentic. If you’re unsure of what to do, say so. Fess up when you make a mistake. Learn from it. Get help from seasoned colleagues. But if you’re sure (that this method is best, or that city won’t work for the research, or that the budget isn’t enough) then stick to your guns. And always be respectful that other people have different styles. Stay open. Stay flexible.

  • Then there’s courage. Of course it’s not so easy to tell the v.p. of marketing that what she wants to do doesn’t make sense. But if we don’t stand up for our knowledge and our expertise, what good are we? Yes, let’s be politic. Let’s be good listeners. Let’s figure out another way to help our clients. But let’s not roll over. We have to stand our ground in these frenetic times. Research requires disciplined thinking on complicated matters. Set your terms. Insist. Honor your own legitimate authority. If we can’t get a commitment to the time and the money, let’s not do the research. Let’s stick with good judgement and do without the bad research.
  • Trust - and its complement, knowing when to be mistrustful - are pivotal to good business and good research. Trust that most people are smart - whether those people are our senior management or our most downscale customers. Trust that most people want to do good work and want a good outcome. Trust that people don’t expect research - or researchers - to be perfect. Trust your instincts. If a vendor tells you about his latest on-line research method (or diary panel, or business model) that sounds too good to be true - be mistrustful. Watch for the telltale lie. Worry.

If you’re sitting in a brand strategy meeting and your instincts tell you that a central issue is being ignored because it’s not expedient to look at it squarely - trust your instincts, then find your courage! Speak up and say what needs to be said at that meeting. Even if you’re not the ranking marketing person, you’ll be respected for saying what others were thinking.

And finally, our work should be fun, at least some of the time. Imagine this scenario. Your client comes to you with a question he must have the answer to ASAP. You’re calm and unruffled in spite of the great hurry. You’re respectful. You guide your client down his own road until he finds out that what he thought was the question wasn’t the question he cared about at all. It was a different question, and you helped him find it.

That kind of give-and-take is fun. It requires a very high level of expertise. It’s mutually respectful. It’s professionally mature and it’s enjoyable.

Survive and prosper in these fast-paced times. Trust your judgment. Support your integrity with courage. And remember that good research lights the way to a more profitable bottom line!