Q&A with 2024 Lifetime Achievement award, Graeme Lawrence, Human8 

Editor’s note: Graeme Lawrence, managing partner at Human8, is the winner of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement award, a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. The award winners were announced during a virtual celebration on November 19, 2024. To learn more about the awards, visit https://www.quirksawards.com/. 

The 2024 Lifetime Achievement award went to Graeme Lawrence, managing partner at Human8. 

Industry peers describe Lawrence as “inspiring,” “loved” and “a true professional who wears his heart on his sleeve.” He has dedicated his career to professional growth, both for himself and for colleagues.  

Lawrence said the people he has met in his 30 years in the industry have been the highlight. 

“I’m not sure all my managers would agree it’s been a lifetime of achievement," said Lawrence.  “There’s definitely been lows as well as highs, but that’s what it’s all about! And It’s the people who make it for me – so thanks to all colleagues, clients, industry friends, suppliers, advisors and investors and competitor agencies. Cheers to you all!” 

Describe a time you had to step out of your comfort zone.  

When we rebranded our agency from Virtual Surveys to Join the Dots in 2011, we very deliberately adopted a growth mind-set that forces you to step out of your comfort zone on an ongoing basis. As such, I feel like the last 15 years or so have been about stretching myself and those around me.  

If I was to consider the biggest step out my comfort zone, I'd say it was the process of completing the management buyout of Join the Dots in 2017 stands.  

I got exposed to a whole different world; corporate finance advisors, accountants, lawyers, etc. For someone who’d been a research practitioner for over 20 years, this was intimidating in many ways.  

Looking back, I had to learn a whole new set of skills both in business terms and in respect of relationships required with suppliers and advisors. This experience made me far more appreciative of the commercial world beyond the insights industry!

What advice would you have for the younger you? 

I think in my early career I accepted what was in front of me as the best that was available to ‘someone like me.’ If I could talk to myself pre-2007, I would challenge myself to consider whether I’m putting enough into growing professionally.  

In particular, what could I be doing to continually enhance my CV? There were probably opportunities to put myself forward for special projects, consider extracurricular learning opportunities and to just put my hand up for things on a day-to-day basis. 

Maybe it was a confidence that comes with age, but once I’d been working for 10 or so years something triggered in me to realize that new experiences were good for me and I got energy from forcing myself to grow, add to my CV, etc. 

Then it became a bit infectious, and I seemed to hook up with like-minded people, which really gave me a work buzz!    

I appreciate that this works differently for different types of personalities, but when I mentor now, I often discuss the concept of how a person’s CV is growing. To me a CV shouldn’t just be about capturing job changes and promotions for the outside world, but a place for you to consider your own personal achievements and growth. 

Why do you take the time to mentor other researchers? 

I was fortunate to have senior people invest in me! In my early career I had two or three senior people who invested in me on a development basis. 

With hindsight, I now know what an important role that played in shaping what I was able to achieve. These senior people really helped me to consider where I was going and what I was looking to achieve. At the time I found that sort of thinking really difficult. Investment in people is key, and I think mentoring is particularly important to help support the nonlinear aspects of people development – skills away from the day-to-day job roles to me are as important as ever.  

Generally, I think we are good at this sort of thing in the insights industry, but I think an example of where we could be better is involving non-industry mentoring and interactions for our people.