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Perspectives from David Boyle of TMRE
What a year it’s been! With so much volatility and uncertainty, what is the role of insights professionals during this time?
It was already hard to stay on top of the rapidly changing business landscape, even with the constant flow of innovations coming at us from the insights world. But this year, absolutely everything changed.
Everything before will be seen as “pre-coronavirus”: business needs, consumer behaviors and the ways we build understanding to help businesses make decisions. Post-coronavirus, this will all be different.
The world is learning that bravado isn’t as powerful as building a careful understanding of what’s happening. I see world leaders that started with the former strategy now adopting the latter. We’ll also see a deeper corporate culture of building a true understanding of consumer needs and behaviors to solve business problems. We’ll see a cultural shift where our work will be valued even more highly. I just hope we can prepare ourselves for that extra attention.
Insights leaders were already dealing with pressure to do more with less. Are there any creative ways to do this?
Absolutely! Even the best teams were struggling, but they had strategies that we must all now borrow from. There are three that I’ve worked to emulate and that have helped me.
First, build a network of friends who are in a similar role. I felt alone for a long time until I started to meet like-minded people at conferences who I could call for ideas.
Second, understand how other people solve problems. Sit through conference talks and actively listen. Challenge yourself to find parallels with what you’re struggling with and ideas you can apply. It beats reinventing the wheel!
Third, innovate. Try small, cheap, quick pilots. If they aren’t useful, kill them quickly (you’ll still have learned valuable lessons). It’s no exaggeration to say that one out of five tests I’ve run has radically changed how I think about and do my job.
What advice do you have for researchers who haven’t been through recessions or downturns?
Get really good at doing something. Work hard at it. Have a skill you’re really proud of and constantly challenge yourself to get better and better at that skill. Stand out from the crowd.
What should insights professionals be focused on currently?
Reevaluate everything. We’ve all run legacy projects that we don’t think are the best uses of our time. And we’ve all had new projects we want to undertake but haven’t been able to. We’ll have so much new work to understand the new consumer and competitive landscape that we’ll have to kill lots of old projects to make capacity and use new tools and techniques if we hope to keep up.