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Data, Mindsets and Powerful IdeasDeveloping a new kind of customer insight professional
by David Smith,Director, DVL Smith Ltd
11 Oct 2012 and continued 15 Oct 2012 and Thursday 18th
The customer insight landscape is changing. The data that market researchers can now access is strikingly different from only a few years ago. In this series of articles we will review the implications of the changing customer insight landscape for the mindset that customer insight professionals will need, and look at different ideas for developing these capabilities.
The Changing Customer Data Landscape
It is possible to identify five fundamental ways in which the data to which customer insight professionals have access has changed.
- BIG: Increasingly organisations need to understand Big Data, using predictive analytics to understand the social media and their own increasingly powerful internal customer transaction databases.
- INSTANT: The talk today is of liquid research - the idea of consumer data constantly flowing into organisations from multiple sources in a way that needs to be instantly understood.
- COMPLEX: It is important to understand how consumers live in different ecosystems. Gone are the days of looking at isolated silos of data that describe only part of a customer's life.
- VOLATILE: Everyone must be alert to disruptivegame changers - Black Swans. Customers, through peer dialogue over the Internet, can swing almost overnight from what we thought was their entrenched position to a widely different view.
- RICH: Today information is not just coming from more sterile surveys and clichéd focus groups, but from a rich range of customer and staff engagement forums, from consumer breakfast seminars to exciting co-creation workshops.
The New Customer Insight Professional MindsetNew skills are needed to cope with the data customer insight professionals now need to master. There will, of course, be variations by agency and client-side researcher, but the following skills will be in universal demand.
- SYNTHESISERS: The industry needs data synthesis skills. We need people who can be the 'wide angle lens' of their organisation, able to see the big strategic picture. This has many facets. There are the 'bricolage' skills needed, to draw together qualitative and quantitative data. There is a need for 'data fusion' specialists and predictive analysts who can 'crawl' through, and make sense of, 'Big Data'. We also need strong cross-project skills - those able to undertake meta-analysis across past studies.
- INSIGHT CREATORS: The mere provision of data does not create insight. Insights are not 'collected' or 'found', they are 'created'. Insights are created through data-rich non-linear thinking. They emerge through rich dialogue fierce conversations. So the true 'customer insight detective' will not only be a fantastic data 'synthesiser', but will also have the confidence and 'forensic energy' to engage with senior management in powerful dialogues that will unearth insights.
- INFORMATION DESIGNERS: We need customer insight professionals who, faced with masses of data, can turn 'data-centric problems' into 'instant visual solutions'. This requires the skills, not only of data reduction, but also of the 'information designer'. We need individuals who, using all the latest multimedia techniques, can pin complex issues down to one telling 'killer chart'.
- STORYTELLERS: It is important to make sure that your message sticks and is told in a way that taps into decision-makers' emotions and leads them, through appropriate framing, to the right decision choices. So, business 'storytelling' is on everyone's agenda. But this skill goes beyond constructing and presenting narratives to aid the decision-making process. Better data and insight does not necessarily equate with more intelligent decision-making. So we need customer insight professionals who can connect data-based insight to successful action. Insight professionals need to master situations in which their powerful insight message, for whatever political, irrational or unexpected reason, does not have the impact desired. They need to know what to do next.
- CONSULTATIVE BUSINESS PARTNERS: The new customer insight professional must be comfortable operating as business thought partners in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous and fast moving business world. The Market Research Executive Board (2012) report that 61% of companies want this consultative excellence - but only 29% feel they are currently getting it! So we need what could be labeled 'insight intrapreneurs'. These are individuals who can take fast action to make things happen, and who feel at ease with effectual, rather than classic, linear reasoning. Effectual thinkers, to adapt the adage, believe 'Where there is a way, there is a will'. They like to explore uncharted waters by making a start, creating some headway and then adjusting the exact destination on a rolling basis as the journey unfolds. They are comfortable with ambiguity. They will arrive at their destination, but they do not crave certainty en route. In short, they do not need a certain process in order to deliver a 'big idea'.
What Powerful Ideas are going to Deliver this New Customer Insight Professional Mindset?
So we have bigger, more instant, more complex, more volatile and richer data. This means the industry needs data synthesisers, insight creators, information designers, storytellers and business partners – insight intrapreneurs who can make things happen. So, what is the way forward for developing capability programmes that will deliver sufficient numbers of individuals into the industry with the necessary mindset to be able to deliver in these roles?
We would like to hear readers’ views on any powerful ideas about how the new mindset could be delivered. Let me get the discussion going by outlining three perspectives.
- The ‘total customer insight concept’: we build the mindset around our core ability to holistically handle multiple data sources
One view of the future is that our industry is in a good place to cultivate the next generation of customer insight professionals because, at the heart of what we do is the ability to handle and interpret masses of data. The argument runs that we simply need to work a bit harder to get out of data silo mode and better develop our data synthesis skills and begin to see the big data picture.
This argument builds on the view that Generation Y is naturally comfortable playing with data, seeing the shapes and patterns and understanding the key relationships. Seymour Papert, in his book ‘Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas’, published in 1980, first introduced the idea of computers as instruments for enhancing creativity and developing our conceptual thinking skills. He could have hardly envisaged the arrival of the iPad whose applications make a reality of his vision.
So, if we want customer insight professionals comfortable with conceptual data-rich thinking, we just need to tweak our industry skills development programmes around the core skills that already exist amongst Generation Y. So this approach could be seen as the total customer insight model. Everybody knows a little bit about each other’s jobs and, if pushed, could step in and play in that position. We are all comfortable with integrating qualitative insights and we are all also fluent on the Big Data stage. Everybody in the team knows how different data fits together to deliver actionable insights. Our calling card is the ability of customer insight teams to seamlessly work across different hues of data and fit everything together to create insights.
- Creative thought leaders to drive and showcase insight
Another perspective is to argue that fostering the customer insight mindset around our ability to integrate and make sense of multiple datasets is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of success. This argument takes us to the view that we need ‘driven’ creative individuals to showcase these ‘wide angle lens’ skills. John Steinbeck in East of Eden wrote ‘Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.’ This is powerful stuff from Steinbeck, and if you believe this, it suggests that we need to cultivate dangerous, edgy thought leaders who are genuinely comfortable with complexity, ambiguity and volatility to get the Insight show on the road.
- Develop the symbiotic power of bionic teams
Another perspective is that the total customer insight concept – the idea of customer insight professionals being fluent across all types of data – will not deliver sufficient excellence. Moreover, there is the view that we should not be dependent on creative superheroes to lead customer insight teams. An alternative view is that we create bionic teams, which would allow everyone to excel in their specialism. We will have world-class predictive analysts and those who are brilliant at unraveling qualitative narratives and stories. But, with this model, we would need to work much harder to encourage more creative symbiotic engagement between the specialisms.
Hermann Bondi, when he was a Government Chief Scientist, argued that the creative power of Cambridge University in the 1930s stemmed from there being fewer distinct differences between the sciences and humanities than later became the case in the British education system. CP Snow also pursued this theme in his ‘Two Cultures’ thesis. He argued that the lack of fluid communications between the sciences and humanities has been a major hindrance to creative problem solving. This argument indicates that the route to insight lies in cultures where the sciences and humanities are more naturally integrated. So in market research, we need our data-crawlers to thrive in symbiosis with our narrative story analysts.
We would welcome your views on the way forward on what are the best capability development programmes for building the mindset the customer insight professional now needs to cope with the new customer data landscape.
Is it around a total customer insight concept, or is it about identifying creative insight thought leaders, or is it about bionic teams of specialists working symbiotically together in a much more fluid and collaborative way than in the past. . ? Or is it something completely different? Please send us your comments using the form below.
David Smith
Comments on this article
Want to share your thoughts...?
David has put this beautifully, but ‘twas ever thus:
We have always thought that we have a greater amount, quicker, more complex, more elusive and more informative data than previous generations of researchers - though ‘big data’ is the one real change to the customer data landscape and one which, I hope will necessarily mean that we hone new technique, methods and approaches, to reap the whirlwind (or whatever analogy you like for lots of data).
The new skills are excitingly and refreshingly labelled, but as an industry, we have been calling for researchers to develop skills which correspond with David’s New Customer Insight Professional Mind-set, for the last 15 years at least. I thought that we had all concluded that researchers should develop joined up skills: learn to combine data synthesis with insight-creation, data visualisation and highly evolved communication - and all this against a backdrop of being a business consultant and partner to the client.
But time has shown that there are not many people drawn to a life in research who have the mind-set and the ability to make the complex clear. While I loved the reference to John Steinbeck, that ‘Nothing was ever created by two men’ sometimes joined-up thinking has to come from joined-up team members who cooperate to produce beautifully synthesised insight, effortlessly communicated with blinding relevance to the client’s needs.
Finally, the money issue: will clients pay a premium for these super-minds and ‘insight intrapreneurs'? Did the clients who wanted - but did not get - consultative excellence, expect to pay accordingly?
Clive, you are right that our understanding of what constitutes the new customer insight professional mindset has been around for a while. It is just that now, more than ever, we need to ensure that we have the skills and training in place to ensure our industry has a breadth and depth of these skills. This brings us to the point about whether this requires us to recruit ‘superminds’, or whether it is a combination of nurture and nature. With better skills development we could actually go a long way to training up the consultative excellence that senior stakeholders require. This, of course, still leaves the question of whether clients are willing to pay a premium for this consultative excellence, as you point out. My approach here is to try and ‘make you own luck’, that is to put in the extra consultancy effort, whilst not always, in the first instance, getting paid for this - but hoping that clients will see the value and benefit of people who have gone the extra mile, and come back to ask, and pay, for more consultancy.
Yes. Build a team that offers the requisite breadth and depth of skills and talents. I’ve yet to meet an individual who can do it all. But the team must include the client, without whom the organisation’s own information and commercial and financial imperatives represent a gaping hole in the fabric of the insight generation process.
Kate, you make a pertinent point about including the client in the partnership team in order to deliver the complete customer insight solution. Increasingly, in the world of Big Data, as you say, accessing the information held by the client organisation is a massive part of the insight generation process. Perhaps training sessions around how to set up creative client and agency working partnerships is a step forwards. Certainly at DVL Smith, where we have run these client and agency sessions, both parties have been able to see the value of genuine and authentic collaboration.
I think that the concept of story telling in the work place has been around for a while but in this context is very effective and needs more work. We hear a lot now about data visualisation and dashboards - so it seems that insight professionals need to know the whole story not just their bit. This may mean broader skillsets in research agencies or greater collaboration amongst all the agencies supplying information to the client. Either way it makes for a more diverse role for the insight professionals and thats got to be a good thing for the future of the industry. So in answer to your question - a bionic team across agencies might be the answer until the insight professional is able to further develop their skill set.
Sinead - of the different options floated in the original piece, you seem to like idea of a ‘bionic’ team of specialists working within an agency, who also work to collaborate in partnership with the client. I wonder whether the leadership skills to manage highly creative individuals working under pressure are a subset of classic, textbook leadership skills, or whether we need to start thinking about the concept of ‘insight leadership and management’ from a slightly different perspective, and begin thinking of insight leadership as a skill in its own right.
NOTE: Please note that this board is moderated, and comments are published at the discretion of the site owner.
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