In the movie Gladiator, protagonist Maximus faces a decision. Formerly an army commander, he now fights in the arena as a slave. The decision is to be either 1) the hero that saves the Roman Empire, or 2) a servient slave.
This decision, although less dramatic, is like the challenge client-side insights face:
Are we slaves to our (internal) stakeholders, fully serving their needs, or are we the heroes coming up with killer insights on our own?
The problem with being the hero is that a killer insight might not fit the end needs, or business reality, a stakeholder is facing. The proposed action coming from the insight might not have positive potential ROI. Or the action might not be a strategic priority. Being fully servient to client requests often yields solid insights. However, the problem is that it also limits the chance to surprise and amaze stakeholders.
So where does the Insights function stand on this balancing act?
In my experience within a medium-sized organization, the Insights function primarily needs to be aware of the main challenges for stakeholders and consumers. For stakeholders, it should react to those issues.
However, the role of the Insights function doesn’t stop there. Other roles include:
- Picking opportunities to overperform: dive deeper, consider more data sources, broaden the scope to contextualize, and improve analysis
- Reserving time for proactive insight creation: exploring data, testing hypotheses and testing new analytical methods
Reserving time for proactive insight creation: exploring data, testing hypotheses and testing new analytical methods
By doing so, thought leadership and growth opportunities are created. This means that the balance leans towards the servient role, but certainly does not negate the proactive ‘hero’ role of insights
So how should one organize the Insights function to maximize impact?
To serve both servient and hero roles, the Insights function is ideally situated to being in both client teams and being centrally located. In large organizations this is often the case, with both a central insights team and analysts in business units. In medium-sized organizations with only a handful of people working in insights, this isn’t always possible. Therefore, a choice needs to be made for either 1) a central insights team or 2) analysts in business units.
Spreading insights across teams means spreading resources thinly. This poses three major risks:
1) Lack of insight on a total business level/no holistic consumer view
2) Little sharing of expertise
3) Being too reactive and thereby losing the ‘hero’ role
The solution is to organize insights centrally, while maintaining close relations with business stakeholders. Insights then assumes an objective role between consumers/clients and business stakeholders, guiding the organization forwards. With the proliferation of data, more and more decisions will and should be data-driven. Therefore, ‘data’ and ‘insights’ will increase in importance and should be given a more central role in the organization. This requires a separate and highly involved insights function.
Besides the organizational aspect, we also need to consider the content part of the insights function. Putting consumers and clients first automatically means that methodology follows. Thinking in siloes such as ‘research’, ‘business intelligence’ and ‘data science’ doesn’t help solve the issue. Each issue requires its own approach, and more often a mix of methodologies. For example, a project to improve sales in channel X can be solved by forming a strategy on an analysis of sales data alone, but a (qualitative or quantitative) study into consumer motivation increases the understanding of the issue, and results in a better action plan.
The insights team should be able to deliver in all methodological areas, to provide top-quality, holistic insights.
Let the insights function enable the business, while from time to time stealing the show as the hero!
In the spirit of the knowledge-sharing platform that ESOMAR provides, please do share your thoughts on this.
To quote a scene from Gladiator:
Emperor Commodus: “I think I understand my own people.”
Gracchus: “Then perhaps Caesar will be so good as to teach us, out of his own extensive experience?”
Your experience and background might differ, so let’s discuss!
