Devoted to how insight is developed, shared and acted on
New Year's Resolutions
Happy New Year! This is a time when we should all resolve to do something different or better during the year ahead. So what resolutions would be suitable for an Insight team? What will have the greatest impact in terms of improving the value of your work or making your life easier? Here are our Top Five suggestions:
1. Say “No” more often – The hardest part of any job is saying “No” to requests. But if we don’t, our capacity just gets eaten up with endless projects – many of which may be of questionable value. The inevitable result is that there is less time for important projects – and almost always it’s the thinking time that adds most value. So learn to say “No” more often – tactfully of course! For a slightly longer article on this subject, please click here.
2. Plan your communications first – Don’t wait until the end of a project to think through who you need to communicate to, or the best way to do this. Otherwise, the end result will usually be the standard two hour, one-off presentation – which may not be the best way to present your results. So, think in advance who will need a summary; who will need the full detail; and who will respond better to words or pictures or video. And think about what will make them act. Do it ‘up front’ – because not only will you be more likely to do it, but it may also actually change the way in which you run the project. Communication should never be an afterthought! For more thoughts, click here.
3. Make time to think – The key to insight is to ask the question “So what?” But that involves thinking, and thinking requires time - without any disturbances. Even five minutes’ peace and quiet can produce superb value. So consciously make time to think rather than just churning out data. For some ideas on how to achieve this, click here.
4. Review last year’s projects – We know that insight should generate value for the organisation. But how often are findings lost or recommendations ignored? And why? Could we have expressed things more effectively to produce more impact? One way to find out is to go back over some key projects from the last 18 months and discover what happened. This may be hard, but is invaluable. And if you find that great things have happened, shout about it – because they probably couldn’t have done it without you! (This also gives you an opportunity to have a conversation with a key internal client.)
5. Share insight across the team – Do your team meetings just go through current projects and problems? Do you ever formally take some time to actually share what each of you has learnt from your work? Given that insight so often demands context from other areas, how can you really deliver it if you aren’t aware of the key lessons from your colleagues’ work? So make time – and police it! It must be specifically for sharing – and not for discussing current problems.
Copyright © 2012 Customer Insight Solutions. All Rights Reserved