Devoted to how insight is developed, shared and acted on
Trading Places: Fun With A Focus
A fundamental aspect of insight is that if people don’t act on what we produce, we might as well not produce it! But what encourages people to act on something? One approach that will help to get your output to the top of their agendas is to make it memorable. Playing a role
Making something fun is an effective way of achieving this. A great example is an approach called ‘Trading Places’.
Imagine that you’re running research groups that are involved in exploring issues involving where people go on holiday and how they make their choices. In one such instance, the research company invited the client’s entire team to the research venue - but then got them to sit in the main room rather than the viewing suite. They were then given personal profiles of consumers for a role play. So one person became Julie, a fitness instructor; the next became John, a BT engineer etc.
The group discussion then began - with each member of the client’s team playing their allotted character to see what issues they would consider important.
Playing for real
At the end of the group, the members of the client’s team were moved to the viewing suite. What they didn’t know was that the characters they had portrayed would come into the main room for the group. So Julie, John etc. appeared and went through the same group discussion.
The impact was huge – not least because the client team became quite competitive. For instance, when the real John said: “I really don’t see the need to go abroad!”, the person who had earlier played the part of John leapt up and punched the air, as that is exactly what he’d said!
The end result was that the team were totally engrossed in the consumers and the topic – despite the great array of food and drink provided backstage!
A day to remember
So, why not think about how can you introduce participation into your processes? It means that your colleagues will have more fun and remember the event for much longer. And it also means that the chance that they will then act upon what they’ve learnt will be even greater
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