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Issue 21 - February 2009 CONTENTS - Save Time and Money - Look in the Larder - Learning From the Competitive Spirit - Meet The Team Member - Decision-Shy Dora - Risky Business - on risk in innovation - Making A Habit Of...... Sharpening the Saw - Spring courses - New Dates - Book now
INTRODUCTION Welcome to the latest edition of 5-Minute Insights, the e-mail newsletter from Steve Wills and Sally Webb at Customer Insight Solutions (CI Solutions). We hope that in the few short minutes that it takes to scan the key messages, you will find snippets that are both informative and stimulating. If you want to find out more, we have provided links to longer articles for some of the insights.
INSIGHT IN PRACTICE SAVE TIME AND MONEY - LOOK IN THE LARDER
But how do you do this?
This approach can save you both money (which has to be a good thing in the current environment!) and time. Why not put it into practice now – you can start by making sure that your library and archives are fit for purpose. To find out more, please click here. LEARNING FROM THE COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
Patrick Harris, former Director of Creativity at Orange, decided that the solution lay in appealing to people’s thirst for competition. To draw attention to the results of a regular customer satisfaction study, he introduced a sweepstake that enticed his colleagues to bet on the satisfaction score for the following month. This stimulated their interest in the results! Here are some more ideas that you could try: Presentation poser - incorporate a competition into a presentation and offer a small prize to the winner. Brainy bubbly - Award a bottle of champagne for the best idea produced during a brainstorming session. Quick quiz – Publish your results (or a summary) on your company’s intranet, with a link to a simple quiz. To look at these ideas in more detail, please click here. MEET THE TEAM MEMBER - DECISION-SHY DORA During this series, we are looking at people who typify four different styles of behaviour. We will use two examples of each style: one whose approach has more impact upon other people and one that has more impact upon the task in hand.
Decision-Shy Dora The style The substance The solution To find out more about dealing with Dora, please click here.
DEVELOPING SKILLS RISKY BUSINESS Managing the potential risks and rewards of major innovations A very useful article on the management of risk and reward in relation to new ideas appeared in the Harvard Business Review a year ago. It was written by George S Day. Think Big - Day says that small changes to a company’s offerings often constitute some 90% of its development portfolio. However, to deliver a competitive advantage, large innovations (i.e. new offerings) are needed, but these involve risk. Take Care - One of the tools he recommends for identifying and managing risk is a unique ‘risk matrix’. He marks each new proposition according to two parameters - the relative familiarity of the target market and the relative familiarity of the new product or technology. The results indicate the likely level of risk involved. Used carefully, the risk matrix can be a really useful tool for looking more closely at innovation issues and for thinking ‘outside the box’. To explore some of the thoughts behind this issue, please click here.
This is the final article in our series based around Steven R Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."
Covey identifies four dimensions to sharpening the saw: physical exercise, spiritual refreshment, mental stimulation and social/emotional interaction. In terms of insight, sharpening the saw can start with finding ways of working smarter rather than harder. This could also involve taking a break and making time to go on courses and seminars. Ultimately, it’s about having a more balanced day and a more balanced life. This will help you to be more effective in your work. For a more in-depth exploration of some of the different ways in which you could ‘sharpen your saw’, please click here.
TIP OF THE MONTH USE YOUR LOAF!
It takes about 15 minutes to make the dough (and we could all do with making some more dough!) and then you have to leave it for an hour or so to rise. You then need to spend ten minutes working it into loaves or rolls – before leaving it for another hour to rise again. Then you stick it in the oven for 20 minutes and hey presto - a great loaf! I’ve just started making bread again and realise that it’s ideal for insightful thinking. It gets me away from the desk for short bursts - and I often find that this clears my mind. It also gives me two sensible intervals of an hour to get back to the PC and work on whatever I need to do. The net result is great insight and a great lunch! TRAINING As part of our regular 6-monthly programme, these are the dates for next set of courses in the spring. Book now to be sure of a place. Or contact us if you want to run one as an in-house course. Insight management and communications: vision to reality: 26th February 2009 Commercial thinking: 26th March 2009 How to communicate for maximum impact: 12th March 2009 Click here for more details
FEEDBACK We want 5-Minute Insights to be as useful as possible. That's where you come in! Please email us at feedback@cisolutions.co.uk with any comments you have about its content, its style, or with requests for items that you would like to see. If you have a difficult problem that you are having trouble solving - such as a Marketing Director who insists on ignoring unwelcome insights; or an issue that is challenging your team on the journey towards insight - please let us know. If we can make helpful suggestions we will, and if several people have a similar problem, we will write an article for 5-Minute Insights. If you would like to pass this newsletter on to your colleagues, please feel free to do so. Equally, if you know anyone who would like to be added to the mailing list, please let us know. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here. |
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If you’re short of cash or time you can often conjure up a decent meal by searching through your store cupboard, fridge and freezer. The same principles apply to insight requests. Don’t just start a new project – see if you’ve already got the answers in work that you’ve carried out previously. 
How do you get people to really take notice of your insight results and not just forget them? Is there something you can do to embed your results in your stakeholders’ minds and to encourage them to learn from your findings?
Steven Covey introduces this final habit with a story of a man who is cutting down a tree but is too busy to stop and sharpen his saw. The same thing can happen in insight work - we can be so busy that we’re not as effective as we could be.
We often talk about making time to think – even in this issue, we’ve suggested that time away from the desk is often great for refreshing yourself or solving problems. If you work from home at all, one way of achieving this is by making bread! 
