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Issue 31 - February 2010 CONTENTS - Use Your Sense! - thinking like Da Vinci - A Daily Dose of Happiness - on keeping a diary - Take A New Look At Insight: Think Like A ....... Surgeon - 7 Deadly Sins of Performance Management - Silos, Pettiness and Inanity - Design Thinking - A new perspective on insight Training and Feedback - Courses
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 USE YOUR SENSE!
These include: A listening ear – Insight teams need to listen carefully so that they can identify the true meanings and issues behind what customers and colleagues say. A seeing eye – As Insight professionals, we need to sharpen our observation skills so that we don’t miss opportunities as we observe customers and their lifestyles. A sense of purpose – Let’s not forget the other senses. Our fast pace of life, multiple demands and multi-tasking can all dull our sensitivity. Our creativity and innovation can also be helped or hindered by our environment. Let’s stimulate our brains with pictures, plants and flowers; with music; and with fresh air. To find out more about how you can use your senses to improve your approach to insight, please click here. A DAILY DOSE OF HAPPINESS
1) Events – Things that have happened during the day, including time spent on projects. 2) Achievements – This relates to things to be happy about. It also acts as a useful reminder of what has actually been done. 3) Emotions – This is expressive writing, and includes things that went wrong or left you feeling stressed. This diary is designed not only to improve your positivity (and therefore happiness) but also to make you more aware of your emotions and how you can cope with them. In forthcoming issues, we will look more closely at each of these three sections. Please click here to find out more about this whole topic of writing a diary to stimulate happiness and success.
TAKE A NEW LOOK AT INSIGHT: THINK LIKE A....... SURGEON This series investigates how other professions can teach us some valuable lessons.
The Surgeon - Epitomy of Focus Insight teams have to pull together information from lots of sources to build pictures that are as complete, clear and correct as possible. However, complex projects often involve a team of people with different skills, expertise and ideas. It’s therefore essential that one person takes absolute ownership of the results. This situation mirrors that of the surgical team. On complicated procedures, there may be a large team, but the surgeon is still in control and takes full responsibility. This principle of ‘conceptual integrity’ is key to the work of an insight team:
To find out more about this topic, please click here.
DEVELOPING SKILLS THE 7 DEADLY SINS OF PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT - SILOS, PETTINESS AND INANITY
Silos – This sin is all about each silo focusing on their own targets. As a result, organisational boundaries and concerns end up dictating the performance metrics. Pettiness – This is closely related to Silos, as it involves a failure to look at the bigger picture. Inanity – This relates to metrics that change behaviour in stupid ways. In terms of insight, the main message is: make sure that you find out what’s really important to the customer and then ensure that these factors are included in your customer measures. For examples of these sins and further information, please click here.
DESIGN THINKING A new perspective on insight
The three key stage of design thinking are: Inspiration – This involves looking at issues from the viewpoint of the customer and incorporates many insight principles. Ideation – This concerns the development of good ideas, fuelled by insight and using processes such as prototyping. Implementation – This is the point at which many good ideas can easily be lost. There are various ways of helping businesses to take on new ideas, including story telling. In future editions of 5 Minute Insights, we will take a closer look at each of the three stages mentioned above. Please click here to explore this subject in greater depth and for a link to a video by Tim Brown, a leading exponent of Design thinking.
TIP OF THE MONTH COMING TO A STICKY END...
TRAINING We run a variety of insight training courses on demand. Contact us if you are interested or if you want to run one as an in-house course. Insight management and communications: vision to reality How to communicate for maximum impact Commercial thinking Click here for more details
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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This is the third in our series of articles looking at the seven important principles for success outlined in Michael J Gelb’s study of an artistic and scientific genius: “How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci.” This month, we explore the importance of using all of your senses. 
Last month, we promised to delve a little deeper into how an ‘attitude of gratitude’ can be developed by keeping a diary. In his book, ‘59 seconds: Think a little, change a lot’, Richard Wiseman suggests writing positive entries in a diary each day to help to generate a mood of happiness. This idea can be developed further, by writing a page each day, sub-divided into three short sections:
These are the last three ‘deadly sins’ identified in Michael Hammer’s article: ‘The 7 Deadly Sins of Performance Measurement (and How to Avoid Them)’ – and they are all inter-connected.
Design Thinking is a stimulating approach to the development and implementation of ideas and offers a unique way of solving problems. It embraces many aspects of insight, but develops them even further. It also provides some very practical suggestions for putting insight into action. 
Last month, we featured an article on a stimulating book called ‘Made to Stick’, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It’s all about communicating in a way that will make your ideas stick. We hope to produce another article on this next month. In the meantime, we strongly suggest that you try and take a look at the book. You could either:
