Episode 3: The purpose of Insight

Insight is an expensive business so we have a collective responsibility to make sure that our organisations are getting the best possible return on their investment, otherwise there’s a good chance that those resources would be better deployed elsewhere. 

The 2nd secret of successful Insight teams is that they recognise an underlying purpose: to identify value for their organisations and to drive change within them.

Topics Discussed

• What can we learn from the IMA’s Insight capability benchmarking? (1.03)
• From service functions to proactive business drivers (2.45)
• The four key activities for Insight teams (3.54)
• We shouldn’t just work at the task level (5.48)
• We’re all too busy working on other things (7.47)

This is Episode 3 of the Transforming Insight podcast which will outline the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams. In this episode James Wycherley, Chief Executive of the IMA and author of the Transforming Insight book, explores the underlying purpose of an Insight team.

Highlights

• “Insight is an expensive business. It costs a lot of money to acquire data, to manage it, to analyse it, to buy market research from agencies, to employ people with analytical or research skills...So, like every corporate department, we have a collective responsibility to make sure that our organisations are getting the best possible return on their investment, otherwise there’s a good chance that those resources would be better deployed elsewhere.
• “We should also study our own organisations with the same focus we bring to studying our customers and our market. Why?  Sometimes we know exactly who these people are, and we can try to develop close working relationships with them. “
• “The most successful Insight teams share another attribute. They don’t just work at the task-level, they reflect on their underlying purpose and use this insight about themselves as a reference point and a source of inspiration.”
• “If our teams are clear that their focus should be on identifying value and driving change, then it naturally follows that we would question a lot of the activity that we tend to get drawn into because other people have asked us to do it.”

If you have the ambition to transform your Insight team and the role it plays in your organisation, please tune in to future editions of this Transforming Insight podcast. Not only will we explore all 42 secrets outlined in the Transforming Insight book, but we will also talk to senior corporate Insight leaders, delve into books that have inspired us, and discuss new best practice research carried out with the IMA’s corporate members.

You won’t want to miss this! So please hit subscribe - and thank you for listening. 

About - James Wycherley, Chief Executive, IMA and the author of Transforming Insight

James Wycherley was Director of Customer Insight and Analytics at Barclays from 2005 to 2015 when he became Chief Executive of the Insight Management Academy (IMA). A popular keynote speaker and acknowledged expert on Insight leadership, strategy, and communication, he is the author of the book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams, and over 35 IMA publications. He has provided thought leadership in the UK, Western Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, India, and the Middle East. Over the last five years, over 20,000 Insight professionals worldwide have received his 5 Minute Insight emails.

Resources:

If you would like more information on any of the ideas discussed in this episode of the Transforming Insight podcast, please visit www.insight-management.org

Copies of James Wycherley’s book Transforming Insight: the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams can be purchased directly from www.transforming-insight.com

Disclaimer

The Transforming Insight podcast is published by the Insight Management Academy and produced by Zorbiant.

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