Episode 31: Identifying options
In every organisation, someone is making a decision about which business issues the Insight team will inform; whether researchers and analysts will work in the same function; what the headcount, structure and budget of the team will look like; and how the team’s performance will be measured.
But in many organisations, it doesn’t feel like these decisions are deliberate. Many Insight teams carry on doing what they did the year before by default, with a bit more focus on projects that mean a lot to a new senior stakeholder.
And budgets roll on from one year to the next, cut when business is not going well, sometimes increased when the organisation has a burst of enthusiasm for taking evidence-based decisions.
But successful Insight teams take decisions about their scope, scale, structure, outputs and budgets in a way that is consistent with their stated vision for Insight. Day to day activity is shaped by strategic decisions about Insight’s purpose and role.
In this 21-minute episode, Tim Downing, former Director of Insight and Foresight at Molson Coors shares his views on the Golden Thread which he believes must run from high-level purpose through to the options we identify for prioritisation, process and people development.
Please listen to find out more!
Topics Discussed
- Developing a mission statement with your team (2.27)
- The importance of conscious choices (4.40)
- Think creatively and think big (7.48)
- The perils of developing parallel strategies and plans (10.00)
- It’s all about choosing you will do and not do (12.15)
Highlights
- “You could say that we all have an Insight strategy already – the question is whether our current strategy – what we do – has been arrived at through a series of explicit choices and with reference to an overarching vision for Insight?”
- “For Insight teams, a mission statement usually takes the essence of a vision, and crafts it into a punchy sentence that describes what the team aims to do in a particular period of time and what effect this will have”
- “Just like the process of developing a vision, it is important to think creatively and think big because if you constrain your thinking at this stage then there’s every chance that you will actually implement something even less ambitious”
This is episode 31 of the Transforming Insight podcast.
If you have the ambition to transform your Insight team and the role it plays in your organisation, please tune in to future episodes. Not only will we explore the 42 secrets of successful corporate Insight teams as outlined in the Transforming Insight book, 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 subscribe - and thank you for listening.
About James Wycherley, 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, and regularly hosts the IMA’s Insight forums - London, Manchester, UK Online and US Online.
The Insight Management Academy is the world’s leading authority on transforming Insight teams.
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 direct 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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