Episodes

Welcome back to the Transforming Insight podcast! This is episode 1 of Season 11, and we’ve called it 'Perfecting Insight’s processes'. How much value does your Insight team place on its ways of working? How much time does it spend crystallising best practice and establishing effective and efficient systems? Unless we pay attention to critical processes we can’t induct new recruits, set common standards, or buy back our own time so that we can work as Insight leaders, not as Insight managers without whose involvement nothing can happen.

Towards the end of each business year, everyone in corporate life starts to think about the success they’ve enjoyed during the past 12 months. Which objectives have been hit, which pieces of work have received the most praise, and which things haven’t gone so well? Will our line manager see those issues in the same way as we do? What will that mean for our performance rating? And what about our colleagues? How will our team members be assessed and rewarded? Knowing how our contribution is going to be judged will be top of mind for everyone towards the end of a period. But how the success of any project is going to be measured is also a determinant in what we focus on in the first place.

This season we’ve been continuing our focus on the 9Ps of the Insight Leader’s Playbook, and in the last episode, we explored P for Performance. James asked ‘has your Insight team had a good year?’ and ‘how did you approach your assessment?’ The most progressive Insight teams focus on identifying value opportunities for their organisations, and know they have to quantify that value if they’re to prioritise the right projects, contextualise their findings, and sell their recommendations to senior decision-makers.

Over the last 3 seasons of our podcast, we’ve explored 8 of the 9 Ps of the Insight Leader’s Playbook. In season 9, we looked at Purpose, Profile and People, in season 10 at Partners, Prioritisation and Products, and in this season at Processes and Performance.

This week I’ve been thinking about the roles that Insight professionals are likely to play in an AI-shaped world, which is the topic of the IMA’s Insight forums in November and December. It’s too early to see the details of any reporting line roles, but I think we can start to map a journey that we will all need to go on – or continue along: a journey from being researchers or analysts to becoming Insight activists. This topic is framing the way I’m thinking about the content I’m reading and listening to, including a new edition of Matthew Syed’s book Black Box Thinking, which has been published to mark its tenth anniversary. It’s a great example, packed full of examples of how some sectors (such as aviation) have become famous for how they record and share learnings when accidents occur, whilst others have a culture of sweeping problems under the carpet and never moving forward.

It’s the last episode of 2025, and James celebrates his birthday while wrapping up Season 11 with a special Christmas roundtable discussion featuring his colleagues and regular guests - Lisa and Emma. We dive into the insights gathered from our recent forums in Manchester and London, where we engaged with numerous Insight leaders about the evolving landscape of corporate insight teams. As they discuss the key themes from these forums, James introduces the concept of the "Insight Professionals Pyramid," which outlines the essential skills and roles that Insight professionals should embrace as we navigate the future. The pyramid emphasises the importance of evidence-based activities, the generation of insights, and the need for Insight professionals to act as growth consultants, foresight pioneers, insight influencers, and knowledge stewards. And the apex of the pyramid is an ambition: an aspiration for all corporate Insight professionals to see themselves first and foremost as Insight …