One of the biggest demands we get as a company is for help with creating insights. “I want my team to be able to create insights” is a popular refrain. And as data becomes more and more available this demand is likely to increase. Managers speak to me of their frustrations: conducting research only to be disappointed by what the agency presents, and what their team is able to do with the data afterwards. There are many reasons for this situation, which I’m going to explore in this post. Overcoming these barriers is the first step to you and your team being able to create better insights.
Why we don’t create better insights?
People don’t know how to create insights
There are many reasons why people aren’t very good at creating insights. Many people simply don’t know how to do it: they’ve never been taught (and while it is difficult to train, it is perfectly possible. If you want help training your team to be better at creating insight, please get in touch and we’ll see what we can do!). Sometimes I encounter managers bemoaning the lack of insight from their team, yet when probed, the team has never been trained in how to actually do it. Hardly a surprise that they struggle!
People lack a process for creating insights – they assume it is ‘magic’
Allied to the first point, is that often businesses lack a process for the creation of insight (if you’d like to know the process we use at engage, just send us an email, and I’ll tell you!) Managers sit and stare at data willing insights to appear: sadly it doesn’t happen that way. Luckily, the process for creating insight is pretty simple: and if applied systematically, is guaranteed to produce better results.
People don’t have time to create insights
Possibly the biggest reason for teams not creating powerful insights is that they simply don’t have time. Or possibly they, or their boss, doesn’t allocate the time – which does seem rather crazy! But in today’s business world, managers have many things to crowd their calendars. Developing insights sadly doesn’t seem to get enough bandwidth.
People don’t allow time for creating insights
Please don’t sit at your desk at 10.00am in the morning and think “Right – I’m going to find an insight” and expect it to happen! Insights are stubborn things – they need coaxing! Want to know how to coax out an insight? Subscribe here as it is the topic of my very next post!
Focusing on a narrow source of data when creating insights
As I first drafted this article, I originally wrote that poorly configured or designed research was one of the barriers. And while it occasionally happens, it is rarely the biggest barrier. At engage, we’ve taken some poor research studies conducted in the past, and still managed to uncover high value insights.
However, one mistake many make is to focus too much on the latest study. Or to look only at reports from one function. Insights often are found when data from different sources is put together, for example pulling together consumer and shopper data.
A disconnected insights team limits the ability to create insights
Not always the case, but sometimes the people in charge of ‘insights’ are sometimes disconnected from the ‘front line’ of the business, and the people on the front line are disconnected from the data. Improving this connection, both in briefing, understanding and analyzing data is a big win. The role of developing insight should not lie only in the insight team: it should be the responsibility of every manager to use available data to find opportunities for growth.
Improving your team’s ability to create insights
The good news is that making your team more insightful isn’t that difficult. Where to start? We’d recommend these four steps:
- Train the team to use a simple insight process. Make them aware of the responsibility that each of them has for creating insights.
- Share with them the wide variety of data sources available.
- Use workshops to create time for the team to practice being insightful (and not to worry if they don’t at first succeed).
- Celebrate insight creation as well as the achievement of targets.
There is a fifth step – the one we call the Zeroth Step of Insight. If you want to learn about that subscribe to my other blog here – you’ll find stacks of articles and next week – I’ll share this – promise!
If you want help building insights capability in your team, or just help unpicking insights from data you already have, please get in touch. We have a variety of solutions to fit any budget. Get in touch now to have a chat.