I love our profession. It is our honor to help companies figure out what their customers really want; to understand their frustrations and problems so that our clients can build solutions. It is so fundamental that consumer insights should have an influential place within corporations, right? Most senior leaders believe that too. That is why…
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Earning Trust is the most important thing we can do. Without trust, a superbly designed, executed, and analyzed study is meaningless. Without trust it will not be accepted and acted upon. Here’s the formula for generating trust . . . The formula for trust How about a formula for trust for us analytical types? David…
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The top of the organization makes the really big decisions. And of course we want them to use our insights when makig these decisions. Unfortunately, many times our reports are our only access to these decision makers. This makes it more difficult but also very important for our reports and presentations to do their job…
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Do you have a great idea, suggestion, or recommendation you want to offer to management? Those of us in market research or other “staff” functions often have a unique opportunity to do so. So how do we do it effectively? We see trends, activity, data, insights, etc. in the course of our work that we…
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Are you reporting your strategic results when the company is focused on execution? An approach to getting heard is to sync your results with your company’s planning cycle. Get on the planning agenda…where the senior leaders will hear you There is a time when management is planning and there is a time when the organization…
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We all understand that senior management values decisiveness. So why are many of our documents or presentations filled with qualifiers – “perhaps,” “tend to,” “may be,” “90 percent level of confidence?” The truth is, as a profession, we offer a great deal of expertise, but we also tend to offer a great deal of ambiguity,…
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I am borrowing this title from John Maxwell’s book Good Leaders Ask Great Questions. At the end of the day, our effectiveness as researchers, marketers, and even in life rests on the questions we ask. We have our strategies, methods, and approaches? But how do we know what we are doing is right? How do…
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As research professionals, we evaluate a brand’s position in the market. We help firms identify how and where to position themselves, how to differentiate themselves from others, and we measure their brand health. Yet, how many research firms or research departments think about how to position themselves? How good are we at managing our own…
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“If I were in charge of my organization, what would I do based on the information I have?” That’s a question each of us as researchers should consistently ask ourselves. All too often, we are content to give numbers and charts, and report what respondents said, when our management really wants to know what we recommend and how it…
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Let’s say you have a great idea for your management. You’ve identified something the company should really consider. How do you move it up the ladder so that it gets implemented? Do you send an email? Perhaps include a link? Do you stop someone in the lunchroom or after a meeting to share your thoughts?…
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