A perennial topic with clients is the ability (or lack of it) of their teams to create ground-breaking insights. Consumer and shopper insight teams are producing lots of understanding, lots of analysis, but sometimes they struggle to find those breakthrough insights that will truly transform the business. Some of this criticism is possibly unfair, and some of it may be that, in reality, ground-breaking, business transforming insights simply don’t come along every day. But it is fair for CEOs and Marketing Directors to expect, from all of their investment, some paradigm shifting insights that will really step the business forward.
There are many reasons this doesn’t happen as often as it might. One of those reasons is simply that researchers, insight professionals and marketers find exactly what they are looking for in the data. Unfortunately they are looking for the wrong things!
People see what they want to see – they spot what they are looking for. And this is alas not limited to researchers. When a group of experience radiologists were asked to look for a lung nodule in a series of charts, over half found the lung module, but most failed to spot the image of a gorilla which had been superimposed (and was 40 times larger than the nodule they were looking for!) onto one of the images.
It’s a play on the well-known video (which I’ve used in workshops) which shows a group of guys playing basketball. The observers are asked to count the number of bounces. As the video plays, a guy (or girl, I suppose!) in a gorilla suit casually wanders through the scene. Time and again, many observers fail to see the gorilla.
We see what we are looking for, what we want to see, what we expect to see. This has some huge implications for those of us who spend our days hunting through data looking for those precious insights which are going to help us build our business. Often we enter the data realm armed with a set of hypotheses which tell us exactly what to look for. But perhaps it is this approach which is the main reason why so little of what we find is ground breaking. We’re looking for what we want to find, and that is what we find. The unexpected? That gets missed too often.
So what to do to create more and better insights?
Firstly, those of us who are insight professionals: fret not. The same study (and several others too) suggest that experts are better than most at spotting the unexpected. Which means that there is still huge value in clients engaging consultants and insight professionals (that’s a relief!) But for all of us, there are steps we can take in our insights approach to improve the chances of finding those paradigm shifting insights.
Better hypotheses drive better insights
First things first – having a great and broad set of hypotheses is key. Please don’t sit at your desk, scratch your head, or (God forbid!) copy some from a previous project. Starting here will rarely, if ever, create ground-breaking insights. Get others involved. Ideally others from outside your business (hint – consultants are really useful here – they have loads of varied experiences!). Brainstorm hypotheses and allow the ideas to be as wild as possible. Don’t reject, don’t kill anything at this stage (we can always prioritize later).
Even after you have your answer, take one more look
If you are like me, when you look at some data, or a chart, something will often leap off the page at you. Typically, this is what you were looking for, or evidence which supports your belief or hypothesis. That’s great, but before we move on, look again. Look for something else. What other trends, correlations or patterns can be seen. If you don’t see anything every time, don’t worry. Even if a new nugget hasn’t emerged yet, you’ve stimulated your brain, which will help enormously (as you will see later).
Go hunting for nothing, sometimes
Insights are sneaky and elusive, especially when you really need them. When you have a project, and a set of hypotheses, finding something that we’re not looking for is even harder. So, logic would suggest, we’ve got a much better chance of finding an insight when we are not looking for it.
Give yourself more time and allow insights to come to you
Wallow in the data that you have. Yes, there will be time to be more focused, to use the hypotheses you’ve developed to drive purpose into your data trawl. But before that, just read, and look and wonder. Get to know the data. When you need to find insights, immersion is the name of the game. Seriously. Dig in. Not just the latest report, but ANYTHING YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON. Read. Know it backwards, forwards, upside down and back to front. Read other stuff. Anything. Curated content (at @mikeanthony6000 for instance).
Insights come to you
Stop and reflect. Once you’ve eye-balled all the data – Wait. Go and do something else. Think about something else. Allow the neurons in your head to fizz over this for a while. If a thought pops into your head, play with it and then let it go (but do write it down). Insights don’t always enter the world fully formed with a big flashing label on them. Insights can be subtle at first – they sometimes need time to mature like a fine wine.
Insights are tricky. Insights can be elusive. But sometimes we treat research and analysis too much like a treadmill: driving relentlessly to the report and the response to the questions we’ve asked. That’s important, but often I find big insights – business changing insights, come from the time when we are a little less structured.
If you’d like to know more about how to get more insights from your research, please contact me.
