How to Create an Impactful Insights Business

Typical Reports

If someone is putting together deliverables with no clear process, and their client audience doesn’t find them very actionable, this is the worst case scenario—having little impact on their clients, and having no Insights Delivery System.

And unfortunately, the reality is that these kinds of deliverables are the norm.

Let me say that again: poor product quality is the norm!

These businesses tend to present “Key Findings”, with slides that require the audience to plod through sections in the same order as questions appeared in the discussion guide or survey.

And that's after sitting through 7-10 slides of apologia about the objectives, research questions, methodology, sample size, screener....

They bury the lede on recommendations or anything resembling a consultative point of view. There might not be recommendations made at all.

They might check all or most of the “objectives” boxes. Here are the answers you asked for using this method. Here's every single punch to every single question.

There's little to no visual clarity. And handing it to a designer to "make it pretty" will not fix all those things I just said.

They may (or may not… 😬) get delivered on time.

Many get stuck here by thinking of their role as The Vendor, the order-taker who provides good customer service (at the expense of their product). They don't diagnose their client and ask the right questions. They agree to shorter and shorter deadlines and lowering prices as a concession to win the sale without creating the time efficiencies and resources necessary for delivering truly actionable insights.

Bottle Neck

In the top left quadrant are Insights Pros who are more consultative, but they're still struggling to get decks out the door past bottlenecks such as Principals who, at the 11th hour, will rework slides created by their team to “find the story” just before the deadline.

Actionable deliverables are happening despite their inefficient product delivery process.

The analysts and others who make it happen do so at their own expense. Expect late nights, weekends, lack of sleep, burnout, and overwhelm.

If deliverables can’t go out until they’re “made pretty” by designers or freelancers—and if they’re slammed, burned out, on vacation, or otherwise unavailable, these companies don’t have much of an alternative plan in place to protect the consistent quality of their deliverables.

It's like if only one guy at Apple made iPhones. The product is great, but what does Apple do when he's out sick?

These companies may have a hard time delivering one-pagers, infographics, illustrations, print work, or video, because (i) they don't have these capabilities in-house, and/or (ii) they don’t have a proven process in place for articulating and visualizing insights in these ways.

This can all lead to expensive invoices to pay, due to all the rush rates, revisions and changes in scope.

This isn't sustainable. If their good products lead to referrals, which leads to more clients, they're in trouble.

Automated Exports

Others in the lower right quadrant take a different approach.

We can give clients access to dashboards on which they can slice their own data. Cool.

A variety of platforms can export slides in a single click, now with or without some AI "analysis".

Ah, the democratization of data collection! Anyone can do it.

Not really. Someone still has to interpret those data in the proper context, extract any deeper meaning out of it, and produce something that can be delivered and communicated clearly to C-suite partners and other stakeholders. A human still has to create something and articulate that message in order to influence decision-making.

That someone should be an insights expert, but unfortunately, sometimes this "last mile” of creating a deliverable out of it that says something is left up to the client.

Product delivery here is simple, and it's fast, but time is only one component of an effective product delivery system. One does not simply solve the quality problem by going faster.

Impactful Insights

The top right is the best-case scenario, where you have a proven system for delivering Impactful Insights.

It’s not a one-off. You and your team can do it again and again, consistently, reliably, every single time, without wasting valuable, often expensive, resources.

Great products drive referrals, and eliminate friction in the sale.

So you probably don't have to waste time writing proposals (read: giving away your ideas for free) as much as you used to.

You're a respected, credible expert. Business leadership seeks out your counsel.

You don't think of what you do as [this or that] research capability.

You're adept at robustly collecting evidence from a bunch of different sources, clearly articulating what's insightful about it, elevating that with visual clarity, and making explicit how that all connects to stakeholder's needs and the broader business strategy, guiding and advising your clients on what they should do to create real value in their business.

Impactful Insights is what you’re known for; they’re a part of your brand.

I promised up top to define what we mean by our y-axis Actionability, and make it actionable for your business, and for you personally, to move you into that upper right Impactful quadrant.

We're going to get way into it, and define the OKRs you can start targeting right now, in the next edition.

If waiting isn't your thing though, and you'd like a sneak preview, I’d be delighted to start a conversation about this with you.

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