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By Thor Olof Philogène
Insight teams are playing an ever more critical role in empowering global organizations.
And rightly so, with McKinsey research showcasing how organizations that leverage customer insights outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and by more than 25% in gross margin.
Yet, insights only remain an effective tool that informs business decision-making, when interpreted effectively, and placed in the hands of stakeholders who can drive organizational change.
It’s this skill set that sees insights professionals playing an increasingly important part. No longer just the voice of the consumer, insights teams face both a challenge and an opportunity: to expand their business influence.
In my conversations with several of our clients, and in conversations with additional insights leaders, something that has stood out to me is this: the holistic perspective required to achieve this goal has a lot in common with the CEO mind-set.
While I, myself, am not an insights leader in the traditional sense, I can share a bit of a CEO perspective, as well as the learnings I’ve gained from industry leaders.
Here are three practices to consider adopting in order to elevate the role of insights within your organization.
1. Move from gatekeeper to business partner.
Increasingly, insight teams are shifting from insight gatekeepers to strategic business partners.
Much like CEOs who focus on empowering teams, it is the role of insight professionals to act as the customer champion and ensure their voices are heard, placing actionable insights in the right hands, at the right time.
A consultative approach here, along with the ability to partner with stakeholders across the business, can truly help departments understand how insights can drive value at a micro, meso and macro level. This helps ensure that there is a clear vision of what each team is trying to achieve, and why.
Storytelling is an integral part of this, helping to influence decision-making in an inspiring and engaging way. Rather than taking a neutral stance, stakeholders increasingly appreciate insights delivered with a point of view.
After all, business leaders will only feel confident applying insights when they really understand their meaning and significance.
2. Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo.
CEOs constantly challenge their teams, processes, business models and their own individual performance in order to improve. And it is this role that insights professionals must adopt within global teams to challenge traditional business thinking.
Sitting in a unique position within the business, insights teams represent the voice of the customer, and act as the entry point for insights into the organization. It’s this unique viewpoint that empowers insights teams to challenge the status quo, and to ask difficult questions.
Insights leaders can also align stakeholders by connecting the dots across teams. Much like a CEO who maintains a company-wide lens, insights teams work cross-functionally and should be encouraged to support multiple teams in using insight to drive change both within departments, and across business functions. Weaving insights into everything from finance to supply chain to R&D will encourage strategic alignment.
3. Implement the right technology to put insights at everyone’s fingertips.
It remains very difficult to inform business decision-making if the technology used to manage insights creates bottlenecks that constrain resources.
That’s why it’s essential for organizations to open their insights with human-centric, user-friendly technology that people need to use, want to use and will continue to use. Even better is to choose technology that’s inspiring, and dare I say, fun to use.
By doing this, organizations can ensure they nurture and unlock expertise, by automating repetitive tasks and removing process-related obstacles. But it also ensures that the full value of insights is realized.
Insight departments that democratize access are better positioned to empower business partners with unique insight that will move the needle for the business, and for customers.
And in choosing technology that helps to drive the organization forward, insights teams can become trailblazers in their own right, promoting digital transformation on an even broader scale.
Conclusion: Embracing the CEO Mind-Set
It’s important to note that many insights leaders are already doing some or all of the things that I mentioned above.
In fact, insights leaders are increasingly adopting the cross-functional, holistic mind-set of a CEO. But I’m hoping to see more insights leaders and their teams truly embracing just how vital they are to an organization.
In the same way that CEOs are seen as an essential part of a company, insights teams should feel empowered and confident about the unique skills and perspective they bring to the table.