Futuring Friday – EMEA 2021
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Futuring Friday – EMEA 2021
As part of the Festival of NewMR 2021, join Ray Poynter and guests in this EMEA panel discussion. What are the key issues and trends facing insights and market research? Join Ray and his panel of leading research experts as they discuss prospects for our industry.
Transcript of recording with Seyi Adeoye, Mike Stevens, Jane Frost, Nikki Lavoie, and Ray Poynter – generated automatically by HappyScribe which means it will be about 80% accurate – if you spot confusing errors, please email ray@new-mr.com. The timestamps are included to help you jump directly to a point of interest.
[00:00:06.860] – Ray Poynter
My name’s Ray Pointer, I’m going to be the moderator for this session here today, and first thing we’d like to do is to give a big shout out to all of the sponsors. We love bringing these events to you. But obviously there are costs, there are licenses, there’s editing and some background calls around. That’s the way that we can do that, is these wonderful companies here sponsor new. So the next time you’re looking for any services, please do consider visiting them.
[00:00:35.330] – Ray Poynter
If you do speak to anybody from opinion or publicity or Naboo or confirm it or any of these companies do say, oh, we love the way that you sponsor new email because that will help create a virtuous circle where they’ll want to renew at the end of the year so we can all do each other a favor that way. So here are four fabulous panelists. Michael Ware is joining us from France, Mike Stephens from the U.K., Shiyi from Nigeria, from Lagos, and Jane, also from the U.K. Each one of them are going to bring along a topic and start us off with the discussion and then we will explore that topic and move on.
[00:01:19.220] – Ray Poynter
So by the end of the session, you know, 60 to 80 minutes from now, we’ll have covered four topics and answer any key questions that you might have. So let’s start with Nikki. Hi, Nikki.
[00:01:34.160] – Nikki Lavoie
Hello. Hi, Ray.
[00:01:35.840] – Ray Poynter
Hi there. Good to see you. Lovely red sofa in the background.
[00:01:40.880] – Nikki Lavoie
Thank you.
[00:01:42.440] – Ray Poynter
And so your topic today.
[00:01:46.480] – Nikki Lavoie
So I’m actually here to talk a little bit about the overlap between user research and market research, and so a lot of people in the industry have been starting to talk about this. I’ve been seeing the topic bubble up on LinkedIn feeds and in blog posts for, I would say maybe around two years now. But obviously, as time has continued on, it’s become even more and more popular. We’ve actually done some blog posts and podcast episodes recently about this.
[00:02:13.780] – Nikki Lavoie
So I just kind of wanted to address this and and have this be the topic I talk about, because I would also love to see what the other panelists have to say and then potentially what some of the audience has to say. So just to give my very brief perspective on this, a lot of people start out by asking what is the difference or similarity in the skill sets between a user researcher and a market researcher? My opinion on that is typically that the skill set of market researchers tends to be broader and deeper because where we tend to be covering a lot more ground on the market research side, whereas on the user research side, we tend to be a lot more focused and specific in the research that we’re doing.
[00:02:55.990] – Nikki Lavoie
So when people ask, you know, which is the better place to start, should I start in market research and then transitioned to use a research or the other way around, I would typically suggest getting a foundational knowledge in market research because it will expose you to a broader range of techniques and methods and then being able to focus those accordingly and use user research. But moving on beyond just skill set, I do kind of have a pseudo bold prediction, I guess I would say, as it relates to these to these two areas.
[00:03:29.950] – Nikki Lavoie
And that is that I actually think that the importance of user research and user experience in general within client side organizations is going to grow and is eventually going to eclipse market research. And that market research and consumer insights functions may eventually be folded into user experience functions. And there’s a couple of reasons why I think that market research, although it can and historically has had impact on the development of products themselves, market research is still actually thought of as research that is aimed at understanding how to sell a product.
[00:04:10.870] – Nikki Lavoie
User research is actually considered research on the product itself, so it is actually designed to understand what is the product, how people interact with it, and without understanding the product itself, we cannot then market the product to any of the audiences. The other thing to consider is that, as we’ve seen in relation to covid happening last year and still affecting a lot of the world, a lot of interactions have become more and more digital. A lot more people are now shopping online.
[00:04:46.240] – Nikki Lavoie
There are brands that are now selling direct to consumer that were previously very heavily reliant on retail partners. And because of this additional aspect of digital interaction with a product or brand, user research has actually skyrocketed in importance in this past year because user research also has this other affiliation that it is for testing digital products. So actually, user research doesn’t have to only apply to digital products that can be in relation to any kind of product, but because it has this association of being something that you interact with online.
[00:05:21.910] – Nikki Lavoie
So maybe the product is a website or the product is an app or the product is a digital service because it’s had that affiliation. A lot of client side organizations have definitely understood the growing importance for them to pay attention to user experience as a whole. So there are a couple of things to consider. If we do want to predict in the future that user research will grow and possibly eclipse market research. An important one is that, in my experience, user experience research typically has more budget.
[00:05:58.090] – Nikki Lavoie
And again, this has to do with the fact that user experience research is in fact impacting the actual product that is being sold. Consumer insights functions very often have to fight for marketing budget, and they’re competing with many other departments in an organisation that also require budget to do their job. So where user research is able to get budget because it’s about the development of the product, market research is about how to sell the product. One seems more important than the other in the eyes of key stakeholders.
[00:06:27.910] – Nikki Lavoie
And so user research often has a bigger budget. The other thing is that user research has greater involvement by key stakeholders. Again, because of this idea that user research directly impacts the product. You often have product designers, product managers, product owners participating in the research. Either as viewers or designing the research itself, so when the results come back, there’s actually a bigger impact of the research within the organization because of those stakeholder involvement, whereas a lot of us who have been working on the consumer insights side for a long time, we know we may find, you know, excellent findings, really important things coming out of our work.
[00:07:07.850] – Nikki Lavoie
And it isn’t always the case that our recommendations are acted upon because there’s quite a few layers between the marketing research and the stakeholders who are making decisions. Not always, but that can be the case. And then one other point is that it’s very possible that user research or user experience research will eventually house consumer insights functions within client side organizations. I think the reason for that is, you know, for all the reasons that I’ve already stated. But when you do conduct market research or marketing related research to understand a market or whether it’s to understand a concept that you’re testing, advertising, that you’re testing anything like that, a lot of those findings do end up having an impact on the product itself.
[00:07:52.700] – Nikki Lavoie
So you may find that you are testing a piece of advertising for a new app. And people can’t understand why the app is depicted as working this way when they expect it to work that way. And the user experience researcher would be able to take that feedback and actually make changes to the product itself where the market researcher cannot. So just to wrap everything up with a nice and neat little bow, emphasizing again that I think use the research will continue to grow importance, I think it has the possibility of eclipsing market research in importance and in growth, both in terms of spend but also in terms of stakeholder involvement.
[00:08:31.940] – Nikki Lavoie
And I think it’s also possible that user experience research departments will eventually house. Consumer Insights functions internally and more and more researchers will need to be able to navigate both of those both of those fields equally.
[00:08:48.710] – Ray Poynter
Right. So we’ll turn to the panel, I’m going to ask Jayne first in terms of the Balkanization of insights, what do you think of the implications and what are you already doing to address this or what might we do to address it?
[00:09:06.710] – Jane Frost
Well, I think it’s a fascinating concept and yes, he’s absolutely right, we’ve seen a lot more sort of public events address the the crossover recently, but where, you know, the next client, I was never a professional search and professional marketer. And and one of the things having set up the senior client counsel in the UK, which involves everyone from Unilever to Beattie to Reckitt Benckiser, ITV, all that sort of thing, is that. A lot of these definitions is a supply chain defining itself.
[00:09:42.100] – Jane Frost
So actually, clients have very little patience with our sort of little bubbles that we put ourselves in. And one of the things that we discovered doing some international roundtables with the Insights Association of the Research Society in the US and Australia, specifically with this word agility, is what is really pounding the clients, sort of doing their heads in. And I think becoming a small. Or an even smaller sort of market stall type industry is not helping us deliver agility to the clients because the clients are interested in those names, they just want to an interesting way to solve their problem.
[00:10:30.080] – Jane Frost
And I am sure what Mickey is saying, a lot of this has come on recently since I was a client. But as a Unilever market brand manager, I just use whatever the right technique was. It wasn’t about what it was called. And there was some pretty darn wonderful ones that I seem to remember. So I think this is a serious threat. I think it’s self-induced and I think we need to get over it. So.
[00:11:00.610] – Ray Poynter
Yeah, absolutely, and there’s a comment in there in the chat that decision makers no idea between the difference between one type of research and another. Mike, you run an interesting panel I’m sure you’ve had other discussions on. What can they sort of useability teams learn from the generals and vice versa?
[00:11:21.780] – Mike Stevens
Yeah, I mean, I I’m actually with Nicky on most of what she’s talking about here, and I think we are I’m not sure that I’m completely in with what with what you’re saying, Jane, because I think the world of UX and user research is actually it’s very different parts of organizations and very different types of activity that happen. And I think we’ve got to be very clear whether we’re talking about market research as a function of a department, as an organizational artifact or research as an activity and research as an activity is I think is is going to become much more widespread in organizations, but it’s going to be done by very different people.
[00:12:09.960] – Mike Stevens
And if you look in the space, you’ve got an awful lot of people who are not researchers doing research. You got product managers, designers, people with them, or even developers who are now starting to do this. And it’s a very you know, it’s a much more fragmented set of activities. And to be honest, you know, the UX research body group of people are struggling with things that the market research industry has systematized and built process around for the last kind of two or three decades.
[00:12:43.290] – Mike Stevens
So there’s an awful lot of energy around the research ops side of UX research because it’s kind of been a bit Wild West and people have been off doing it, recruiting whoever doing their own things. These are things that the market research industry has developed, you know, a good set of processes and methods around. And I think rather than it being, you know, use it, I think what we’re going to see is, you know, you talked about Balkanization.
[00:13:08.460] – Mike Stevens
I think we’ll see. Quite a lot of evolution of, you know, some of the principles of market research will go into the you expose some of the tools that UX researchers are using will be used more by market researchers. So I think there’s definitely a lot of change, but I see it more as a kind of symbiosis and more people doing these things than it being like a, you know, a big kind of threat to the existence of market research.
[00:13:37.960] – Mike Stevens
Because you can you could say the same thing about social intelligence, about data analytics, about many other types of activity that we kind of broadly lumped together. And, you know, they kind of understanding people rubric. So, you know, I I hold with a lot of what you’re saying. They care about the development of you explicit. I don’t think it’s necessarily going to use it. I think there’s going to be an awful lot of purists once we actually translate and understand the language that nine times out of ten we’re talking about the same thing just with a different label.
[00:14:09.190] – Mike Stevens
But there are you know, there are some really effective things in use in research and UX, the market research industry needs to adopt. You know, you talked about agility and some of that really embedded seems cross-functional teams running weekly sprints, having cycles, product development cycles in the tech industry that are very, very short term and fast turnaround and very product focused. So, you know, it’s I don’t I don’t really see one displacing the other. I see a lot of evolution where there’s a lot of kind of cross-fertilisation.
[00:14:42.370] – Ray Poynter
She what’s the scene like in Lagos and perhaps broader than that in Africa, is useability raising its head to the same extent?
[00:14:55.230] – Seyi Adeoye
Well, you know, in Africa, it’s it’s still not very clear. We don’t really have that huge debates around Eurex against market research, of course, for Deeter products. I mean, like Neki rightly said, there’s a very strong association when it comes to user experience research. I mean by default, I mean usability. And all of that really happens a lot. My point of view is that I don’t see one actually being better than the order or UX taking over, as it were, totally swallowing all the market research as a function.
[00:15:37.770] – Seyi Adeoye
I think it’s good to be collaborative, like Microglia said. I mean, there will be tools that are being fusing to us that we choose also in terms of our approaches and thinking and the dynamics of UX that also empower practitioners to begin to also infuse into what we do see. Ultimately, I always want to look at things from the point, from the lens of the lens of the visa as a business or the brand owner. For them, it’s two sides of the coin without amount.
[00:16:09.300] – Seyi Adeoye
You can’t really understand whether there’s an opportunity in the market in the first place. Even beauty products. So, I mean, enter is like the foundation or segment to go after. What kind of product they need is a gap. How best for me to even begin to build something and then go after, of course, right after that point, which then becomes a UX thing where you are creating trying to get a look at what you prioritize in terms of the product’s features and functions.
[00:16:38.400] – Seyi Adeoye
Yeah. So I see things evolve into a more collaborative approach because at the end of the day it is all about a customer is all about making better decisions for the business owner.
[00:16:53.140] – Ray Poynter
Thanks. Thanks. Does anybody want to come back and add anything else before we go to Nikki to round up on that and move to the next topic?
[00:17:04.390] – Jane Frost
Right, if I may, I think there is one thing that we need to challenge, and this is all of us, I’ve always had my suspicions that I did a presentation with someone from BTE the other day, and I’m glad to say that was shared by this particular person, that one of the problems that we get in user testing is it’s frequently done from a technical point of view. And the net result is if you ask yourself the broad question, why does so much tech only work for techies?
[00:17:31.650] – Jane Frost
It’s because they’re actually testing themselves. And that’s why I do think it would be much more healthy if there was more of a fusion and that we actually got people who actually thought, what about the small person and doesn’t really need a nuclear bomb making in their microwave. It. Is it? The test for me is ninety seven percent of the functionality of microwaves are never used. And that, to me, is a failure of testing, in fact, putting all that much technology into something never gets used.
[00:18:00.850] – Jane Frost
But I’m sure it is very exciting when you write it in scientific journals or tell your friends about it. So I do think that there is more working together needed to avoid some of that, saying the planet is a good reason for that as well.
[00:18:15.220] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely. And linking back to the forward, looking forward to the fourth topic, inclusion. There’s anybody who’s not seen it. Have a look at The Economist this week. There’s an article about tech that doesn’t work for people who are taller or shorter or have a different skin color or are female. And the vast majority of tech is tested on and drugs and medical devices are tested on white males. And turns out when not a majority on the planet at the time, you get that Venn diagram.
[00:18:51.040] – Ray Poynter
So I don’t know.
[00:18:52.690] – Mike Stevens
It’s just not something absolute. But I, I, I agree, like, to some extent that when there hasn’t been enough testing or bad U.S. research about the use of testing is done by white blokes who are designing their own. I agree. A lot of that stuff just washes through. But the majority of specialists use the researchers. I mean, a couple of communities and I see a lot of the stuff they talk about those those who are specialists, either embedded in larger tech organizations or freelancers, are generally very focused on diversity and inclusion, making sure that design is inclusive.
[00:19:32.200] – Mike Stevens
They are generally very well trained in observational methods and have good backgrounds in psychology. So where you’ve got specialists, actually, I see putting more attention being paid to some of those things and a lot more concerned than I than I actually have in the market research industry. But I think you’re right in that there’s far too much stuff just go through and it doesn’t get tested or is tested badly or is just, you know, let’s let’s get enough data to validate our hypothesis, which is this works for me.
[00:20:04.360] – Mike Stevens
So it will work for everybody. So, you know, I think let’s not tarnish specialist UX researchers with bad product because there’s an awful lot of very highly skilled people in the research industry.
[00:20:17.380] – Jane Frost
Absolutely. I think, Mike, I was talking tech with doing too much tech.
[00:20:24.840] – Mike Stevens
Or you could lead information just like Nickie’s and you want to respond to before we move to Mike.
[00:20:32.110] – Nikki Lavoie
Yeah, I just wanted to add very quickly that I think I. Just to clarify my bold prediction about you eclipsing or you research eclipsing market research and then folding it in, I think that cannot happen without collaboration. And I think collaboration is going to be the key. I think that the element that I was talking about, where stakeholders are actually closer to use a research than they are to market research, means that user research is more agile. And I think that it’s a it’s a big benefit to any company that’s placing emphasis on user research because they are going to be able to be more agile.
[00:21:10.090] – Nikki Lavoie
And when they do fold consumer insights under their umbrella, as many of them are already doing, it’s going to enable consumer insights to be more agile as well. And I completely agree with what Mike just said. As you know, Ray, very well, I am one foot in both communities use the research and market research and its use the researchers that are leading the way in diversity, inclusive, accessible testing, accessible products, accessible design, market researchers are behind in terms of all of the things we can be doing there.
[00:21:41.240] – Nikki Lavoie
So it is, in my opinion, not at all a threat. You know, talking about doing things this way, I think it’s going to be an improvement. I think it’s going to place greater importance and emphasis on consumer insights functions when they are given the freedom and the flexibility to collaborate more quickly in a more agile manner with their stakeholders, understanding the importance of the consumer insights function and will be able to get more done with less moving forward.
[00:22:07.480] – Ray Poynter
Thanks, Nicky. And we’re going to come back to infusion later in the session. But now we’re going to move to research is going to be a lot less expert, Mike.
[00:22:17.490] – Mike Stevens
Yeah, this is probably a little bit counterintuitive, given given what we’ve we’ve just been talking about, but bear with me because there’s some there’s some logic here. OK, so the the demand for insight, understanding of people, you know, whether we call them users, consumers, audience members, customers, whatever it is, that demand inside is growing and it is growing actually pretty strongly. If you look at Simon, Chadwicks movie now attracts investment into the industry, five billion dollars of external funding coming into the broader consumer insights industry in, you know, during the pandemic year.
[00:22:59.440] – Mike Stevens
So in 2020. So there’s a huge amount of demand. Gartner tracks some of these things with the CIO and the investment priorities. When it comes to technology, data and analytics are always top of the tree. So, you know, understanding what’s going on with people, I think there’s this there is this enormous demand. And I think we have to be careful about talking about, you know, market research defined historically what the IP bellwether report came out yesterday, which is just perpetual gaslighting of the research industry about how budgets are going down.
[00:23:36.810] – Mike Stevens
And it’s all tragic and it’s nonsense. OK, we should stop doing it because they’re asking the wrong people the wrong question for the sake of continuity. And that’s a different rant. But my point is huge growth. But what’s happening is these these methods and the way that we’re understanding people are being embedded into nonexperts tools and workflows. So a little bit like some of the bad user testing that ends up in bad products. You’ve got people across the organization now able to do a lot more of their own feedback, a lot more of their own testing, a lot more of their own product analytics, things like things that were, you know, still are under the hood.
[00:24:19.740] – Mike Stevens
Amazingly sophisticated research methods. And, you know, we happily write off a B testing, as you know, which is the least the least, you know, Web page design under under the hood. There’s a lot of sophisticated, you know, methodology and analytics. And, you know, how do you decide which is the most appropriate one but baked into technology where you just push a button when you go? Let me test the people want the red button or the blue button up fills the you know, the data on the website.
[00:24:50.430] – Mike Stevens
You’ve got different execution’s. So things like user user testing embedded into the design tools and the prototyping tools that are being used by designers and on researchers, technology people, you’ve got things like what are your sponsors, a case of a conjointly someone who has built a company with automated conjoint testing. Now that it just blows my mind, because the last time I actually did a proper conjoin job, there was like six people in research, international marketing sciences team beavering away building simulators in Excel.
[00:25:25.560] – Mike Stevens
So we’ve displaced so much of that stuff, embedded it into not just the technology is the enabler, but it’s embedding into the workflow of other people in the organization. So for me, I think what we’ll see is this huge growth in research. We’ve got more people doing more stuff. We’ve got less of it funneling through the department or the agencies that historically have done what we think of as market research. We’ve got far more people doing their own desktop, product analytics, social intelligence surveys in our survey, monkeys, that kind of poster child for people running their own research.
[00:26:05.160] – Mike Stevens
But it’s happening on an enormous scale. There are so many different tools and integrations that now mean, you know, and that comes with pros and cons so that they’re less expert means you’ve got people just on a painting by numbers basis. Making a decision they think is grounded in data may not be the case, but the designed all that sort of thing. So that’s my that’s my my position is that we’re going to see a lot more being done by people who are a lot less expert.
[00:26:36.950] – Ray Poynter
And just to add to your survey monkey example, they announced earlier this week a new tracking brand tracker, presumably targeting the likes of Canton’s Millward brand type tracking, using a fundamentally cheaper, fundamentally easier to set up and. I don’t have any reason to believe that he won’t be as useful to most people, actually.
[00:27:04.250] – Mike Stevens
So I’ve got a bit of a you know, I have to disclose survey monkey is a customer, so I’ve worked with them on various things. So just full disclosure, the survey monkey has become almost like a pejorative verb buy in the market research industry, especially people in agencies will get, oh, the client will do something quick and dirty. They’ll survey monkey so quick and dirty. And certainly monkey has become less like delusory, like conflation of things that are just not true.
[00:27:35.210] – Mike Stevens
If you look at what they’re doing with the, like you said, the brown shocking thing, the systematic concept, testing frameworks, all that stuff, it’s really, really impressive. So, you know. Right. These tools are at your peril because they are going to displace an awful lot of historical activities.
[00:27:53.120] – Ray Poynter
So who would like to chip in some thoughts on that? Yes, Jane, right.
[00:28:02.420] – Jane Frost
I have to agree with Mike completely, I think, but I think this is part of as a sector, we need to put our hands around everything and people expect me to have a down on monkey. I don’t I have a doubt on that use of survey monkey. And I do think that it is a dialogue we have to engage in with with people like Survey Monkey about how they encourage better use of their product rather than the sort of thing Mike talked about.
[00:28:33.120] – Jane Frost
But one of the biggest growth of corporate membership in Aymaras, which is, you know, Ray would involve therefore regulations that people coming into regulation is from tech and data companies who’ve got things that they think they can use for research and they very frequently have. Sorry, but the Post is just turning up the dogs, giving them out. But they are. So I think this is part of we must become a country church fair sector. We must embrace all this change because it can only be good for us.
[00:29:10.010] – Jane Frost
We’re a seven billion pound business in the UK that is bigger than many things everybody talks about. And we ought to act like a big business, I think, rather than acting as a series of very small businesses.
[00:29:24.500] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely. And Nikki O’Shay, if you’ve got something you want to bring into that mix.
[00:29:33.850] – Seyi Adeoye
Right, I absolutely agree with Mike and I think last year covid-19 actually accelerating that very I mean, like totally accelerated that. So, I mean, I can tell from my own experience with Guter platform, I mean, it’s more like we’re just playing with it. We knew the future was of the details of about three years ago. I’m building that. And fast forward to 2020 three covid-19. Suddenly all of us are faced with the fact that the reality that, you know, that there was no physical contact anymore.
[00:30:07.810] – Seyi Adeoye
All the clients just went into a frenzy like everybody was. They just didn’t know what to do. And I mean, looking back and trying trying to we did so much with that platform. It was imperfect, but there were so excited to have something to work with, somebody to, you know, to begin to engage our customers via this has been you look into the future. I totally agree with Mike from the perspective that it’s going to be less fun because it’s so I mean, you have so many platforms out there now, software, a service where people can actually do quite a lot by themselves without really coming back, you know, coming to talk to our agencies and a lot of people also going online, again, covid-19 people traditionally who are not even online.
[00:30:53.780] – Seyi Adeoye
The Italian client got online last year. I mean, looking at Africa, we were at the other end of the bell curve right now, accelerated again by 19 because that was the only way at some point during the heat of the lockdown that you could get anything done meaningful. It allows you to educate yourself or you can talk to customers or you could relate with anyone to the future, definitely to be less expert. And again, borrow from Nikki.
[00:31:19.750] – Seyi Adeoye
There’s a lot of focus now on agility. So I see when you stand and I which is coming from inside of you, there’s so much that I needs to learn from from you at the agility part, being in bed and being spontaneous, being there with a product, seeing the client is faster going on the days that clients want to wait for two months before they have says the market is super dynamic. You know, they to make decisions and move quite quickly.
[00:31:48.370] – Seyi Adeoye
So it’s exactly the quite interesting in terms of us and our practitioners. We need to begin to rethink what exactly is our costume. I told my team members, I say, you know, our core strength as petitioners is not so much about the tools and the methodologies is actually about thinking, because if we look at it in another two, three, four or five years, the world as we know it today be so different. But one thing that will be constant is our ability to think is our ability to connect and understand humans.
[00:32:18.950] – Seyi Adeoye
And that should be what will start building more on the platforms. We get to do quite a lot of what we are currently doing.
[00:32:27.580] – Ray Poynter
I think it is an interesting story. You first.
[00:32:31.190] – Nikki Lavoie
Am I allowed to jump in? I don’t want to throw a monkey wrench into the discussion, but everything that you’re saying reminds me of this little example that I’ll just throw out and maybe others on the panel can comment on it as well. Agree with everything that’s being said and will say that it is about thinking. It’s not necessarily about the platforms. However, when these sort of non expert practitioners within an organization take on a piece of research themselves, what happens a lot of the time is they see a platform like Survey Monkey.
[00:33:05.090] – Nikki Lavoie
They feel empowered to conduct a piece of research. And then what happens is once they get into it, they very often realize that they are either over their heads, that they don’t have the bandwidth that this piece of thinking requires or deserves. And they very often then turn to the platform and say, hey, can you actually step in and help with this? And I know this because, you know, Mintzberg, this is really, really common as we actually get contacted a lot by platforms to say, you know, such and such company wanted to do a quick and dirty piece of research.
[00:33:39.500] – Nikki Lavoie
Then they realized they don’t have the time. Can you step in and moderate and do the analysis? So we may have actually been talking to X, Y, Z client to try to do the research with them. They said no thanks, we’re going to do it ourselves and we end up doing it anyway just through another channel. So we’d love to hear it. Thoughts, feedback, and especially from you, Mike, because I know with all the work that you’re doing with platforms, kind of what you see for the future of this, because I do think there’s a lot of dabbling happening.
[00:34:06.110] – Nikki Lavoie
And I actually think it’s a good thing when the doubling happens and then people realize, oh, wait, I might actually need some help here.
[00:34:13.150] – Mike Stevens
Yeah, very cool. I’m glad somebody I’m glad someone took the bait because honestly not so my whatever my pitch was for this panel was, to be honest with one half of the story. And I was hoping we’d get a bit more feisty discussion around that, because let’s be honest, the other half is it’s going to be a lot more expert as well, which is not contradictory. What we’ve got is this distributed non expert use of all these technology tools by people who don’t have much background in research or conversely, what’s going to happen is there’s going to be an increasing need for genuine expertise on the you know, because we’ve got depth of knowledge in expert areas of qualitative, especially of analytics, of semiotics, all of these areas, we’re going to need more consultancy and coaching so that people know how to use the tools properly.
[00:35:15.680] – Mike Stevens
I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to have this hourglass shaped evolution in the industry where we’ve got masses more volume going through, fewer, you know, less expert people with a lot more technology. We’re going to have a lot of value being shifted to the people who are genuinely expert, can consult, can talk about brand strategy. You can talk about, you know, product design in a research sense and coach people. The people who are going to struggle are the people in the middle whose role to look for.
[00:35:45.710] – Mike Stevens
The last of 20, 30 years in this industry has really been about moving information from one place to another. So it’s been about collecting data, packaging it and distributing it. That’s going to disappear. It’s going to be massively squeezed. So we’re going to end up with this volume and volume thing, I think, where the nonexperts, you know, the less expert future is only half the story. So I’m glad you I’m glad you called. I agree with you.
[00:36:10.990] – Ray Poynter
So I think it’s an interesting analogy with cars, because we can be very precious when we talk about our own discipline and how important our knowledge is, for most people, dumbing down cars has been a good thing. So going to an automatic instead of manual gears and using SAT satnav instead of being a map reader. For most people that improves the quality of the driving. It improves getting to the right place. Rally drivers. On the other hand, they want manual gears because they’re using them as experts.
[00:36:45.610] – Ray Poynter
And sat next to them is their co-pilot, who is actually a navigator, who is looking at a really detailed map and saying it’s a 90 degree right hand. You should be able to do it at forty five miles an hour going into the spin afterwards. So yeah, I agree my absolutely. This bifurcation. The median project is going to be better using these platforms. But the good stuff, the top end, the fun stuff is still really going to need the experts and of course, there’ll be some scraped knees between here and there.
[00:37:22.900] – Ray Poynter
So anybody else? OK, in that case, we’re going to move to a quite different topic from Shayea attracting millennials.
[00:37:40.910] – Seyi Adeoye
Right, thanks, Ray. It’s a topic I’m quite passionate about because two decades ago it was something I came across and I was just wondering why. So looking back quite recently, again, having conversation with colleagues globally is still this is pretty much still the same over 20 years ago. Let school or even before I go into university, had no clue whatsoever of the industry, core market research. And then out of school, I was just looking for something to do right.
[00:38:17.090] – Seyi Adeoye
I stumbled entirely into this industry and I you know, I keep wondering why the low visibility, why it’s not even aspirational, so to speak, because if you talk to millennials, you talk to the Jameses. I mean, they don’t even know they do expire for the industry, as it were. So we still have the usual suspects or I want to be a doctor. I want to be an engineer. I want to be a lawyer. And also, there was a recent study done, I think, called Dream Jobs, released last year by the World Economic Forum, sometimes in February.
[00:38:56.060] – Seyi Adeoye
And they found out that over the last two decades, they actually absolutely no change or changes in terms of the career options that kids and young persons and teenagers are actually looking forward to, to take on is still pretty much the same suspect. And then also found out that it’s grossly influenced by friends and families, what they see grossly influenced by the big media. You have the TV, the radio and of course, the social class. So, again.
[00:39:26.020] – Seyi Adeoye
That’s that’s a concern. It’s still pretty much what it is today, and these are young people are not aware of they’re wondering what exactly is it I meant when I started working, you know, my dad asked me, what exactly do you do? Oh, I work. I deal with, you know, research products and services and know like, what do you get paid to do? I mean, it took a long while before they could come around to believe I have a real job, you know, and and it’s all that still is happening today.
[00:39:56.410] – Seyi Adeoye
I do believe that there’s a number of things you should begin to look at even as an industry in terms of how to begin to create awareness, young persons around market side of the industry being, you know, a great career choice. A couple of things we’ll be doing locally and across the African continent. One is we you we organize all local talent down events where will bring the university students and and also be in the industry. And we just create that.
[00:40:27.100] – Seyi Adeoye
We talk about topics relevant, career oriented kind of topics just to create that discourse. And when, as I said where because we know that it is not within their consideration set, they can even consider it as a as a good career option for them. Again, I think a lot can be done using the popular media, social media, TV, radio. I mean, we could come up with very creative ideas and specific events that we can actually put out on those platforms, because those are the platforms that these young persons are actually exposed to.
[00:41:02.800] – Seyi Adeoye
Again, partnerships. It’s something that we can also look at the University of Georgia. They have a program targeted at market research, but I’m not so sure that so many universities globally doing just that. So, again, it’s not even right in the face of young persons as something they should consider. And I also believe our recruitment strategy should be relooked. We should consider a lot wider rather than people just the in and we take anybody that comes through the door.
[00:41:34.300] – Seyi Adeoye
It should be quite deliberate in terms of really trying to reach a wider scope of person with different skill sets and of, of course, also creating and driving awareness. Again, we could consider building issues from even secondary schools, colleges, universities. And so, you know, we’ll just come around for some age and actually get them exposed to what we do. And I do believe, again, the likes of asthma and other trade associations have a big, massive role to play in this in terms of advocacy and putting the industry out there, educating the general population, the young people, you know, trying to connect with all the different stakeholders and creating engagement that resonates with them, you know, really catching them on their own terms.
[00:42:23.980] – Seyi Adeoye
And I like once again, lastly, before I like your significant insights, media is doing James a NDB fantastic. Trying to create a platform where professionals can actually tell their story and then put it out there on the social media online and, you know, open that young people can actually be inspired. Young people can actually see that you can do fantastic, fantastic, fantastic things, Amarjit, as it were, and that the opportunities are actually limitless within the industry.
[00:43:01.860] – Ray Poynter
And I’m going to go to Jane first, because this is right in your wheelhouse without encroaching too far into the inclusion, which we’re going to tackle in a moment.
[00:43:13.540] – Jane Frost
I think this is a really, really difficult war, and we do look at it a lot of our eye coming from the marketing advertising side. I have huge envy for that bunch of people who’ve got a louder voice and a lot deeper pockets, to be honest. And frankly, the sex is something that people can see. It’s probably true that we are not because we can’t necessarily demonstrate what difference we make. It does hold us back and being able to really sort of motivate younger people or other people.
[00:43:48.100] – Jane Frost
And it’s the tools of the awards that frequently clients will not permit case studies to go forward to awards because of compared to still be seen as a competitive advantage. But I do think that we have to get together and do more. I do think that we do drag ourselves down and I think we are about to launch a huge sort of campaign to ensure that the awards come back strong, because the only way that we can demo what we’re doing is really to do that sort of thing, as well as the big things like conference.
[00:44:27.670] – Jane Frost
I mean, I was delighted this year because we. To impact don’t just put on case studies, we put on the leader of the opposition, we put on autistic scientists who are absolutely fascinating. We got a lot more coverage and things like the marketing and advertising and actually the general press. And we got to get our names on things that interest people. And unless we do that, then we’re always going to be fighting this very, very sort of uphill battle, I think.
[00:45:01.180] – Jane Frost
And it’s things like that would encourage everyone to get all the people listening here. If you ever put it in or you ever work without agency who’s going in for an award, try and make sure that they list you as well as themselves as the clever bakers who did that, because it still doesn’t happen in the effectiveness awards. And that is all about measurement. So every year I ring up and say, please, you promised. But so I think that we do we are at a disadvantage, but we need to get together more and actually speak louder and and actually commit more of ourselves to it.
[00:45:39.530] – Ray Poynter
One thing we have seen globally, including in the U.K., is a lot more young researcher Tiger Woods. I think that probably is a step in the right direction. And linking across now to Niki, who’s been involved. Yes, which is Eskimo’s young person involvement when you were first elected to us, well, you were indeed young.
[00:46:07.950] – Nikki Lavoie
Well, technically, when I was elected, I still wasn’t young. I was I was old by that point. But when I joined actually joined us more as a as a young member. That was my first ever connection point with the association. And frankly, I’ve told the story many times. I actually got told about the summer Congress and attended the summer Congress as my sort of introduction to the the broader industry and to the international industry by my my supervisor, my mentor at the time.
[00:46:36.210] – Nikki Lavoie
She said there’s an organization called Estima. They hold an annual conference. You should go. But otherwise there was nothing that was successfully reaching me. There was no communication that was successfully reaching me. I will say, you know, I agree with a lot of the stuff that’s been said by everyone so far in terms of us being more interesting and et cetera. I will say that I got asked a couple of times to go back and speak to my alma mater after moving to Paris, because then I became a much more interesting profile.
[00:47:05.460] – Nikki Lavoie
She’s an American in Paris. She’s going to she graduated from our school. She’s going to come tell you about her career path. I actually studied advertising. I didn’t study statistics or economics or anything. I was a communications major with an advertising specialization. And when I went back, what I said to the students who were study, who were following the same path that I had followed and studying the same major was I said, you know what? Why what are the things that make you want to get involved with advertising?
[00:47:35.250] – Nikki Lavoie
And and they said, oh, I get to be creative and I get to impact my products, my favorite brands. You know, maybe I’ll get to work on a Nike campaign or maybe I’ll get to redesign the Heinz ketchup label or something like that. And I said, yeah, it’s market researchers who do that. It’s not it’s not the advertising industry. It’s I mean, yes, they also play a very important role. And I said, but here’s an example of some of the brands that I’ve impacted in my career.
[00:48:00.630] – Nikki Lavoie
And I said, I get to travel and I get to go here. I get to go into people’s homes and talk to them about how they use Twitter. I get to sit in a room and listen to people all tell me about why they drink whiskey in this particular occasion and beer and that particular occasion. And their mouths just dropped and they said, I didn’t even know this existed. And when I left, I had a handful of people who had come up to me and asked me if I knew of any internships available in the field, because I think that it’s it’s not just about getting in with with universities that actually have market research modules.
[00:48:35.310] – Nikki Lavoie
It’s actually getting in and saying, oh, you’re interested in being creative. Here’s how research is creative. Oh, you’re interested in impacting ad campaigns. Here’s how research impacts ad campaigns or you’re interested in developing an app. Here’s how research plays a role in that. So we are actually incredibly versatile as an industry and as professionals. And I think we need to start flexing a little bit on that front.
[00:48:58.200] – Ray Poynter
My thoughts.
[00:49:01.500] – Mike Stevens
Yeah, I mean, I’m interested, I’m just running through professions and industries and trying to think, you know, when you’re 18 years old and you’re thinking about your future, you know, how how many industries do you really know about and other ones that we can learn from? Because, you know, there’s a finite number of things that are going to motivate you at that age. It’s like, is it going to make me rich? Is it going to make me more attractive?
[00:49:24.480] – Mike Stevens
Is it going to give me status, you know, in all these kind of things, you know, are we playing to those fundamental needs? And if we’re lucky enough, we know who is, because, you know, I’ll be honest, I mean, you know, my entry into the industry was entirely accidental, like about 80 percent of people, because, you know, I could speak a couple of foreign languages and I started as an interviewer in some really obscure industry.
[00:49:48.730] – Mike Stevens
So, you know, it’s kind of it was interesting enough, you know, it kind of started making enough money and, you know, kind of retrospectively justified the whole thing. So, you know, I wonder who who do we think does it? Well, you write about the output. I think that, you know, something tangible, whether it’s like a product or a campaign, you know, we don’t we don’t have the kind of glory of Hollywood movies about the banking industry that, you know, it might be divisive.
[00:50:16.800] – Mike Stevens
But, you know, you’ve got you got, Wolf, of Wall Street and various other things that, you know, that kind of market industries for, you know, for them. But honestly, I don’t really have the answer. One of the things that I wonder about is, you know, is the language around what we do a little bit missing the mark. I mean, you know, we talk about it as as research, but it does not sound a little bit, you know, dull and theoretical.
[00:50:42.120] – Mike Stevens
You know, should we be talking about behavior? Should we be talking about change or, you know, I don’t know what this is. So, yeah, I don’t have an answer. I just have more questions.
[00:50:51.690] – Ray Poynter
So one more thought. And I think one of the issues is the salary levels for people starting in research in London, in the UK are abysmally low. And I think that is an attractive and I think one of the reasons that low comes back to your point, Mike, that we’ve got a lot of agencies who are trying to compete with machines by working harder and cheaper. And we’ve seen that in history so many times. You can’t just work harder and cheaper than the machines.
[00:51:25.260] – Ray Poynter
So we need to work smarter and we need to be wanting to pay better salaries because it reflects coming back to Nikki’s point a moment ago, expertise, looking for the brightest and the best because they’re going to be doing innovative thinking. And we’re going to be charging the right amount for that shade, do you want to just set up on that and then we’re going to move to a conclusion?
[00:51:53.860] – Seyi Adeoye
Right after my closing thoughts on this would be changing the narrative, the whole experience that all of us agree is what it is at the moment, it’s going to you know, it’s going to take deliberate actions, very deliberate and sustained initiatives. And I really do honestly. We need to make our industry famous landmarks like it has to be aspirational. People must really look forward to joining the industry and with a feeling that they definitely will make a difference in the world.
[00:52:32.150] – Ray Poynter
So with that, thank you, we’re going to move to Tidjane, and just before you start speaking, I’m just sort of blow the trumpet a little bit for the. Over the last few years, the IRS has become the real benchmark, I think, for inclusion globally and of course, what’s going on here in the U.K. So please kick us off on intrusion.
[00:52:57.500] – Jane Frost
Thank you, Ray. I mean, it’s a of worrying showing a pattern with you or with your own with some things better than I do, and that is real superpower. But I’d like to suggest something now that maybe addresses our last conversation just a little bit. Obviously, everyone always makes the case for inclusion based on it’s right. It’s human dignity. It’s it’s good business practice. I would like to make the case for inclusion. And I didn’t come at this from my normal balance, which is a joyful thing to do, is emotionally a much nicer place to be.
[00:53:37.640] – Jane Frost
But I’d like to come at this a bit different today and maybe address that last conversation and suggest to you that as a sector superpower, as curiosity and that superpower can be found everywhere and often in places where people haven’t conventionally looked. But if we are actually going to change the way we look as a sector, we really need to gather behind a core purpose. And I believe that our core purpose as a sector is to give people a voice to power, particularly those that would normally possibly be underrepresented, but we’ve got a duty to do that.
[00:54:22.920] – Jane Frost
I think people would get out of bed for a mission like that. I used to be a senior director. God help me. Revenue and Customs. Nobody ever got out of bed to collect taxes. They do get out of bed to collect to build hospitals with tax. And that’s the reason that they really are motivated a lot. They are wonderful. So our super power is so magical because it actually empowers people. But in order to do that, we really desperately need to look like the people we want to represent.
[00:54:57.450] – Jane Frost
It’s no good being where we are. And I know a lot of people tell me that, and I have been told over the past few years that actually the sector is very good at this. Actually, the sector is very bad at this compared to where it should be. And there is still and the Aymaras for the last three years has done large scale research into the sector, into Perception’s beliefs and behaviors, a vast difference between whether you are white, middle class and male and non with no disability or perceived disability and everyone else.
[00:55:38.780] – Jane Frost
And that’s sad because over 60 percent of the sector is female, but yet a significant minority of the sector believe that it’s any good for women to be in the sector. This is this is just pure rubbish. And I think one of the worst things is that only 40 percent of young people think the sector is fair for all. And if this isn’t a wake up call for us to do something about it, I really don’t know what is. You know, it is true that in large companies and they are the big employers, 74 percent of people say that they feel that they are comfortable being themselves, but only 32 percent of them think that they’re a diverse company.
[00:56:21.950] – Jane Frost
You know, you’re OK and you’re happy being yourself if you’re not particularly diverse. There is some good news about this. I think we can all gather together behind this subject as a. Part of actually attracting more talent into the sector, we will get further and there is some good news so far. So networks like Aymaras Pride, which has been hugely successful, there is a marked difference between people in the LGBTQ plus community and ethnic minorities and women, for example, in how they feel about themselves and how they feel they are welcome in the in the research community.
[00:57:06.890] – Jane Frost
And that has changed. And I give a lot of credit to all those wonderful people from Aymaras Pride and more is starting to get there. They’re starting to do Internet sexual stuff with with Aymaras pride. So I think enabling networks like that and wire and corps are going to be really important. But we have all as employers to put our commitment behind that and really knows I’m going to plug this. And that’s the inclusion pledge I would like all CEOs to sign.
[00:57:32.750] – Jane Frost
I don’t care whether they’re where they are in the world to sign up to that inclusion pledge because we know it makes a difference. I have conversations with staff and ring me up and say, why isn’t my business signed up? I will sign anyone up after a conversation that just got to commit to it. So there are things we can do. There will be apprenticeships in the UK soon coming in September. There are big programs that we have. We actually put aboard a diversity award at the moment.
[00:58:00.880] – Jane Frost
And I think the award season this season is going to be about people in leadership less than case studies because of what it’s done to us. So here is another opportunity to get behind what I’m talking about. And so in answer to the last debate, I think a lot of the answer is actually the power and excitement of verve we put behind change in this area. So I may be paying overexcitable, I may be paying over hifalutin, but I do hope everyone who’s listening feels that this is something they can take part in to.
[00:58:36.880] – Ray Poynter
Thanks, Jane, I’m going to jump now to Nikki, who for the last two and a bit years, I sat on the committee with her and Nikki and Nejat have very much led the charge in that committee on this topic. So, Nikki, your thoughts?
[00:58:53.460] – Nikki Lavoie
Well, first and foremost is to definitely pay tribute to the IRS, because, indeed, we do see, you know, your organization as as one for sure that is has taken a lead on this issue and that we are keen to to follow and to contribute with the work that the IRS is doing. I think one of the great things about having Ray involved in the discussions that we’ve had around exclusivity and and things of the like in our industry is that he’s really great at reminding us to think, you know, we might just think, well, we need to get more women in positions of power in this.
[00:59:30.840] – Nikki Lavoie
And he is really, really great at reminding us. Well, culturally. Have you taken this into consideration and have you taken that into consideration? So also, hats off to you, Rafer, for always being willing to to think about things from all angles, even when it is the voice that we don’t necessarily want to hear, because we all just want to happily charge forward and say inclusiveness and accessibility. And so I really appreciate the voice that you always bring.
[00:59:54.570] – Nikki Lavoie
But outside of that, I mean, I think that the thing that you said, Jane, at the beginning is it’s it’s really troubling to me that we are hired by clients to help them produce diverse research that represents diverse populations when we are not a diverse population as an industry. I think this is inherently the biggest problem that we face. And as somebody that runs a company and hires people into the industry, sometimes people who are fresh out of university or sometimes people who are very experienced, I can say with certainty that we do not see many people of color or many people of varying different physical or visual abilities as we do white people.
[01:00:44.430] – Nikki Lavoie
And that’s not even in the U.K. or France or in America. It’s it’s a lot of places. It’s the people who step forward and think this is the industry for me, for for whatever reason and for a lot of the reasons that have already been spoken to tend to be of a certain group. So I definitely think that, as you alluded to this, this really links very closely and with the talk about getting younger people involved in our industry as well, we need to start earlier.
[01:01:10.860] – Nikki Lavoie
We need to start sooner. And we need to make our our industry as a whole more accessible and not just in the way. You know, a lot of times when we talk about accessibility, we say, well, can somebody with a, you know, a certain visual condition read this? And and can somebody with a certain physical condition participate? But also, we need to make our information accessible to people who have varying different financial access to finances and financial resources.
[01:01:37.050] – Nikki Lavoie
And and the way we do that is by putting putting our content out there into into communities that we may not initially think of as being interesting to us. But the fact of the matter is, is that all communities should be interesting to us because everyone’s got something to offer in terms of our, you know, curiosity superpower that that doesn’t you know, it comes it comes to us in a variety of ways. How we become curious comes to us in a variety of ways.
[01:02:04.140] – Nikki Lavoie
And I think we need to be a lot more open to where and how we tap into that superpower.
[01:02:10.330] – Ray Poynter
So she what is inclusive, itI mean, at the moment, in your context, in Lagos and beyond that in Africa.
[01:02:21.120] – Seyi Adeoye
Right. I’ll just speak for the broader African market. Within the industry, it’s easy to hire. What are the stereotypes? So, you know, and that would be along the lines of gender, along the lines of the population, along the lines of people. If you look like, you know, they’re right for the job or they’re not right for the job that happens and the attention that would be given the business I run. And what I was two years ago as a director, we had to talk about how do we ensure that we actually have a very inclusive team?
[01:03:07.180] – Seyi Adeoye
Because, again, we’ve seen the benefits come from just the level of creativity and a sense of belonging that people, team members do have when they feel that the entire team is quite inclusive. And it’s not one of the same across the board. And nobody’s rejected for whatever reasons along any other any dimensions, as it were. So it’s not a big, big, big issue in Africa at the moment, but definitely it’s something that all organizations are quite focused on and being very intentional about, particularly the our industry, to have the right balance of female researchers on the team and to have the right balance or ethnicity within it, to have the right balance of old age, you know, in terms of experience, in terms of which they did belong to within the team.
[01:04:03.850] – Seyi Adeoye
Right. I mean, that’s that’s that’s how it’s playing out in Africa countries.
[01:04:10.910] – Ray Poynter
So, Mike, any thoughts?
[01:04:15.050] – Mike Stevens
Yeah, as far as the white middle class bloke representative on the panel will walk out of there, I guess. Look, I, I, you know, at the moment I’m in a business of wonderful time person, which is me. I want a lot of freelancers and those things. So, you know, I think you always have to look at things and say what you know, what can you do? That’s, you know, that’s actually going to make a practical impact.
[01:04:41.360] – Mike Stevens
It’s great to support this stuff, you know, so there are things, you know, take me personally to bear. I’m not going to have more than 50 percent of the presenters events that we run are going to be white men. You know, all these all these little things. I think, you know, you’ve got to you’ve got to try. And this is you know, we’re not we’re not an outlier in terms of a lot of industries.
[01:05:01.850] – Mike Stevens
That doesn’t make it right. I’m saying, you know, this is a this is a broader commercial business social issue across a lot of times the company. But I think, you know, one of the things for me is we are you know, most organisations that are working with research are commercial in some form. You know, there are agencies that are supplying the money for their organisations. Obviously, not a lot of social stuff gets done, a lot of different types of organisations.
[01:05:29.990] – Mike Stevens
But I think we also have to tie the value of diversity to the value of commercial impact. So, for instance, you know, the the advertising industry is has been shocking at this and then suddenly about three years ago decided, you know, to kind of populate adverts with people who are differently abled, who are not white and all this kind of thing. It kind of switched overnight. But for years now, they’ve been targeting the vast majority of our communications have been all about the celebration of youth and the value of youth when, you know, 80 percent of of wealth and assets are owned by people over 50 in the country, you know, so all of that sort of thing, I think we need to challenge and go, whereas we have to it is a good thing to do.
[01:06:16.010] – Mike Stevens
Obviously, it’s a good thing to do for long term health. But we’ve got to find ways of, you know, of ensuring that diversity by reflecting the value of different groups and by representing them effectively actually has commercial value as well. So that where you’ve got people who are dragging hills, great. The people are signing pledges. Great that people are doing this stuff. I think we have to make that link tighter for the different businesses and organisations that are the bottom line as well.
[01:06:45.140] – Mike Stevens
So that I think we need to we need to be strong.
[01:06:48.020] – Ray Poynter
And I’m going to to some extent, disagree with you, Mike. I think that I think probably from a nouse sensible point of view, some people have to do what you just said. I think that real change will come, however, from the people who believe it’s right. And you do this. And I think that we shouldn’t try to get those two groups people to agree. Let the people who are doing it for purely it’s the right thing to do, just get on and do it for those and then a separate strand can talk about.
[01:07:27.780] – Ray Poynter
Well, this is what happens if you don’t design it. Here’s how inclusive teams produce better outputs. Here is what happens in countries where the prime minister is a woman. And here’s what happens in countries where the prime minister is a man in terms of a lot of the covid outcomes. I think that we need to facilitate two separate strands because the gulf between US two isn’t really crossable.
[01:07:56.880] – Mike Stevens
Yes, but if you look at what’s happening, you know, look at the voting rights issues in Georgia and look at all the businesses that are coming out in support of it coming in, because fundamentally, I believe it’s the right thing to do. It did not go with the killing campaign purely because it was advocating for what’s right. No, because the segment of the market, they recognize that losing business to progressive and liberals. And so it’s now there’s a you know, I agree.
[01:08:25.990] – Mike Stevens
I think those things need to work in tandem along with regulation and kind of pseudo regulation, which is everybody else needs to publish salary discrepancies by gender or whatever else. If we don’t, then we look bad. So we kind of have to. So, you know, I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of different tracks that push these things forward. So, you know, no silver bullets. But I think the commercial tying commercial benefit to some of this, the improved diversity inclusion, I think is one strand of what needs to happen.
[01:09:00.670] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely, said Jane.
[01:09:03.560] – Jane Frost
Yeah, I’d like to reassure Mike that we are very practically focused and so members of the Senate, like council members who in the Clydeside have now all asked to their procurement departments not just to ensure that the people on their short list are accredited, but that they’ve also signed the pledge, which is us just moving people into a space where they need to talk about it. I think there’s a lot of work has been done on the value of inclusion. I don’t think we need to recreate that.
[01:09:42.320] – Jane Frost
I mean, Harvard Business School have done it. McKinsey have done it even less than the government has done it. But I do think we should be slightly horrified that our sector in government statistics is far behind some which are you would think would be more. But the in this area, so I do think that we can’t we can’t be supine about. I do think that we need to probe both. I do think there are practical thing forward, but I think every single person can do something, even if it’s only going to CEO and saying, can you sign a pledge or as a client going into your procurement department saying, please make sure that they meet this level of diversity, it’s doable.
[01:10:26.440] – Jane Frost
I think if we get it right, all our wonderful superpower will be actually a lot richer. I think people will be motivated to join much more.
[01:10:35.000] – Ray Poynter
Right, I would like to thank all of you on the panel for joining us today. So, yes, I’m thanks, Mickey, Mike Shayea and Jayne for joining us today. Thank you for those in the audience listening in. I think we’ve explored a lot of topics, some commonality, I hope you will explore them further. And for those of you in a position to please do consider the CEO pledge that Jane was talking about. So thank you, all of you.
[01:11:09.950] – Nikki Lavoie
Thanks, Ray.
[01:11:11.030] – Mike Stevens
Thanks for the advice.
[01:11:13.160] – Seyi Adeoye
And it’s very, very interesting, as usual. Thank you.
