Futuring Friday – APAC 2021
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Futuring Friday – APAC 2021
As part of the Festival of NewMR 2021, Ray Poynter and guests discuss what are the key issues and trends facing insights and market research? Join Ray and his panel of guests as they discuss prospects for our industry.
Transcript of recording with Ray Poynter, Geoff Lowe, Navin Williams, Vanessa Oshima, and Sue York – 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.
[00:00:06.240] – Ray Poynter
Well, my name is Ray Poynter, and I’m going to be the facilitator, moderator for the session today, we’re going to have a panel discussion environment. It’s going to last for about 60 to 80 minutes. We’re going to have four topics. Each of the speakers has brought along a topic to talk about. Go to the panel discussion. Here is our esteemed panel for today. We’ve got the Nasra Cima, who is joining us from Tokyo. Jeff, who’s joining us from New Zealand, Naveen from China and Sue from Australia.
[00:00:39.890] – Ray Poynter
So right across the Asia Pacific region and also to you are going into summer and two who are going into winter. So we’ve got a nice atmospheric split that way as well. So, Geoff, we’re going to turn to you and your topic is.
[00:01:01.400] – Geoff Lowe
The future belongs to the bold, right? That’s my topic. Shall I kick off?
[00:01:07.890] – Ray Poynter
Yeah, just give us a little bit of your thinking.
[00:01:11.810] – Geoff Lowe
So you remember, it would have been about a year ago. I joined you on your future on Friday. And I talked about I think we all talked about some really far future concepts. I talked about the possible use of I and the future of market research and how potentially humans could be could actually be replaced in the process. I’m actually going to bring a little bit more immediate for this discussion, because I think that in the immediate future, we actually face some risks of being left behind unless we can be just a little bit more bold about how we deliver value to our clients.
[00:01:50.270] – Geoff Lowe
And I think we can do that using things that are available to us today. I don’t think we need to be waiting for anything new to be invented. And what I mean by that is you cannot look around at some adjacent industry say the industry’s revolving around big data analytics, for example. They’re doing some amazing things with I think by definition, they, of course, are generating huge volumes of data and they’re applying applying neural networks to to that which is incredibly powerful.
[00:02:20.540] – Geoff Lowe
And of course, the bigger the data, the more effective neural networks are. And there are companies that are applying that new technology to exactly the same questions that primary survey research his head as a sole domain actually for the last several decades. So I think we need to be on the lookout for how we can be disrupted from the outside on top of that. Think about that. The number of companies that are pulling all of the marketing data or marketing relevant data, which, of course, includes the data that we care about in our industry survey data into huge cloud storage platforms.
[00:03:06.260] – Geoff Lowe
There are data lakes and oceans, which are the new terms now for what we used to call data warehouses. And there are I.T. people who believe that they can do everything that a research agency would do so long as they have the time to read data ocean. And even though we would argue that they’re wrong, they are getting traction. And so they are giving their marketing people access to the survey data, along with all the other marketing relevant data with the tools and using techniques that I think risks marginalizing the research agencies and and evaluate the research agencies can now do risks think monetized.
[00:03:49.760] – Geoff Lowe
And what amplifies that risk is that there are still people in our game, in market research that are using tools that have been around for a long time and they are using them, I believe, and appropriately so. And this actually happened yesterday. A prospect of mine said to me, look, we’ve been asked by a client to produce a 1000 slide PowerPoint deck and we want to do that more efficiently. And of course, the answer is probably yes, you can.
[00:04:20.240] – Geoff Lowe
But what I actually said was why? Why are you doing that? You know, I think PowerPoint slides are great to help communicate an insight that you’ve already generated, but they’re really bad at sharing results or generating insights. And it’s the same for large crosstabs as well. So I think there are lots of tools that we can use today that are an awful lot better at generating insights and sharing insights than the huge PowerPoint slides that people are still asking for and delivering and large bundles of crosstabs heads.
[00:04:56.810] – Geoff Lowe
We need to be bold in choosing the tools that we use, otherwise we just risk being swamped by the technology that’s coming in from from our flanks. Is that a good start? Right. You happy with it?
[00:05:07.310] – Ray Poynter
It is. I think just to maybe broaden your your concept of both, I’m quite often asked by people on the cloud side for a one handed researcher. And what I mean by that is, well, I keep finding people are coming in and say, well, on the one hand, people are wanting this. On the other hand, maybe it’s not statistically significant. And they want the other hand, they want to know what is the main recommendation going forward.
[00:05:35.550] – Ray Poynter
So, I mean, do you want to chip in on this at all?
[00:05:40.310] – Navin Williams
Yeah, I think one of the things that we’re going to see is that a very resounding return of the old ways in a sense, because, as Dave said, we’ve been doing this for a long. And, you know, when we see big data and large data sets, it’s not new. You know, we’ve been working on a census kind of all national media studies, and a lot of the work might have been manuell or, you know, but so now we have more tools, AI and machine learning, which help us work with it easier.
[00:06:34.710] – Navin Williams
But it’s always been been that. You just get better.
[00:06:43.470] – Ray Poynter
So you’ve been pushing new technologies for years and years and often met resistance. You’re one of the first people pushing mobile. You wrote the book on mobile with Sir myself. What are the barriers, do you think, to people adopting new stuff? Why is it always a bit slower than we would like it to be?
[00:07:07.230] – Navin Williams
Right. I think that’s it started with such a thing. I think it’s everything. You know, people didn’t want to adopt because they felt that the horse was way better. And so so I think it’s not unique to us. And it’s universal. Looking at technology adoption for research, I think it’s it’s been slower than other industries because the impact we could not show up moving to technology or investing in technology. There was a huge outcry for our industry because it’s a lot of intellectual capital out there as well.
[00:07:56.460] – Navin Williams
So that’s, I think, one of the reasons and also we don’t have an outsized impact often. So, again, there’s a resistance to change a lot of the old ways and invest in technology. So I think these are the market realities. But however, what has helped us and I probably eating into my topic, but what has helped us is basically the digitization of our whole ecosystem. So it has seeped into the food as well, which is now, you know, gathering pace.
[00:08:37.410] – Navin Williams
And now, even if you’re a traditionalist, you can’t help but adopt some of the tools which are available and often free or are, you know, very cheaply. And as these get more accessible, it will be very mainstream. I mean, when we wrote the book on mobile market research, it was considered heartbreaking. And today, you know, it’s it’s mainstream and and there’s no way that of building a platform from scratch would benefit many innovators.
[00:09:20.580] – Navin Williams
You know, there are free tools. If you want to build on that, that’s fine. But it’s a different environment. So and I’ll keep changing. So I think now we are really adopting it. But that’s technology. What’s coming tomorrow. We don’t know if it’s Venessa. If I can just sort of add on, you said, well, why are we not so good at adopting it are moving fast? It’s because I believe we are all working together in this ecosystem.
[00:09:54.000] – Navin Williams
And so even though Jeff and the team might be ready to move forward and you and Naveen might be ready to move forward into mobile, you need some you’re going to throw the ball. You need somebody to catch it and its clients. And it’s the customers and consumers and everybody we’ve got to. And if we’re all not sort of almost joined at the hip going, then it’s going to be a little bumpy. And I think that that’s that’s where, you know, we kind of get a little bit frustrated with, like, sort of saying, I can see the future, I can see where it’s going and I’m bold and I’m going to be Amelia Earhart and take that step or I’m going to be whatever.
[00:10:29.250] – Navin Williams
And then I look around, it’s like, OK, where’s the people? The people not with me.
[00:10:33.890] – Geoff Lowe
Am I going to win this thing?
[00:10:35.700] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think, you know. In any of our careers, especially when we’re young as well, being bold is like we’ve almost got nothing to lose, but almost when we get older and we get in our careers and I’ll speak for myself as you become a little bit more conservative about, OK, maybe I can have one strikeout or to strike out a quarter, you know, and so we start to be a little bit more conservative. And so it’s about creating that environment where it’s OK to fail.
[00:11:06.090] – Vanessa Oshima
We always say that it’s that environment, it’s OK to fail, but also to creating that awareness. Like, you know, sometimes you’re speaking a language about the future and it’s like you’re speaking something foreign, like you’re speaking French and I’m speaking German or what? And it’s just I can’t grab it. And how do we just take the time to bring everybody? Oh, I can see that. And I think that then it becomes a little bit less risky because now you can see it.
[00:11:38.070] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think if I can just together, what a new assignment is. There’s another, more pragmatic reason that it is hard to be bold, and that is the bills need to be paid. So this client, you can you can get my business if you can make a thousand PowerPoint slides efficiently. Well, it’s really too early to say to not be bold and question the value of those thousand PowerPoint slides to say we’re on it. We’re absolutely.
[00:12:07.230] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think the the way that we navigate that is that we we say yes. In other words, we stay in the conversation because when we’re in the conversation, we can exert influence and we we start off by providing what it is that’s actually asked and take that opportunity within the relationship to drill down and find out what is the real underlying need that these thousand PowerPoint slides are serving.
[00:12:35.430] – Vanessa Oshima
And now that’s a really I was just thinking about the idea of a dead rubber, you know, like in cricket and stuff, like we have a dead rubber and it’s just like, you know what? We’re trying to get to a goal, which is decide who’s the best after three game or, you know, after two games. We’ve already figured that out and we’re just going to play the dead rubber. And it’s like, why? Why don’t we just call it quits?
[00:12:55.830] – Vanessa Oshima
England’s the winner, New Zealand the winner, whatever it is. And that third brother, that third brother is like whatever money was going to be spent on that goes to some charity or something like that. But imagine if you did that with focus groups, which is like we’re 12, 12 focus groups, eight focus groups I’m in and I’ve pretty much figured it out. So we’ll just call it quits. And rather than sort of saying, you know what, I only did eight focus groups, I’m only going to pay for eight focus groups.
[00:13:23.580] – Vanessa Oshima
It’s like, well, you’ve basically got me what I needed and eight focus groups. I was willing to pay X, Y, Z for it. Say, here’s your X, Y, Z, you know, and you don’t get dinged for having great recruitment. Great insight, great. Whatever the I don’t know. That’s something I. I’ve just thought of now, which is what I love about panel discussions.
[00:13:48.190] – Geoff Lowe
So you must have a view on the bowl.
[00:13:51.340] – Sue York
I mean, the thing I was thinking about, Jeff, is the value of the proposition that you came along with is, yes, we can keep looking in our same ecosystem. But you’re actually when you’re talking about things like AI and other things, it’s the value of actually looking outside the square. And it is similar to a presentation of race earlier in the week where he’s talking about our ecosystem and the growth of what we would call research that’s actually happening in other areas.
[00:14:23.710] – Sue York
And we’re not necessarily playing. So, you know, I think it highlights to everybody, don’t think that we’re just going down this path here. You’ve got to be monitoring what is happening everywhere else and mean if you see some great stuff happening elsewhere, I mean, that’s gold. But also you can get inspiration from other areas. So you need to be constantly scanning the broader environment, whether it’s the broader business environment or even other areas that spark these interesting ideas and leaps.
[00:14:55.480] – Sue York
And I think that’s where being bold helps, because when you spot them, you actually have whether it’s the courage or, you know, the whatever else it is that it takes to go with it. And I think we need to be very careful about this looking inward and need to be looking outwards to see where those new opportunities come from.
[00:15:14.500] – Geoff Lowe
Love it. Absolutely.
[00:15:16.780] – Vanessa Oshima
I love what Nevine basically said about big data. It’s like Big Data has always been around and census data and things like that. I remember doing a presentation a few years ago in Australia where I said it’s no longer big data, it’s almost a base data. And it’s it’s like in trying to figure out where the wheat from the chaff is, know there’s a whole we’ve always been trying we’ve been skilled at finding the insight inside a bunch of conversations or a bunch of stuff.
[00:15:45.070] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think that’s where the industry where we really add value is being able to find that nugget inside. So I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like we’re staring like a deer in the headlights going, oh, big data, what are we going to do in the event of that? It’s always been big data. And when you’ve got, I don’t know, thirty six hours of conversations from ethnographic and stuff like that, that’s a big data as far as I’m concerned as well.
[00:16:12.070] – Ray Poynter
So, yeah. Jeff, do you want to just sum up where we are on that topic and then we’re going to move to the next topic?
[00:16:21.660] – Geoff Lowe
Thanks for yet, I’ll actually bring a comment that was made in my comment was released from the plane before we started the webinar in response to the topic. And and I’d like to retrospectively change it from the future belongs to the Bold to the future is built by the fall of the future actually belongs to everybody. And it is the bold that they are building. Look, there’s been some fantastic we could go on, I think, for for another half hour just on this one topic.
[00:16:54.840] – Geoff Lowe
But I’ll summarize it is that there are things that we can do if we’re brave enough just with the technology we have right now to be able to we need to be bold and hit the confidence in ourselves as minister of saying that we are naturally curious people. We have huge value as researchers to add to all these other streams of data. We just need to have the confidence in our ability and be bold in applying that that ability makes, right? Absolutely.
[00:17:25.290] – Geoff Lowe
So, Vanessa, what have you brought along today for us?
[00:17:29.550] – Vanessa Oshima
So I basically wanted to talk a little bit about how within the insights industry right now, we’re going through this real state of uncertainty for many people. And a few years ago, I wrote a paper called Brand Ichigo like Finding Your Guy, and he goes about purpose and your lifeblood. And it’s a Japanese word, but it also is supposedly the lifeblood of longevity. So for the industry to survive with longevity for a team. So, for example, I have I’m in charge of the head of marketing at Starbucks Japan as well.
[00:18:10.650] – Vanessa Oshima
And it’s like, what is the role of marketing right now when in the middle of covid, we’re all trying to think about we’re not trying to drag people into the stores at the moment because the stores are closed or what is our role? What are we doing right now and how do we add value to the organization? And so the branding go just to remind everybody is four simple questions. And so anybody on the panel listening. The first thing is to get really sharp about what you’re passionate about.
[00:18:37.620] – Vanessa Oshima
So like within your business and within the things that you’re doing, what are you passionate about? And the second question to that is, what is what are you good at or what are you differentiated at? Which I think for the industry we can say, what are we passionate about? And we’re passionate about as an industry of being the voice of the consumer and that true voice of consumer and within the industry. What are we good at? And we just touched on that with like, you know, we’re good at distilling insights and things like that.
[00:19:04.440] – Vanessa Oshima
What is the world need? That’s the third question. And and the fourth question is, what is the world willing to pay for? And I’d like to sort of focus on what is the world willing to pay for at the moment, because I put the challenge out to say that there’s enough data in the world, that big data thing again. So what if I said I’m never going to pay to make data again? Actually make data with a survey.
[00:19:26.220] – Vanessa Oshima
I’ll never pay to make data because it’s already there. My consumers telling me every single day. So if all the data is out there, I’m going to pay for something else. So what might that be? And if we work backwards to it? So what is the industry? What is we as an industry able to monetize in this new big data world of free data, CRM data, all the rest of it? What is it that we’re able to do and link it to what we’re passionate about, what we’re good at and and what the world needs?
[00:20:03.750] – Vanessa Oshima
Just a gentle reminder that sometimes I don’t know, I’m going to show my age at the moment. Does everybody remember when we traveled flights and went to hotels and stuff like that and used to step into the hotel and you’d have to decide how many days of Wi-Fi you wanted and you’d buy a day of Wi-Fi like nineteen ninety five day of Wi-Fi or three days ago for all three days kind of thing of Wi-Fi. And then it got to a point where it’s like Wi-Fi should be free.
[00:20:30.140] – Vanessa Oshima
I’m not going to pay for what I should just Wi-Fi should be free. I don’t know about you right now, but the amount of Zune calls and things and I’m in the shared workspace in Tokyo right now. I’m paying for Wi-Fi again and I’m paying for high speed Wi-Fi. I don’t expect it to be free any longer. I need it to be high speed because of my changed environment, which is the Zoome calls 24/7 kind of thing. You know, the idea of not paying for water because you always got a glass of water for free when they wanted us.
[00:20:58.630] – Vanessa Oshima
Whenever you go to a Japanese restaurant, you always get a glass of water for free to the point. Now I’m paying for water to the point. Now we’re coming again, which is like you should not be paying for water. You should be having your tumbler and filling it with tap water. And so I keep challenging ourselves to keep thinking about what people are willing to pay for. Because sometimes we get caught in our own old fashioned cycles of this is what’s always my business model.
[00:21:27.580] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think the business models are changing. So that would be my kind of my question out to everybody is that keep assessing your brand. Keep assessing what you as an industry or as a team or even as a person or as a mother or as a whatever is passionate about. What is it that you’re necessarily good at in that what is it the world needs and what is people willing to pay for and do that exercise just to keep yourself relevant, which, you know, I think the industry has to go through right now.
[00:21:58.360] – Vanessa Oshima
I don’t know if that answers the question, but that was what’s going on in my mind about the issue that we’re dealing with right now, which is how do we stay relevant and, you know, being able to keep that business model going.
[00:22:11.620] – Ray Poynter
I think that’s several great points, not surprisingly, but that what people will pay for, I think is a really fascinating point. And just take your hotel’s example. What we saw was the first hotels that gave you free Wi-Fi with the cheap hotels, the ones hanging hung onto charging. You were actually the expensive ones, but not much longer. And when I started in research back in the 70s, I did a lot of work with McCann-Erickson in London.
[00:22:43.600] – Ray Poynter
And in those days, Bren’s gave advertising agencies a big wodge of money and they use that money.
[00:22:51.270] – Vanessa Oshima
They would watch the technical term.
[00:22:55.510] – Ray Poynter
So they bought research that it created all sorts of things. That money was handed over and they then would use that quote intelligently to give the maximum value and the best practice. And as we move forward now, we’ve got a situation where a lot of clients are buying on a menu basis. They’re buying Ruchi, but they’re not getting the continuity of support from their suppliers. And may be coming back to what you said about the dead rubber. They need to put some money in there, which is just this money is to enable you to know my business better so you can give me better advice.
[00:23:34.300] – Vanessa Oshima
Right. You and I once had a conversation in Tokyo about asking the question of do you know how we make money? And this was about Coca-Cola at the time because Coca-Cola makes money from selling concentrate the Coca-Cola Company. It’s the bottlers that make money from selling Coca-Cola. And it was and it was like coming with ideas about knowing how a business makes money, how that actual company’s business model works, makes you a very smart and intelligent person, not just the customers, but actually knowing the business as well.
[00:24:10.520] – Vanessa Oshima
And so I love that idea. Is there the models is there a retainer like this idea of an actual retainer, which is that, you know, my business, you’re in once a month, you’re in my business review sections and things like that, which is like I don’t need to I don’t need to sit down with the page briefs to explain to you the business, you know, because, you know, it it’s a completely different model. And I think that’s something interesting.
[00:24:36.970] – Vanessa Oshima
I think there’s a lot of urban myths. I’ve just been through some research recently, which is about what would people pay for and things like that. You know, the team wanted to be actually interfacing with the customers straight off the bat. This idea that we had to keep it all kind of unbranded and stuff like that, it was like, you know what, it’s good. It’s all random. We basically said who we are, what we’re here for.
[00:25:00.160] – Vanessa Oshima
And what was interesting is that the customers are so comfortable right now with telling brands directly their opinions, whether it’s on Facebook, whether it’s on Twitter, whether it’s whatever, there wasn’t like, oh my God, it’s this client. I should be nicer. It was just like, OK, now I’ve got you. Here’s what I want to say. And it was it was incredibly liberating for the clients who are not like separate of what’s behind that mirror any longer.
[00:25:28.660] – Vanessa Oshima
But also, too, it was just it was flowing almost, you know, a belief that we had that this is the way it needed to be done out of out of the water, you know, doing so with an iPhone and basically rather than saying sit down at a sit down at your PC with no noise. And it’s like, you know what, just put your iPhone on and walking around your house. Talk to me. You know, these kinds of things.
[00:25:54.130] – Vanessa Oshima
And it’s it’s just easier for them because they don’t have four people in an ethnographic situation in a small house in Japan, which people, you know, they they don’t feel as comfortable. So, yeah, a lot of learnings for me during this covert piece as well. But just keep thinking, what are we paying for? What are we doing? How are we different? That would be my thing. Sorry I talk too much. I’m not I’m interested to see what Sue and Jeff and Nevine think.
[00:26:21.940] – Geoff Lowe
I have a question for sort of I mean, I love the four elements that you mentioned. This is the passion, the what is your USPI, what you’re good at, what does the world need and what is it prepared to pay? And the question is, what does the world need? A you encouraging us to ask that question within the sphere of our passion and what we’re good at?
[00:26:46.120] – Vanessa Oshima
So what the way Ichigo kind of works and is that you ask the questions and then you’re trying to find the intersections, so, for example, if you just list out what the world need and you’re like, oh, and that’s what I’m passionate about and that’s what I’m good at. And you get that intersection, then it’s so you don’t need to start with that filter. It was really interesting when we were doing this. People are trying to find personal Ichigo.
[00:27:10.690] – Vanessa Oshima
So, you know, just because I’m in my own funk and I need to get my own brand Vanessa back together, which I went through when I got cancer and I was just like I wasn’t I was lost and needed to start with those first two questions. What am I passionate about and what am I good at? Just a reminder of myself that it wasn’t all about cancer any longer. So I started with those two questions. When I’m working with brands or businesses, I tend to start with the what does the world need and what can we make money off, because that’s the business model.
[00:27:42.250] – Vanessa Oshima
And then when we get that list up, we go, OK, now what are we passionate about and what are we good at to help filter through that, to find the links? Does that make sense? Absolutely, yes. You don’t actually have to start in any particular order. You know, so the intersection, because, like an expo doesn’t necessarily have to make money. Right. And so, you know, it’s so maybe they don’t start with how do I make money?
[00:28:04.630] – Vanessa Oshima
It’s like, what does the world need? One of my passionate about and what will we be good at to help society and make social impact?
[00:28:11.450] – Ray Poynter
So I think those four questions have got real relevance to the trade associations. And Jeff, you’re with Ramsey, you’re with the research that, A, this was just won election to us. So I think those questions, particularly what will people pay for, is going to be fascinating. But, Jeff, I’m going to ask you in particular about one of the services I’ve heard horse talk about several times is being custodian’s today. And that, again, is a different charging model.
[00:28:42.230] – Ray Poynter
How did you convince clients they should pay for this? Because that isn’t something that would normally expected to pay for be holding the data.
[00:28:53.030] – Geoff Lowe
In fact, that’s exactly what Phyllis was talking about, I think. So when you mentioned about the possibility of a retainer, and that’s effectively what the a couple of clients, one you’ve already mentioned, and he said we were doing this when I think you were with the Coca-Cola Company, too, is that we the Coca Cola Company, obviously does research with multiple agencies all around the world. And it’s a really hard job to try to wrangle all the different agencies with all the different methods, all the different data be.
[00:29:30.620] – Geoff Lowe
And and so we kind of fell into this role where we were helping them bring together all of these disparate sets of data and harmonizing it. And after a while, we figured that we can monetize this. And in effect, we we offer to continue providing that service with a retainer model. So, yes. So that’s exactly what we’ve done.
[00:29:57.920] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think that’s the thing. It’s about just continually asking. It’s like your question of why why a thousand page PowerPoint? It’s it’s like, why are we doing it this way? Is there a better way? And it’s because the end goal is not a thousand pages of PowerPoint, to be honest. And the end goal is to take a bunch of information and get it disseminated somehow, whether it’s PowerPoint or a town crier standing on a box, it’s that I mean, that’s the goal.
[00:30:30.590] – Vanessa Oshima
And I sometimes I think we get lost in and thinking what that the goal is or what the actual objective is, is what we’re trying to do. So I think asking that question of why or what’s keeping you awake at night or what are you willing to pay for, you could if I could just make this headache go away, this disparate sets of data, I would pay for it until somebody asks the question and says, well, you know, that could be something we would do.
[00:30:55.070] – Vanessa Oshima
And I think that’s the question we need to ask with the industries, like, you know, whether it’s the macro reason and whether it’s smart or whether it’s, you know, the various industry groups that we belong to, it’s what is what is the problem we’re solving right now? What is the thing that we’re passionate about that we as an organization are going to be able to do better together rather than alone to the point where people might be willing to pay for something or invest in something.
[00:31:22.300] – Ray Poynter
And I mean, does this ring any bells with you and and your urgent desire to move the industry forward technologically?
[00:31:35.030] – Navin Williams
I think. A lot of this needs far more consensus than often practical, like Jeff mentioned, the housing slide. It makes no sense, but it’s built into the code. It’s been negotiated. And you you give already a huge discount because you spoke to, you know, the person who had no clue what a 10 slide executive summary was, is a thousand flight, you know, so a lot of these things make no sense. Even the point when I say you said that after eight, if deeds, you know, I know what I want, but but we go through the motions and the love that the last people need to be done.
[00:32:37.760] – Navin Williams
And if if my client said, you know, this eight I’m fine with I’ll have a heart attack, you know, tell me talk to me about why why you have a heart attack. Tell me what if I basically said, Navina, you’ve done such a great job of a focus, so, you know, I’m done.
[00:32:57.730] – Navin Williams
I’m good because because because we’re thinking ahead of the consequences, you know, that. Oh, that that’s like 30 percent of my revenue gone, you know, and I need to redo the contract. And now they’re going to adjust the, you know, all these things.
[00:33:15.700] – Vanessa Oshima
That’s really interesting because I would be basically saying, hey, I’ve got it done in eight. Let’s let’s say it was whatever. Let’s call it a number. It’s twenty thousand dollars, whatever it was supposed to be. Twenty thousand for twelve focus groups. I got it done in eight. And I’m like, well, here’s your twenty thousand. I want you to spend the time. Yeah. It’s time that you were going to sit moderating. I want you to spend the time on the actual report now on the right I, I wish that happens more often.
[00:33:45.790] – Vanessa Oshima
It, I’m, I mean sometimes I have different versions of that in the sense that all of you building software for, for a client and we had a lot of, you know, a modules that they wanted to build into it. And then we decided to merge a lot of modules, which basically reduced a lot of our work but made the product better. And that that worked well for both the client and but but that’s not normal. If we can normalize it, it’ll be great.
[00:34:22.520] – Vanessa Oshima
So just I think that’s probably the next question. How do you know? Well, I’m sorry to I was just it’s interesting that, Vanessa, you’ve proposed a really interesting idea of the dead rabbah the doesn’t like it because it messes with these contracts. I mean, if we want to go back to sort of, you know, like we kind of say you don’t want cual theory and methodological considerations getting in the way of business decisions. But in actual fact, like a lot of quoll theory was you keep interviewing until you learn no more new information, but you can’t write that in a proposal normally.
[00:34:58.960] – Vanessa Oshima
So you say I’m going to do X groups, but in actual fact, you’ve got a really sound methodological reason for doing it. So you could write, we will do sufficient focus groups or interviews until we learn nothing else. But you’re paying for X, so the leftover over you can propose topics to explore. So in actual fact, it’s one of those situations where good practice and business combine in a really happy note. Well, is an section, if you like.
[00:35:31.180] – Vanessa Oshima
Well, isn’t that really interesting? That’s a really great idea. Like turning the dead robot into a live robot, which is like, OK, we’re we’re done with eight. We’ve got a bunch of people recruited already ready to come in. What else do you want to know? And we just quickly rewrite a discussion guide or quickly rewrite a thing which would probably give the moderators a heart attack like, you know. But but that’s an interesting thing to sort of say, OK, we’ve pretty much got that.
[00:35:58.480] – Navin Williams
We can very I think when I said that, that already happens, like, you know, you you you might have started with with an X objective and with within it. Maybe you in short, a time you understood it, answered your question, and then we explore additional people.
[00:36:22.000] – Geoff Lowe
I think the idea of having a heart attack and I know I’m real and of value pricing. Right. So the word was that you price to the let’s say twenty thousand was the value that was created. The information that came in from the groups and the way that the researcher put it together and generated and shared insights, now, if that happened without groups or 12 or 20, it doesn’t matter. The same level of energy was generated. I know this is a hard equation to sell and I think this is what you mentioned.
[00:36:54.970] – Geoff Lowe
So maybe is what you said. So I think that’s the reality of what we do, is we’re actually in the business of generating that value, not delivering 12 groups maybe against the consulting model, sort of the one that we always talk about, the sort of the McKinsey model and things like that, which is like this is what we’re delivering to you and how many will get it to you. And it’s not quite sure what the black boxes and how many things are inside it, but they’re delivering that value as opposed to you know, I always find it really interesting when you’re working with the consultants, which is like we’re going to deliver this and this.
[00:37:28.660] – Geoff Lowe
And this is not a line item that’s like this and this and this for the wonderful price of two hundred thousand dollars kind of thing. And then in research for like eight groups at X number and eight rooms extra and five or bento boxes, whatever, it’s like, it’s like nine to death. So yeah, it’s definitely an interesting one.
[00:37:54.730] – Ray Poynter
We are conscious at the time and the fact that you will need to drop off.
[00:37:58.300] – Vanessa Oshima
I do. I do. So I’m so sorry. No, no, I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
[00:38:04.630] – Ray Poynter
That’s fantastic. Thank you so much. And Loving, what was your bringing the show today.
[00:38:13.460] – Navin Williams
Right, so the topic aspect is the impact of digital on interest sites, so has the earlier you said I’ve been at it for a long time and I actually used to be in media research where households had to, you know, keep a diary, a pen and paper diary of what they watch when they watch the channel and of that quickly move to meet based things. So I’ve always and I saw the impact immediately. You know, they are reporting cycle was three to four weeks, game almost down to ten days.
[00:39:02.540] – Navin Williams
And the impact of on the business was immediately. And I saw that in retail research and then consumer research as well. And I’ve always tried to be part of that movement. And when Mobile came about, we started doing now, of course, all of us have iPhones and Androids, which are very advanced. But when we started, we we were we did it on our phones. NOCTUA If everyone’s old enough to remember the Nokia phones and Blackberries, which were considered the gold standard of is not bad.
[00:39:46.040] – Navin Williams
But actually they will give me one of my very early breaks. Very nice, you know, with helping them build an application for Coca-Cola on BlackBerry. And the transformation from there on the consumer side was very fast. They moved they picked up the iPhone Android. And you saw the death of Nokia, you know, very fast. And people forgot about these guys who sold more phones a day than iPhone in the first year. And in research that has not happened.
[00:40:34.220] – Navin Williams
Change has been very slow. But if you look at the inflection point we are right now and the change is happening very fast. And when I sort of talk about the place our are industrious and I think a lot of it has to do with us, the players in the industry who have not, you know, moved with the times. And what has happened is that research has not shrunk at all. It has actually, I would say double or tripled or really.
[00:41:14.990] – Navin Williams
But it’s the space has been what it has been is by consulting companies, analytics companies and a lot of, you know, of software companies who don’t and who are doing everyday market research activities, but not calling it that and not believing they are part of the industry. You know, data scientists and and a lot of statisticians who work with a lot of digital data don’t believe they are market researchers. So they think they’re technologists, data technologists and things like that.
[00:41:54.620] – Navin Williams
So I think we have an opportunity to clear my industry back and roll with it so that that’s that’s my thinking. And earlier, I also mentioned that when you look at if you go back a couple of decades, that digital business was not an oversized part of our lives. You had, you know, national polls, you had sensors and you had a lot of media, national media studies where you dealt with the millions of data points and you analyzed it.
[00:42:37.370] – Navin Williams
Yes, of course, you didn’t have tools that allowed you to do a machine based analytics, but you still had the statistical tools to do an analysis, which probably took you a week or two weeks earlier. You now can do it in a in a day like I think recently I did a segmentation study for a client and we tried, I think, 11 combinations. And each combination went through a number of iterations and all that. Happened in one day, and I remember doing a segmentation study probably two decades ago the first time, and I did it, it took us three weeks before we like, you know, arrived at the segment something.
[00:43:26.430] – Navin Williams
But after that segmentation, the analytics part of the analysis and the joining of the insights. What I took this time on, say, 20 years ago, I think is the same the you know, the report and the what was delivered to the client. I don’t think that I spent any less or any more time, so. I think that digital is here to stay, and if researchers are here to stay, we need to also evolve and embrace what’s out there.
[00:44:06.470] – Navin Williams
So, yeah, that’s that’s the broad range that I have.
[00:44:14.030] – Ray Poynter
OK, Jeff, any thoughts?
[00:44:16.610] – Geoff Lowe
Yeah, certainly. I’ve got quite a few, actually. I don’t know where to start. Well, I’ll pick up on one point you made in the vein the about the the the expansion of our industry is happening. And this is something that I believe for a long time. And I believe in exactly the same way you describe that it’s expanding because there are different players. In fact, this is what I mean when I talked about those adjacent industries.
[00:44:42.920] – Geoff Lowe
Right. That are that are sort of right there and doing the sorts of things that we’re doing. And I think I may be misquoting you here, but you talked about software providers who don’t realize that they are in our industry, but they’re actually doing what we do. That’s exactly what I mean. And in effect, I don’t know if anyone else saw it, but I got a email from in my inbox today from Qualtrics, which is not necessarily adjacent to the industry.
[00:45:12.290] – Geoff Lowe
They are largely isolette, but they position themselves as an experienced management company now. And they have just launched this this new product called Experience Management, or Ximo is. And the way that they describe it is to understand customer segments, segmentation point and the needs and the design breakthrough experience for target segments. So they have designed a software platform that does exactly what you described you did in three weeks, three decades ago, and then one day just recently, they’re doing what we do.
[00:45:49.730] – Geoff Lowe
Do they consider themselves to be in an industry? I don’t think they do. And I think that’s a challenge for our industry.
[00:45:57.940] – Navin Williams
Yeah, but but we understand it better, you know, so so a lot of like I work very closely with a digital agency and I’ve worked with them for 14 years. So they started off as a mobile digital agency. And now they’re just a digital agency because mobile everything is about what. Right and what they had done it earlier. I food that way. And now the they offer all those services as part of their service. And while the cost of the insights is like Bakhtin because they give a report, you’re doing a lot of social social media tracking.
[00:46:46.180] – Navin Williams
So all that is baked into their service. And very often the dashboard and the delivery of the regular reports is packaged in a way that it looks like it’s free from a delivery standpoint, it’s not free. And so the agency is talking about the campaign, the social media activation of the CRM work. But and the report is secondary or part of the service.
[00:47:18.080] – Geoff Lowe
So I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in the vein and say, I would argue that the thing that is being positioned as free is actually the thing where the most value sits. All of the data collection, all of the analysis, all of the process and all of that has a huge cost. But no value accrues to anybody until it turns into something that can be delivered to somebody who cares about it enough to to take those understandings and turn them into actions in the business.
[00:47:44.390] – Geoff Lowe
Yeah, I’m with you 100 percent.
[00:47:47.080] – Navin Williams
So we see that as well. So so you have this delivery, which is very standard. And now they want to look at it at one level, know they want to see that, OK, you have all this data. Can you tell me in three months or six months, what can my sales be? You know, they’re talking about modeling that data to to do some projections. So then they come back. But what I’m saying is that over time they will have they building model.
[00:48:19.810] – Navin Williams
So it’s like right now it’s rule rule-based, machine learning. And they want to get to a point where it’s totally automated. So effectively, what we’re talking about is that we are moving in over intellectual property to people who are selling it better and managing it better. And I think if they can encroach into our space, maybe we could do the same and offer services which may be considered to be on top of you.
[00:48:57.280] – Geoff Lowe
Absolutely. Consider. Sorry, sir. I know you’ve probably got something to say here to the let me just add to that, because think about the moving into this space. We know market research, market research is hard. Market research data is hard. Generally the other kinds of data that these adjacent industries care about technically easier. And so because we’ve got the heart that we should be really in a good position to also bring in those other sources into the data to get the value.
[00:49:31.660] – Geoff Lowe
In other words, impinge on their area. Yeah, I’m with you 100 percent again soon.
[00:49:37.720] – Ray Poynter
Any thoughts?
[00:49:38.410] – Geoff Lowe
It doesn’t compare this.
[00:49:39.820] – Sue York
I mean, again, like lots of different different thoughts, but I sort of reflecting earlier in the vein when you’re talking about various things in digital data. And it sort of reminds me when we were writing the mobile book, which, you know, in many ways is a long time ago now, in many ways it still stands up, a lot of it really quite well. But there was this idea with mobiles that everybody is carrying essentially a very powerful device with them at all times.
[00:50:10.780] – Sue York
So, you know, there was the idea that we would only ask people questions when there was no other way of getting that information. We had a lot of the time people are still asking questions like I could take your phone now with the right set of tools. Look at where you’ve been everywhere today, everywhere the last week. So I can know a lot about what you’ve done. And then I can use the idea of asking questions only when I need to.
[00:50:39.550] – Sue York
And Ray often talks about the idea to have no questions, research and what proportion of the industry isn’t asking questions. But yet we haven’t moved as far away from asking questions as as we might have thought we would.
[00:50:57.590] – Navin Williams
Right, right. So I think the really smart digital agencies and technology companies, they start with that, you know, so they probably say all we want to learn about the consumer. And then they look and say, OK, if that’s how much you want for a survey of hundred people. So he says, OK, forget it, let me see that same money, what I can do with what’s already out there. And also so a lot of what is being done by players who are not, you know, a research centric, a lot of that we can offer.
[00:51:41.390] – Navin Williams
And and because we understand data, we should be able to do a better job. And I think that’s going to come back. I think we as researchers are going to claim online back in a sense, because now a lot of these schools out there are getting cheaper and often they are free. So you’re going to see EIB get to be more accessible and we’ll be able to do a lot of things. And, you know, it’ll be fun to be a researcher in a way like, you know, you won’t be stuck with one model and and, you know, to do product testing.
[00:52:30.620] – Navin Williams
We only do this and we don’t believe in anything else. So I think a lot of those legacy things are just going to go and we can start having fun again.
[00:52:41.650] – Geoff Lowe
This with.
[00:52:43.820] – Sue York
I was going to ask the question, too, and it struck me partly through Vanessa’s piece as well as yours, Davenant, and possibly even a little bit of yours. Jeff And you had this idea that Vanessa proposed of what will people pay for? There is that element. But there’s also there’s different ways of paying for things that whether there’s different business models, et cetera. Can you see that evolving so that, you know, like whether it’s a subscription model or some other way, if you got people paying for the things they believe there is value in.
[00:53:20.500] – Navin Williams
Right, I think when I talk about paying for Wi-Fi, I think we’re going to get into a situation where there will be a light research, which will be very, very good, and then there’ll be a kind of an advanced or more mature research which will need more involvement and which should be paid for at a higher premium. So. That’s that’s that’s how I see things evolving. I think the online space is a good example. So if you if you want to scrap a complex survey, you can do it for free or you can do it.
[00:54:13.060] – Navin Williams
For the going rate around five hundred dollars a survey, and then after that, when you’re even collecting the data, you’re paying anything from one a half a dollar to a couple of dollars per comp.. And, you know, so look at look at free versus a dollar plus. It’s a big difference. And I think that’s going to happen for the rest of our business as well.
[00:54:42.970] – Ray Poynter
So we’re going to move to sue because I’m going to share with of my favorite technology stories, really in the light of what I mean, he’s just been saying the guy used to work at this computer center and he retires after 40 years working there, and a few weeks later there’s a problem. So they bring him in as a consultant and said, what’s wrong? And he has to look at it and he gets a piece of chalk, an X on one of the panels and says the problem is that they just replace the board that’s behind that panel and they do that and he’s still working and he sends his bill.
[00:55:16.960] – Ray Poynter
One hundred dollars and I can’t send it back. So you must itemize your bill. So he writes the data back cost of chalk, one dollar knowing where to put chalk. Ninety nine dollars. And we need to make sure that with the digital, these bits over here are really cheap. Knowing how to get insight and advice from them is the value we’re adding and we need to be charging for that moving forward. So soon, your fourth topic.
[00:55:53.240] – Sue York
OK, excellent Segway, right? So Jeff proposed the idea that the future belongs to The Bold. And I know, Jeff, you have tweaked a little bit along the way, but I was going to counter with the the future belongs to the Lenna. And that can be people who can learn, people who prioritize learning. So. If we then kind of think about Vanessa’s icky guy concept, learning helps you create your own future, it can help us create the future for the industry.
[00:56:29.240] – Sue York
But if you just want to think about yourself, it’s through learning that you can design and create your own future. So, I mean, I think everybody on the panel and all of the other future Friday panels, it’ll be on later today point out we’re living in these constantly changing times. There’s excitement, but there are challenges. And it’s often through learning that we can address those challenges. And I know I keep talking about your bold statement, but if you even think about it, if you’re someone who’s not as bold as somebody else, it’s actually through knowledge and learning that you can become more bold.
[00:57:08.780] – Sue York
Some people will embrace change. When they don’t know things and go for it, and that’s great, but there are other people, once they have more knowledge about something, they will become bolder and make more change. So I kind of want to propose learning and keeping up to date as a great tool for helping us keep up with the times, but also helping us embrace change. Be bold and perhaps move towards the future that nobody is advocating. So, I mean, if we break it down differently as well, you know, if you want to keep up with the leading or bleeding edge, yes, you need to keep up to date.
[00:57:48.520] – Sue York
You know, learning can be many different things. And if you have found yourself going through perhaps change, that’s not been great over the last 12 months or slightly longer in other parts of the world, perhaps you’ve needed to pivot your career. So the idea of acquiring new skills is a very powerful way of being able to change your own career. If you’re trying to move forward in a career, you might want to go from no, say, a more operational role to a leadership role.
[00:58:18.850] – Sue York
There’s a role for learning, training and skills development there. I mean, it was tough times, you wanting to make it business more efficient. It’s the idea of learning how to do things better, faster, more efficiently that can help you there. And the other idea I wanted to think about when we’re talking about learning is learning is important, but sometimes unlearning can be important as well. If you’ve been doing something in not the best way, unlearn that, learn how to do it better.
[00:58:48.910] – Sue York
If, Jeff, you want to forget about doing some of the analysis the way you used to, you have to unlearn how to do that. You have to unlearn that. You should make a thousand slide PowerPoint deck and learn what is the other alternative, some kind of just wanting to put a shout out for learning as one of the great tools to help create a better future.
[00:59:11.380] – Ray Poynter
Yeah, I think I certainly would pick up on that unlearning being really KeIso, if we want to create agile solutions, then we need to unlearn lots of things that we would previously have said are essential gates in the process in order to be able to deliver that. And I’m going to throw up a particular bugbear of mine, which is video editing, because I mean, think that what is it that researchers need to learn? Yes. Research topics. But actually coming back to what Marvin was talking about, using a lot more digital and what is necessary.
[00:59:48.520] – Ray Poynter
By collecting a lot more videos. My phone’s. I see people really struggle to edit them both from a technical point of view, they don’t know how to use editing suites. And from a editorial point of view, how long should that clip be? How many clips should I use? How should I combine those clips to make something that’s really effective? So I think that if we want to, as Jeff and I both said, move into neighboring disciplines, we need to have the skills that are appropriate for those.
[01:00:24.110] – Ray Poynter
And for me, one of those would be video editing, video creating the right sort of deliverable final product.
[01:00:34.280] – Sue York
So and and I think that’s an interesting thing there. And it’s the word you’ve used is appropriate now. Yes, maybe it is that you should learn more about video editing, is it actually that you should go and learn how to use video editing software, or do you need to have enough knowledge of the process to be able to just tap into somebody else? So you might watch the videos and say, right, you know, I want a clip that runs from this timestamp to this time stamp.
[01:01:06.300] – Sue York
And it’s actually more efficient for you to then recognize that you’re not the best person to be technically editing the video, but you know enough to know how to instruct that person to do it. And I mean, that’s a simple analogy. If we go to Jicks I exampled, not everybody needs to go and learn how to be an expert, but you need to know how to talk to somebody who is. You need to know what you know and you need to know what you don’t know.
[01:01:36.600] – Sue York
And I think sometimes learning enough to be able to have a conversation, learning enough to understand where it is complex and you should bring in an expert is an important thing as well.
[01:01:49.230] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely. So, Jeff, any thoughts on this, the learning mission?
[01:01:55.050] – Geoff Lowe
Absolutely no argument from me whatsoever. So, in fact, I might suggest the future belongs to the curious because it sort of covers a little bit of the boat and and the willingness, the inclination to learn. And at the end of the day, curiosity, I think, is what differentiates people in our industry. We are I think we’re drawn to doing what we’re doing by the by a curious curiosity. And I would argue that if both people if you’re going to be bold, that you have to be willing to learn this.
[01:02:30.540] – Geoff Lowe
There’s no point in being bold and doing something that has no relevance to to what’s around you. So I’m completely aligned with that. I’m also intrigued with your reference to unlearning, and I would rather you drew the connection to the unilingual with you so I can remember the unlearning of the of the value or the supposed value of doing the thousand tables of a thousand slides. It’s really hard to unlearn when you’ve got money coming in for it. And so I think the willingness to unlearn and then also go hand in hand, I love it.
[01:03:17.080] – Ray Poynter
I mean, you spent a lot of time learning about new tech.
[01:03:22.370] – Navin Williams
Yeah, but some yes, but some I use the Sumita, you know, just understanding, getting a helicopter kind of a view to ensure that it’s not way beyond me, but enough to give direction and have some control over the process, because the little programming that I’ve done is so long ago, none of the tools that I did it and exist today. And there’s no way I can learn those. But yeah, certain of, you know, the logic that goes into it, that doesn’t change and that that kind of helps.
[01:04:08.210] – Navin Williams
So, yeah, and also, I wouldn’t make a video editing. It’s it’s not my back and it’s way beyond me and also. So you pick your battles as well. So you can there are some areas where you can learn and then there are some areas that you just have to defer to someone who knows what they’re talking about and sometimes just listen. And and of course and to Jeff’s point about Balde being bullied while being bullied is great. But I think there’s a lot of element of luck that needs to play into it for the realization of a lot of the bullies.
[01:04:58.700] – Navin Williams
Bold action, one stick. So right place, right time. All those things make a difference.
[01:05:09.000] – Geoff Lowe
Yeah, absolutely, and in fact, I would take that a step further in the vein and say that I think, as I mentioned to you earlier, that I think lackas even more than just an element of it. I think we are all very lucky to be where we are because we didn’t choose our parents or we were born. So I think lack is a really important part of being having a learning approach, as so is advocating being curious, in other words, and and being bold, amplify the things that you already have and in fact, even hearing about the attitude, that was probably something that’s a little bit lacking, too.
[01:05:47.640] – Geoff Lowe
Can I just draw a link between something the vein said earlier and and what you’re advocating for? So we could say that the future belongs to the humble because the humble understand what they don’t know, which is what you’re saying. The thing you’ve got to understand what you don’t know so that you can either leave room for somebody else or leave room for yourself to learn. And I’m thinking it reminds me of the anecdote about knottier you referred earlier in the evening to the death of Nitya.
[01:06:19.140] – Geoff Lowe
If they had been more humble, if they had been willing to learn from what they were saying that Apple was doing in 2007. We may still have a Nokia around today. We don’t, because I think that they their attitude was we know this industry is not why this upstart can get in here. We’re good. And they turned out not to be. And and one of my my big fat days. Right, is is complacency in our industry.
[01:06:48.810] – Geoff Lowe
I’m really into what Naveen is advocating, which is us moving out beyond what we consider to be the boundaries of our industry and to those adjacent areas and and taking bits of business off those guys. Right.
[01:07:09.050] – Ray Poynter
So, Sue, any thoughts about how we might go around making learning more central? And relevant.
[01:07:19.020] – Sue York
I mean, I think there’s there’s lots of different ways. I mean, I think first and foremost, I mean, it’s nice to think that, yes, my boss will pay for me to go and go to this conference, go to this course, have time to study. Some particular thing, but at the end of the day, everybody needs to be kind of in charge of their own destiny and in charge of their own life, and most important thing that everybody can do is say, well, learning is something that I can take charge of myself.
[01:07:54.540] – Sue York
Now, there there’s free learning. You know, you can read books, you can listen to podcast. There’s lots of opportunities to learn without spending a lot of money, you might have to be in your own time. Probably everybody is on this call today is someone who to a certain extent has personally prioritized keeping up to date and learning. So to a large extent, we’re probably preaching to the converted here. But I mean, I would encourage anybody to actually say I’m in charge of what I’m learning now.
[01:08:30.670] – Sue York
If we then think about what does it mean to be in charge of your own learning, in some ways it becomes easier if somebody else is helping you because I say, right, I’m going to go and. Send you on a course to do X, but when you take charge of your own learning, it gives you a lot of freedom, but it also creates a situation where you need to be reaching out to other people to kind of say, well, you know what is good?
[01:09:02.030] – Sue York
How can I learn more? What do you recommend? I mean, obviously, you know, that’s where things like mentors to a certain extent, if you go to things like the various trade bodies, you’ve almost got a curated set of things that you can learn. So, you know, if there’s a course on X, it’s probably something that is good for people generally in your industry to be involved in. Now, it may not be necessarily something that you need to learn, but you’ve got a curated set.
[01:09:31.760] – Sue York
If you go to an industry conference that starts to give you a sense of what topics are available. So there’s lots of ways to direct your learning. But I’m also a big fan of following your passion and probably taps into Vanessa’s topic as well. Yes, you can say I’m going to go and learn how to code this computer program, but if you’re not inherently interested in it, you’re probably not going to find that easy, particularly if it’s a road you’re going to travel down yourself by yourself in terms of self-paced learning and things.
[01:10:07.550] – Sue York
So I think it is good to be cognizant of what you genuinely interested in, what you’ve got skills and aptitude in. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try some things, you know, like you could say, go to a free coding sort of website and start to learn some skills. Now, you may never learn from that. You know how to analyze one of Novales data sets, but it will give you a sense of whether it’s something you want to pursue further or whether it’s something that you just learn enough to be able to talk to an expert about.
[01:10:45.120] – Sue York
So, I mean, I think we’re all spoilt for choice, the big challenges in curating what you need to know and Jeff has his hand up there wanting to. Wanting to interject, I think.
[01:11:01.550] – Geoff Lowe
We don’t think we didn’t think much about learning as we go through our business, and I’m really inspired by what you’re saying to start doing that. And it’s just occurred to me that just about an hour before this meeting, I sent out an email to all of our team, everybody in the company, inviting them to take part in a contest to use our tool to create insights. And it’s just occurred to me that the purpose behind us doing that is because we want everybody to learn this new feature that we’ve built into the tool.
[01:11:39.390] – Geoff Lowe
And so I guess on and we are doing what you’re what you’re encouraging us to do. And I think that it’s just a case of putting a context around it or seeing it in the right frame, which is we are actually encouraging people to learn.
[01:11:57.810] – Sue York
And we think you may you may have a game of hide learning, I guess.
[01:12:04.170] – Geoff Lowe
Yeah.
[01:12:05.040] – Sue York
That means there is a history of problem centered learning to and in actual fact, for people who learn by doing that is great. I mean, the other thing you can probably do within your company is, you know, encourage a social aspect to learning to where, you know, you might not sure exactly what you know, how you set up your challenge, but potentially you’ve set people off on an individual path. But I mean, the other thing you can add to that is sharing or, you know, people presenting, you know, what they’re working on partway through.
[01:12:38.940] – Sue York
So you start to bring in some social elements as well. And you could grow that into something quite powerful.
[01:12:45.960] – Geoff Lowe
Probably a good point. What we’re actually doing is keeping an individual, but we’re getting everybody to present what they what they come up with to everybody start. Everybody can learn. And I’ve already had people respond to me even in the hours since I sent the email with ideas and what they’re thinking of doing. And I want to do something that’s different this year have been done before. This is exactly what we want.
[01:13:09.930] – Ray Poynter
Oh, so I am going to add one note of caution. I am passionate about learning and skill development, but about 30 years ago I was working with the company and we announced that we were going to spend one afternoon a month on learning and development and one of the employees burst into tears. And so one of my colleagues had a chat with her and she was working till about eight o’clock most evenings to meet her commitments. And her assumption was, and probably correctly, had she not burst into tears, would be that she would have to make up the time that we put the training in by working to even later.
[01:13:53.730] – Ray Poynter
So if we want to facilitate skill learning, you need to make space in people’s timelines. You you can’t just say do this learning as well as your normal output.
[01:14:07.470] – Geoff Lowe
Yeah, really good.
[01:14:08.920] – Ray Poynter
And it’s not really. So, Sue, any final thoughts before we move to close and if there’s any thoughts from the floor, people listening out there, that would be great.
[01:14:23.050] – Sue York
I was just about to ask, are we taking questions from the floor there?
[01:14:27.360] – Ray Poynter
All right. I want to go insane.
[01:14:33.060] – Sue York
I mean, I think it’s been a fascinating discussion, I think in many ways, although we’ve picked different topics, they all intersect ever, ever so much for me. Naveen and Jeff are probably mostly challenging people to move forward, look beyond the immediate boundaries. And, you know, I think that’s absolutely what we what we should be thinking about. You know, you don’t want to be siloed into where you’ve been. And I’m a big fan of looking for inspiration outside.
[01:15:11.400] – Sue York
I mean, you occasionally, you know, people go, oh, I went and did an improv course to help me with my presentation skills. And I mean, there’s lots of things like that that, you know, may not immediately count as like learning or professional development, but they can make you better at it. I have seen things advertised. We can go and do like a radio announcer’s course. Well, in actual fact, the right sort of work.
[01:15:40.230] – Sue York
Maybe all of us here should have been and done a radio analysis course. You know, like you don’t need to think too narrow about things. And I think looking in those adjacent areas can be really, really powerful for all of us. In some ways, you might just grab the ideas of, hey, they’re doing trying to eat what is traditionally at lunch, so let’s get over there. But also, you know, inspiration can come from like the strangest and most unusual places as well.
[01:16:08.470] – Sue York
So I think, you know, get outside your usual comfort zone. And the other thing is, if you’re lucky enough to have a boss who might be like or freeing you up for an afternoon, a week to learn something and get involved in a challenge, that is fantastic. But at various points of your life, you may actually have to make your own time to do that, whether it is Tuesday night or Saturday morning or whether you’re reading or whether you’ve taken annual leave to go go to a conference.
[01:16:43.920] – Sue York
At the end of the day, you’re the person who will be better for it. So I would encourage everyone who’s interested in the future to make sure you’re looking after your own future.
[01:16:55.220] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely, and we do not have a comment from the floor, so I’m just going to read that another field where periphery industries are cutting in is the whole SCIEX sector, who’ve done a great job in creating a new need for business. And I think we can learn a lot from what those two areas have done. They’ve they’ve become narrower. They are a handful of the tools for the market research toolbox, but they become much more integrated with the rest of the business.
[01:17:27.260] – Ray Poynter
So you tends to sit in the design team, not in the insights team. SCIEX very integrated with ops and performance and remuneration. So that’s another way of moving forward and saying what we’re going to do is take this tool and really integrate it with more of the business. Jeff.
[01:17:52.470] – Geoff Lowe
I was just going to say that that reminds me of the Qualtrics exam that I saw the email on today. That’s exactly what they’re doing, that experienced management and bringing it into our sphere, getting into sphere.
[01:18:10.330] – Ray Poynter
Absolutely. So big shout out to all of our sponsors, particularly to our two newest sponsors, Opinium and Party City and of course, Twinkletoes, who are with us on the line here today. So thanks to all of you. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing you at the next event.
