In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Humayun Rashid, Consumer Insights Director at Microsoft.

We’re surrounded by insights, both in and outside of work — it’s just a matter of knowing where to look for them. But once identified, how do you turn those insights into concrete action? And how can you ensure that those actions fuel growth?

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Humayun Rashid, Consumer Insights Director at Microsoft.

They cover:

• Why the ability to fuel growth is what defines insights in a commercial context
• The importance of a holistic understanding of consumer sentiment
• Why market researchers need to be streetwise
• Why it’s essential to get the right respondents
• What to consider when implementing a Concept Value Testing Program
• What to consider when relocating to a different country for work
• The growth opportunities of a global insights career
• The advantages and disadvantage of hybrid insights work
• How to cultivate psychological safety on your team
• Why it’s important to challenge the power dynamics in market research
• The opportunities on the horizon for insights professionals

If you’re interested in learning more about how insights can fuel commercial, professional, and personal growth, tune into this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast.

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Spreaker. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor Olof Philogène:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Consumer Insights Podcast. Today, I'm excited to have an amazing Insights leader joining me for what I know will be an enlightening conversation. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Humayun Rashid, Consumer Insights Director at Microsoft, where he leads the research function for Microsoft's $8 billion a year consumer subscription business, Microsoft 365. With 18 years of international research and Insights experience, he's also worked for companies like Citi and T-Mobile, and he has a Master's Degree in marketing from Middlesex University. Thank you so much for joining me, Humayun.

Humayun Rashid:

Good morning from Seattle. How are you doing this morning?

Introducing Humayun

Thor:

So to kick things off, could we take a couple minutes for you to tell us about yourself, your company, and how you got to where you are today? How did it all begin?

Humayun:

Thank you for that great introduction, Olaf. I really appreciate that. And thank you for reminding me of my career and where I went to university. First of all, when I look back at my career, I feel there's always an explanation that most people say, which is, I just fell into market research. I was the first person in my family to go to university, both on my mom's side and on my dad's side. As an Asian boy growing up in England, we did two things. One was either going into the medical profession or accountancy, or we opened businesses. Market research, even in our culture, was even less prevalent than in the general population. And we know the general population prevalence is low. So yeah, I grew up like that, but I was also exposed to market research. At university, I did market research, both undergraduate and post-graduate, and knew exactly what market research is. And I still didn't want to go into market research. I had no interest in it. It wasn't something that I thought I would do. It was the one module in university that I felt, I don't want to do this. And then, you know, I look back on my data science career—I did really well at GCSE Maths when I was in school—but that was the last time I really wanted to do maths. So that was my background in regard to wanting to get into market research. After university, thinking about those first couple of months was quite difficult.

Now, what do we do? How do we manage my career? Where do I go from there? How do we find a job? I remember in those early years in the 2000s, it was really hard to find a job. I ended up at a Ford Motor Company call centre, just answering the telephone straight after university.

A lot of people were doing those kinds of things in those days. That actually led to Ford taking me on as a trainee and working in marketing, giving me a good start to my career. Incidentally, my wife was working at Granada Media, which is ITV now, and she was doing quite well. I was looking at that and thinking, I should be working in the city myself. Why don't I go and work in the city—somewhere in central London—rather than the outskirts of London? I left my resume on United News and Media's website, just left it there. I didn't even know what I was doing; I was just a young guy looking to make career moves. Then NOP, do you remember NOP? They were called National Opinion Pals of the UK. They're called GFK now since GFK bought them out. They contacted me and said, "Hey, Ford is one of our clients. Why don't you come work for us?" And that’s how I ventured into market research. I joined them, took a pay cut, and I remember those first years being absolutely awful. Like, tab specs, checking tables, stacks and stacks of tables that we were checking, doing every manual job you could possibly think about. Then, after working three to four years, I look back and think, I must not have hated it as much as I remember because I stayed for those years. And one thing you're going to love about this small story, my manager at the time—her name was Sherry Weber—was a really nice lady. She lives out here in America now. She asked me to send some tickets to a client at Ford Motor Company. And so I kind of, that was client services, client management, I don't know what it was, but I went on the train and took the tickets in person to this guy. But I remember driving back on the train thinking, I can't do this. Like, you know, this kind of thing, you know, be good, I'm more than that. That's what I felt at the time. And so sometimes client services went so deep into those kinds of things, which I think we'll talk about a little bit later around how that provides a discrepancy between partnership and versus what client and agency is. But I remember doing that and then deciding to move. And then I moved to T-Mobile on the client side up in Hatfield near my house, where I'm from in St. Albans. And yeah, T-Mobile, Citigroup, you mentioned them before, Nokia, and now Microsoft. So I've been working in consumer insights, I would say client side about 15 years, 15, 16 years, and before that two or three years at GFK. And I've had both experiences. I remember doing door-to-door knocking at GFK. So, you know, I've had all of that, you know, deploying market research and everything else. I feel like I've had a good grounding in market research, both client-side and on the agency side.

Thor:

And I just love hearing that story. And I think a lot of our listeners who have been around for a while will recognize those early years and how tough they were. But having spent so much time in an industry, tell me, as an insight leader, how would you define an insight?

Humayun:

This question takes me back 15, 16 years to a Market Research Society conference. And I remember there was a discussion at the end of the conference around what is an insight, and a lot of luminaries and very important people were discussing it together at a round table. And 15, 16 years later, it's still going strong, this same question. How do you define an insight? And I think we are surrounded by insights, whether that's predictions or whether that's something you find out about your wife, your children.

And the most important thing around insights in a commercial context at work is, did the insight, or whatever you found out—let's call it that, information—help grow your business? And growth can be anything.

It could be bringing a new product to market, it could be adding more users, selling more subscriptions, as in our case. And it also can be making improvements, making changes, or letting the company know that they're doing a good job. So I think defining an insight is what you do with the information and whether it is commercially successful, rather than just saying, "Great, we know what happened. Thank you for this information." You don't want to just ponder about it on your drive home and never give it another thought again. For us, it's about business change, business improvement, and getting to that real, tangible benefit to the company.

Unveiling expertise: how do insight leaders define true insights?

Thor:

And with all that experience, why would you say that insights are so important? Why is it that market research and insights are so important?

Humayun:

I think it's about what we don't know, right? Every day I see leaders and speak to leaders who don't know, who are so far removed from ordinary people that they don't know. I see marketing strategy documents written and it looks like they don't know the industry that they are writing them in. And I see market research folks who cannot form an opinion on a specific topic because they don't know about it well enough. And I think insights provide companies, humans, everybody, with actual knowledge, with actual information so that they might know, and they may know more.

One thing to remember in all of this is that respondents in our industry are not experts in marketing, right? But it's very important to understand their perspective and how much they know. And then, you know, taking insights from that and drawing strategies from that.

For example, back in the day when we used to do research on phones, in the early years of phones, if you asked 14, 15,000 respondents, "Do you want a touchscreen phone?" the majority would say, "No, I like buttons." When Apple did research around their recent phone change from one button to zero buttons, the majority of people were saying, "I don't like this zero button nonsense. I want the one button that centralizes." And those are insights, right? They're super important because they allow you to know the consumer sentiment around it. But Apple changed it anyway, right, to zero buttons. And so what they decided to say is, "Consumer sentiment is that they don't want it, but they do tell us lots of other things that make us feel that losing it won't be such a huge problem." And so, you know, thinking about insights in that way and trying to take insights from a respondent that doesn't know your products as well as you do, understanding that, subliminally, they're telling us that they could really do without the button. That's where market research is super, super important. There are messages within that frame that you can find super important and that can change your business.

How experience shapes the way we unpack and interpret insights

Thor:

And that's such a good example. And with your experience, what is it that you remind yourself? What is it that you tell yourself to make sure to unpack, understand, and interpret the insights that you get?

Humayun:

Market researchers have to be streetwise. And I mean, that's the word that I use a lot of times, right? We have to be streetwise. Quite often we get into the mindset of, "But the data says this," you know? For example, in the past, I've seen driver analyses where people have put certain things in their driver analysis as the seventh or eighth most important factor, and that's what they've focused on. It might be the seventh or eighth most important thing, but it might also be, if it's missing, they're not going to buy your product at all. Security is an example, or privacy, or in the mobile phone case, apps. They don't really talk about apps; they talk about phone design, speed, and everything else. But if the apps aren't there, as we found out with Windows Phone, it’s going to be really hard to break through.

So I always ask my teams and remind myself, "What's the common sense thinking about this?" If you're really thinking about a common sense perspective, can the data be wrong? Probably not. Can the data be misleading? Yes. Because you are responding to questions that you've asked or a moderator's conversation on it.

So I always cut back to, "What's realistic?" That's the first thing. The second thing, regarding the mobile phone analogy and the touch and button example I gave, is: Does whatever idea you are sharing or wanting to pursue as a company push your company into new innovation? Does it move forward into something that you believe, given the information you have, will drive your industry forward and help consumers achieve better outcomes?

Real-life stories of how insights fueled game-changing breakthroughs

Thor:

I really love that. Do you have any stories you could share about times in your career when you uncovered or integrated insights to fuel such innovation, allowing your organization to introduce an innovation, build a better campaign, or develop a better product, something of that sort?

Humayun:

I have one example that I could talk about in a little bit of detail, and I think it really addresses some of the doubts I've had about consumer insights throughout my career and some of the small doubts we often face. Let's start with the respondent. I've asked many people in marketing, engineering, and senior leadership if they stop by a shopping mall when someone asks them to complete a questionnaire. They usually say no. If someone knocks on their door and asks them to answer a questionnaire, the answer is usually no. Or if they receive an email survey, they typically don’t respond. So I’ve often wondered, who are these respondents? Is there an inherent bias in who is willing to take part in these surveys? And I've been passionate about ensuring we get the right respondents to provide valuable insights. Another crucial aspect is making sure our internal stakeholders and partners understand the marketplace. So, bring together the respondent, understand the marketplace, and then think about your product truth. This approach will help you understand the respondent and the marketplace they’re in. For example, a respondent might be impressed by your product, but if they are overwhelmingly loyal to a leading competitor, they may never switch. So you need to evaluate your product's position within the marketplace and among your respondents. What we did at Microsoft was to implement a Concept Value Testing Program. This program evolved over the years from ad hoc research into a structured approach. It involves testing concepts with respondents and through engineering. We decide whether to invest in a concept based on how it performs in these tests. We realized that the power of insight comes from how effectively we can engage with respondents. If you only provide them with a one-line description of a concept, it’s not enough.

Respondents are not engineers or marketing strategists; they are ordinary consumers.

So, we designed a program that included competitive intelligence to understand the marketplace and communicated this to our internal partners. We then showed respondents concepts developed by design agencies, which included storyboards detailing how a respondent would use the product and the benefits they would gain. This approach helped respondents visualize the concept more effectively. We then conducted qualitative testing to understand their reactions and gather feedback. We asked them how they would use the product, what they liked or disliked about it, and whether there was something they already use that they wouldn’t switch from. This qualitative data was then combined with quantitative analysis to determine whether we should proceed with the concept or not. A “yes” decision often meant hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars of investment. We then went back to engineering with the feedback, including competitive barriers and benefits. We used this comprehensive approach to support or reject concepts on a monthly basis, not just ad hoc. By empowering respondents with exceptional stimuli and providing engineering leaders with robust insights, we made very convincing arguments about whether to invest or not.

What motivates a career leap and the lessons learned from relocating in the insights industry

Thor:

I think that makes a lot of sense. I love how you talk about it and really about empowering those respondents through exceptional stimulus. But I really want to dig into the leadership and career side of things, because I think you have particular expertise in these areas of Insights work. So if we start with a decision to relocate from the UK to the US, what motivated you to take that leap across the pond, if you will? And what have you learned from it? And if we would start there.

Humayun:

Yes, I just got back from a couple of days away, just about a hundred miles away somewhere, went to a cabin over the weekend. And the conversation on the way back is, could we live there? Why not live there? And I think everybody has this thing in the back of their mind of, could we live somewhere? Whenever you come back from a holiday or a vacation, you probably think, yeah, I could do my Podcast and other things from anywhere. I could do it from the Middle East or Asia. And it probably just runs through your mind in this new world of working from home. And so that's the same thing happens when you travel for work. So when I joined Nokia back in 2011, I traveled a lot. I think every week, every two weeks we travel, people that work in that company will vouch for that. There's a lot of traveling going on. I used to go to Finland and back quite often. I used to go to the Middle East, India, across Asia, United States. And there's a lot of soul searching on the plane back of, could I live there? That feels cool what they do there. People are quite kind there. But the majority of us, and I mean nearly 90% plus, don't actually push for on that and say, I'm going to move. I'm going to go to another country. I'm going leave my local pub, or I'm going to leave my local school, or my mom needs to be told that I'm not going to be around all the time. Those kinds of things. I think that is something that enters people's minds, but quickly leaves people's minds with regards to moving abroad. And I'm the same. I'm absolutely the same. There was lots of opportunities at Nokia to move to Finland. There was lots of opportunities to go and work in another place. And I'd always said no. I'm from St. Albans, a small town north of London. I love living there. I love my friends. I had my school buddies. I had my family around me and everything else. And also I'm a family of immigrants. My family already immigrated from the Indian Subcontinent and moved to the United Kingdom. Wasn't time to go somewhere else. So that's a bit of a background into moving abroad and the perils of moving abroad. And so I didn't want anything to do it really. It was just something that never crossed my mind. And then Microsoft bought Nokia in 2014, I think it was. And My Manager at the time, Tom Crawford, moved immediately, more or less, to Seattle to further his career. And he wanted me to join him as well. And obviously I was reluctant. Reed Cundiff at the time, who was our leader of market research here at Microsoft at the time, said to me, you can work from London. And I did that for a few weeks, couple of months, and found that really hard. I'm the only person in London, majority of people had left or had joined the old Nokia or moved to America. And I was the one left and it was just really weird to go into the office and maybe the only person in our department there. So I decided that I wanted to be part of the action, maybe for a career change.

What was my career moment, I felt to myself, looking back at my career, what was your career moment? Where did you do something that you felt was really different? And so, I spent so many times traveling, I spent so much time searching, I decided that I'd go, I just wanted to go.

I'll just go to America and come up, maybe we'll do it. And then obviously the doubts set in, and you do get the doubts. I think Donald Trump was campaigning to be president at the time, and he wanted to ban all Muslims in the same month. The guns were the rage, that school shootings were happening often. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? You see all of this stuff. But I decided to move. I persuaded my wife, Jasmine, and agreed to move, and she did. And we had a small child who was about one years old. He was not in school yet, gives Jasmine some time to climatize. And then my eight-year-old will just go into school and it will just be fine. And so we did that, we decided to do that, haven't looked back since. And really making that decision was so hard, because it is uprooting your family to another country. But also taxes change. There's so many things that will change about your life.

But I realized that I had the unique opportunity where everything fell into place. Your little whole department had moved to the United States, and Microsoft was an extremely good company at moving people around the world and helping them.

And so that made it easy. I would advise it to anyone, but it was a real hard decision, going from thinking about it on the plane home from focus groups in China, to actually saying, I'm going to uproot and sell up and go to America.

Expert advice for insights professionals considering an international career

Thor:

And to build on what you just said, that you would advise other people to do it, what advice would you give other insights professionals who are curious about embarking on an international career? What should they think about?

Humayun:

There are things to consider. For example, people wanted to move to Dubai with the rage for so many and the reasons why was higher salaries, zero taxes, that thing, great weather. There's things to consider in anywhere that you go. At the United States, or the general level, up in here has great schools, higher salaries, lower taxes, larger homes, and a corporate environment that's much more intense. If you want to change your environment and do something earn more money or have different experiences, go hiking every weekend and do that kind of thing. I think that's well worth you considering to do those things because change doesn't happen without change. Quite often we want change. You wake up in the morning, what can we change today? And by the way, I'm living in the same house, working in the same job, doing the same exercise and going to the same gym and eating the same food. Okay, cool. What else could we change? And there's nothing to change, you know?

And so the change doesn't happen unless you change.

Having a Microsoft, I can say there's very talented people here, very technical people here. This is where all the big engineering departments are. This is where a lot of the things happen. There's much more rigor, less banter, more rigor, I would say, it's one of the working environments here. And there's considerable scope to make decisions, larger budgets, large inside teams. And so, you do take yourself out of what you are used to, to learning something new and different in a new environment, get to go home to a different place, have new and different friends that are from wildly different backgrounds. And that really, really helps you grow as a person. And also what I've noticed is when you go abroad, most people they're also from other countries and other places and they also looking for friends and you build this really cool network of people who don't have family around either. So here hardly anybody has family around, everybody is there by themselves, everybody makes each other their friends. And I think that's a really good, expat way of living. You know, us English have been doing for decades, but I think, moving to America, moving from market Insights is a big move. But again, if you don't know, you don't know, and you will never know if you don't know. You know, the world isn't as scary as it seems, different cultures are amazing, different countries are amazing, America has more outdoors, more beaches, more mountains, bigger companies, diverse culture, mosques, synagogues, temples, like is bigger in nearly everything than England with regards to scale, you know. I didn't think about any of these things when I think about Korea. I think about the role and that's it. I don't think about, you know, the environment. And I think that's the thing that I would ask everyone to do is to say, hey, think about the environment change, think about the school change, think about the growth that I would have in work, how it looks in a resume. Years ago, there was this traveler that came to my work and I forget his name now. He lived in about 10 countries in about 10 years, and he did so much in each of those countries. But I thought, wow, like one year in six months in one country, 18 months in another country, wow, that's amazing. But there's so much you can accomplish. And also you can come back, by the way. It's not a spaceship into orbit and you're not coming back. But I would say that, you know, look at it in that way and really feel like it's a growth opportunity.

Navigating the advantages and challenges of leading a diverse insights team

Thor:

And you also lead a hybrid diverse team in your current role. And this is something else I really want to dig into. So if we first zoom in a bit on the hybrid element, what do you see as some of the advantages, the disadvantages of hybrid insights work and how have you adapted?

Humayun:

I think it's been amazing to look at that evolve, right? Especially around being able to view groups from a distance and being able to do things where you don't need to be in person. Where historically, market research is traveling the world and doing that stuff. But let's just rewind back a little bit about the pandemic and what really brought about this real huge step change in the way that people work. I think productivity is key, right? At the beginning of lockdowns, when we were sitting at home, people were working really hard because they couldn't even go out the house. And so a lot of the times, the main thing that we were doing was working. Companies were talking about closing down their offices. I think Google did that. I think Twitter were going to go fully remote. And a lot of this stuff came about from real push by companies to reduce costs and to have this new way of working. At Microsoft, we did a lot of research into this. We did a lot of pandemic research. and we found out a lot of things. But one of the things that I found super insightful is, what happens when the shops, malls, pubs, restaurants, friendship circles, houses, parks, public spaces are open again, right? What happens to productivity, which is what we started talking about when that happens. And of course, it's going to go back down to pre-pandemic levels when people are actually taking a break, rubbing their knee at their desk, and people are going out and about again. People are going to the doctors, not doing telehealth. And all of the other things, this is going to go back. And so I think that when that goes back, companies will think, okay, cool. We had no longer have the same thing of people at home all the time. What do we do now? So I love what Microsoft have done in this instance. So I can only talk about my company, but I love what we've done. You can be 100% at home. You can be 50% in the office, or you can be 100% in the office. You can choose. And all of those ways of working are celebrated. So we might not have it right all the time, but Microsoft is definitely better than a lot of companies who are providing that flexibility. And so let's just go back to how we managed that as a culture and the team, which is what we were talking about.

I think this is a privilege. And I also think flexibility like this comes with responsibility, if you like. I think trusting folks to self-manage themselves as a way of working really, really works. It allows us to also tap into talent that otherwise can't come into work. And they can be exceptional for us by working remotely.

The disadvantages are that not everybody's cut out to work from home, just that some people aren't cut out to come into the office. And so we totally get that. And I think trying it for six months to a year is what we did with our teams, and to see what works and what doesn't work. And we're still learning about that, but really providing people the opportunity to work the way that they want to work, and then being open to having a conversation about what's working and what's not working is the key to making hybrid work, but allowing people that opportunity, I think, is the most important thing.

Proven strategies for delivering results while fostering trust in teams

Thor: 

I know that cultivating psychological safety while also delivering tangible outcomes to your stakeholders is really important to you. Could you tell us a bit more about how you approach this? What tips and advice you would give the audience on this topic?

Humayun:

This is really important to our company. I think this is really important in the world. And I think it's really important to households, friendships, you know, are you psychologically safe? And you know, even when you go out with a group of friends, you might not fancy it. You might not think that you are heard or listened to and you might not like it. My son the other day was saying to me, I have a new bunch of friends and like he felt that no one was listening to him. That affected him. So, you know, you understand how people feel about having psychological safety is I want to talk about it in three phases. But you know, the first one, you know, at the base level, is someone able to raise a concern? Are people bringing new ideas and feeling safe to do so? Can someone ask me in my team a tough question? You know, are we OK admitting our mistakes and do we feel respected at work? I mean, those are, you know, super, you know, baseline. And when you think about what does that help with, it helps build trust in the group. It helps ensure diverse opinions are welcome, even if those opinions are different. In a political landscape that is on fire here in the United States, you know, the two sides of the political spectrum have extremely differing views on so many things and helping your team members to have differing views, to still work together and respect each other's opinions is psychological safety.

Embracing those cultural differences and the different folks coming to the work and being able to be themselves is super, super important in that environment that you are trying to build.

So that's how I think about psychological safety. But we do have them in pillars that are companies. I want to talk a little bit about how we think about. First of all, we have making space, being specific about the inputs that you want from your people, inviting input, prioritizing certain people that you know that don't always provide input, modeling good behavior, responding constructively to criticism. Everyone says, give me feedback. And then when they get feedback, they cry about it. And so they don't want feedback, you know, those things are super, super hard for people. So modeling that and making sure we do that. And then following up, you know, when you appreciate someone's giving you feedback, when you appreciate that someone's made a comment, when you appreciate that someone's made a suggestion or a recommendation, all of those things following up, I find is super, super important because if you don't follow up, the person might not feel heard. The person might not feel like whatever I said in that meeting counted. And I think those are the loops and feedback loops that we are really working hard in closing and to make sure that people that are coming to work feel empowered to be their best selves and feel empowered that they can make a difference.

The best career advice that shaped my journey in the insights industry

Thor:

And if we talk a bit about you and your journey and the people that have inspired you along that journey, what is the best career advice you've ever received?

Humayun:

Have you ever looked at a job specification online? Oh, I can't do that role. Oh my God, there's so much to it. You know, you do that. My wife would look at jobs online that are like, literally CEO roles. You know, I could do that role. So now I can do that. I can do it. I'm like, I'm not sure you can, you haven't got 15 years experience in this, but you know, they're asking about 15 years. And so that always prompts me to say, there are certain people amongst us that will give anything a go. And there are certain people amongst us that will be like, no, unless it's exactly the same as my current role, but paying more money, I'm not going to do it.

And which defeats the object, because you've got to do something more than you currently do to get to the next level.

And so I remember joining Nokia and wanting to leave after two weeks. I found the presentations really hard, the technical jargon really, really hard, engineering really, really hard. And even though I was leading brand strategy research at the time, I still found it all really, really hard. So I called a friend of mine, Mickey Crowe, he's at Nunwood now, and he was at Nunwood then as well actually. And I said, look, I can't do this. Like this is really, really hard. What advice do you give? He gives the best advice I've ever had that I could give anybody, is yes, people are more talented than you. Yes, people know more than you. Yes, you are least experienced in all of this than you. But nobody owns the hard work. Only you own that hard work. We're way less in control of things that we think, even though we want more control. So I just, my advice would be is whatever job that you get placed into, it might be an old change, right? It might well be a job change that you've done through other people getting made redundant. Or it might well be that you've decided to join a new company because you need, want to be working closer to home or want to do something different. It's possible to learn that new job. It's possible to learn a new methodology. It's possible to learn a new industry, no matter what your previous experience is. And if you don't say yes to those opportunities, you will never grow. And the continuation of the crying around the same mundane jobs that we are doing will remain. So I would say always give something new a try. And honestly, after six months, you'll be singing a completely different tune to what you are singing after three weeks.

How insights professionals can drive business impact and challenge the status quo

Thor:

That's such good advice. And I definitely understand where that comes from. And looking ahead, what opportunities do you think there are for Insights professionals to make true business impact? What can they do to challenge the status quo?

Humayun:

I think when you think about how market research works, you know, you have your field work agencies and then you'll have your market research agencies and then you'll have the market research departments that do a lot of agencies type work within a client organization and then you'll have your clients organizations and then you'll have your end user, right? I think all the way through that chain, we should speak truth to power. And I think where we feel like there's a power dynamic that goes on between each of those areas, there shouldn't be, it shouldn't feel like that. And we need to create a market research industry that feels more equal. That's not derived by who pays who the money, but derived by who is providing the great insight. Our industry has a reputation for having pragmatic views because the person we are speaking to, you know, paid us or worked with us and we are unable to push some narratives because they disagree with it. There's so many times I've seen situations where an agency will bring a great piece of insight and someone on the client side would say, well, I disagree with this. And they start to then remodel the debrief to look slightly different. I mean, sticking by the things that we believe in is super important. You know, you need to have to deliver those hard messages. A really good example of one that did this that inspired me was Jon Priest. He used to be the owner of SPA. I think he's long retired now. He's doing something else. When I was at T-Mobile, he'd come in to present at T-Mobile to senior executive and literally have them in the palm of his hand screaming at them about what's wrong and what needs to change, regardless of the fact that, you know, he is from an agency and to do that. So I would say, you know, equalizing and making sure that all of the big businesses within market research are equal and empowering each of those to speak truth to power and be able to provide a perspective that might not be what someone wants to hear, but is actually speaking truth to power.

Thor:

I love that answer. And on the flip side, what challenges do you see that could face Insights professionals and the wider industry in the near future?

Humayun:

This trend that I'm going to speak about has been going on for a while. I think corporate stakeholders and client size are becoming much more research savvy. I think I've seen a significant difference between our end users of research and how savvy they are with market research. Then we turned 10, 15, 20 years ago and we would just wheel in an agency and have them present to the end-user and that kind of thing. That was the industry norm. It's not the case now.

I think AI is becoming and making us savvier. I think clients are doing more things themselves than ever before.

I think reinventing yourself to do new things essential to the growth of the company, of the end user, that's the super most important thing. So what are your superpowers? That would be big advice that I would give. Is it unique? Does it have a unique value? Even if it's niche, that's where the money lives, really. I very rarely think of methodologies or platforms when I think about who I work with. I think of people who have industry expertise, who have a specific opinion, who have a specific skill that they can give to us that allows our end users to be, well, wow, this is really useful and we can change our business and help our companies to grow. So always think about the end user because if your Insights just goes to the person at the company that is just talking to you and buying the research and that's not going to be getting you the second follow-up project or the third follow-up project. What's going to get you the follow-up work and also going to get you the long-term partnership is if you've made impact and if you've helped grow that company's business.

Power lunch: if you could dine with any insight leader, who would it be and why?

Thor:

I think it's so good that you highlight that element. It's something that we can never stop thinking about. Unfortunately, we're at the end of our conversation today. And as much as it hurts me, I still have one amazing question I want to ask you, which is who in the world of Insights would you love to have lunch with?

Humayun:

I used to be really into this. I used to go to all the conferences and I used to go to all of the industry meetups and that kind of stuff in my early, in my career. And I unfortunately haven't been to many for a long time. One person that I know that's on the circuit and is extremely well known is Crispin Beale. He was my Manager, our boss at Royal Mail Group. And I know he leaves Behaviourly now and is doing a ton of things around the MRS and Insight 250. I would love to catch up with him soon. And I know me and him talk about it often, but I would love to catch up with him soon and see. I remember the one saying that he used to always say to me is, did your company make money or save money based on your research? If not, I'm not interested. No, I say that to my team still to this day. But I also want to mention one other friend of mine, Rob Volpe, Ignite 360, based out of San Francisco. Rob and I are the complete opposites of each other. You know, he wrote a book titled, Tell Me More About That, which is a book on empathy. And I'm saying that now thinking I'm the least empathetic person. I'm not the least empathetic person, but I'm not as empathetic as Rob is. Now don't articulate it as much as he does. But I count on him for inspiration and great ideas and the willingness to listen. And, you know, I meet him from time to time, but I really, really urge anyone to speak to people that have completely opposing views or not even opposing views, but just slightly different way of approaching things. It will really help, you know, in that growth and development. So yeah, Christian Biel and Rob Volpe, those are the two guys that I would love to have a meal with and then catch up with.

Thor:

Such good advice and really interesting people. We wish we could have used drop on those conversations, but what can I say? This has been such an interesting and incredible conversation, Humayun. You have a truly unique perspective on the industry and I really think we can learn a lot from it. So if I play back some of the moments of our conversation that really stuck with me, I'll start with your definition of an insight. Ask yourself, does the information we learned help us grow our business? And growing our business can be so many different things. It can be adding users, it can be growing revenue, improving the quality of our product. And you also talked about the importance for market research to be streetwise. They need to be able to ask the team, what does common sense thinking about this?

Can the data be wrong? Is it misleading? What's realistic? Does this push forward your company into a new innovation? At the end of the day, you need to understand the respondent. You need to understand the marketplace that they sit on, sit in, and then you get to the product truth.

And lastly, you also shared some great career advice that you received, which is you will be in situations where you will think, yes, there are people that are more talented than you, but nobody earns the hard work you will need to do. So whatever job you get placed into, it is possible to learn that new job. It is possible to improve and learn a new methodology, a new industry. But if you don't say yes to challenges like this, you will never learn. I know that I've learned a ton from talking to you today, and I'm sure our audience has as well. Thank you so much for joining me.

Humayun:

Thank you. I really appreciate your time, too.