Insight as Competitive Advantage

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, we speak with Dr. Graham Kenny, Managing Director at Strategic Factors.

If you’re looking at a problem from your customers’ point-of-view and your competitors are looking at those problems from their own point-of-view, then you’ve got a breakthrough. And if you’ve got a breakthrough, you’ve got an advantage. And that’s just one of the reasons why insights are so important.

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Dr. Graham Kenny, Managing Director at Strategic Factors, renowned author, and regular Harvard Business Review contributor.

They cover:

• The value of expanding your perspective on insights to the entire stakeholder ecosystem

• How to free up your mind for more insight

• The downsides of surveys

• What you can learn from other industries 

• How to avoid “strategy as usual”

• Reconciling differences between inside-out and outside-in perspectives

• Why data is not a replacement for talking to customers 

• The vital role of management when building a customer-centric culture

• The importance of breaking down knowledge silos

• What to consider when weighing business diversification

• How to structure more insightful planning sessions

• Lessons in insight from Charles Darwin & Svante Pääbo

If you’re interested in getting a masterclass on the intersections of insights and business strategy, tune in to this episode of The Consumer Insights Podcast.

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or use the RSS feed with your favorite player. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor Olof Philogène: Hello everyone and welcome to the Consumer Insights Podcast. I'm really excited to be joined today by strategy and performance measurement expert Dr. Graham Kenny. 

Graham is the Managing Director of Strategic Factors, a Business Strategy and Performance Measurement Consulting firm. He's also a renowned author regularly contributing to the Harvard Business Review and has written more than a hundred articles for international journals, as well as five books.

In addition, he's a member of both the Advisory Council at Harvard Business Review and the editorial board of the Journal of Business Strategy. Thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Graham Kenny: Thanks very much and thanks for the invitation. You've done your research I can see. 

Thor: Firstly, could you maybe take a couple of minutes to tell us about yourself, your journey, and how you came to work in the role you are in today? How did it all begin?

Graham: I won’t go too far back. I'll go back to when I finished my PhD, which was at the University of New South Wales. At that stage, I was interested in an academic career, and I pursued an academic career for 13 years in Australia. 

Then I was in the UK at the University of Bradford Management Center as a visiting research fellow. While there, I made up my mind to go to North America, and I had the opportunity to work at the University of Alberta, a Canadian university. And then we moved down to San Diego, I was there for all four years in North America.

I came back to Australia, knew that I didn't want to continue to be a professor of management, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I had the fortunate opportunity to be a CEO of a company that made trusses and frames for houses. It was a turnaround job, and we turned the business around, a team of us, and then sold the business. I didn't own it, I was brought in as a person to do that. 

Now, you might wonder why would you bring a professor of management in to do that? And the answer is because I had previous management experience before I took on the PhD. That was a really important change in my life because that's when a lot of the ideas that have since developed over the last 20-something years started to take shape. So that was a real breakthrough for me. 

And that brings me to where I am now. When I was an academic, I was writing for academic journals. I've written 5 books, but then about 8 years ago, I broke into the Harvard Business Review. And then one became two, and now it's up to 42.

So I just enjoy the writing as well. I get up early in the morning and do my writing when I need to. So that's a snapshot of where I am today and how I got here.

A definition of insight from the strategy perspective

Thor: Such an incredible journey, Graham. I think it will be inspiring to many of our listeners. As an expert on strategy and performance measurement, how would you define an insight, and how has the way you define an insight changed over time? And if it has changed, what made it change?

Graham: Yeah, that's a very good question. I don't think I put enough emphasis on insights and insight in this whole process. It was a few years ago when I started to think about, “Well, what am I really doing when I'm talking to an audience? What am I doing when I'm writing something? What is some insight that I can give to people? And what is an insight?” 

It's an “aha'' moment. I didn't think about that before in that way. I didn't realize that. “We've never understood that before.” That's what an insight is. 

Now, when I say I didn't put enough emphasis on it, I mean that when I was working with groups of managers, we'd go through a process of analysis and we’d talk about how the business (or any organization, could be government, could be a not-for-profit) needed to position itself to become successful. 

But I don't think I pushed far enough. And in the article that came out today in the Harvard Business Review, there's a third step in this whole process, which is about gathering insight. 

And what I say in the article is “Push, push, push, push until you get that insight”. Because it's easy just to sort of roll over what we did, what we've done in the past, and then think, “Well, that was okay,” but it's not enough. And that's why I think you've just gotta push that a little bit further.

Why market and consumer insights are important

Thor: I absolutely love that, and I think we also see that this is something that's becoming more and more important. So from your perspective, could you help the audience understand why it's become so important? Why are market and consumer insights so important? And how do you describe the role that insights play in strategy building?

Graham: Well, the first thing is: why is insight important? And it’s because that insight gives you competitive advantage. The very nature of an insight means that no one else has got it. So if you’ve got that perspective, if you've seen it from that customer's point of view, and everyone else is seeing it from the organization's point of view, the business's point of view, then you've got a breakthrough.

If you've got a breakthrough, you've got an advantage. And it doesn't just apply to consumers or customers either. It can apply to employees, suppliers, any stakeholder group. So that's why I think insight is so attractive. 

The first thing is: why is insight important? And it’s because that insight gives you competitive advantage. The very nature of an insight means that no one else has got it. So if you’ve got that perspective, if you've seen it from that customer's point of view, and everyone else is seeing it from the organization's point of view, the business's point of view, then you've got a breakthrough.

If you've got a breakthrough, you've got an advantage.

I think those firms which have gone ahead of the competition have been able to see something that no one else has seen. You know, for example, [Steve] Jobs saw something in consumers that the competition didn't see, and then he built a product that was slick, beautifully designed, and so on. 

But you can see it in other cases where people can see a shift in an industry that says, “Television's gonna do a lot of harm to cinema. And that online viewing is gonna do a lot of harm to television.”

So those step changes, someone's looked into the future and seen something coming. And then they say, “We didn't realize this before. What we can see is consumers now want                          .”  Now, how do you get that insight? I'll give you four ways.

The first one is introspection. Charles Darwin is a great example. He's not a strategist. He's one of the greatest scientists of all time. In fact, many think he is actually the greatest because his insights have a far greater impact on our lives than any other scientist.

And I was at MIT a few years ago, and I could see his name carved into the stone around the forecourt near the Great Dome next to Einstein and Newton and all the others, and that was quite interesting. He was on the left here and the others were going around there, and I thought, “Well, that's amazing. He's the natural scientist that is up there with Einstein Newton, et cetera.” 

What he used to do is he used to walk. And he had a walk near his house called the Sand Walk, and he would put a proposition in his head, you know, maybe it's like, “It could work out this way. Maybe that's the reason they look like that.” And then he'd walk and think, and that's introspection. 

I know managers that have told me that when they get their strategy ideas, when they get their insights, it's actually not at work at all. It's doing woodwork, gardening, going for a walk, swimming, there's something where the mind is freed up.

I know managers that have told me that when they get their strategy ideas, when they get their insights, it's actually not at work at all. It's doing woodwork, gardening, going for a walk, swimming, there's something where the mind is freed up. So that's number one. 

The second way, and this is the way that I don't think most organizations use nearly enough, is to talk to the stakeholder group. Let's talk about them as consumers or customers. And ask them, how do you make a decision to choose one organization over another? 

And then you listen to their stories. You listen to their journey, and then you think, “I've never thought about it like that before.” And that's number two. Now there are some cases in which asking people isn't quite so effective. Because they'll give you a socially acceptable answer, and employees are like that. And this is why I'm a bit skeptical of surveys.

They've gotta be done properly and they've gotta ask for the right sort of material. So if you ask an employee what's important in their job, they're quite likely to say everything. And then number five becomes money. But their behavior sounds just something else. And that's what I mean by socially accepted responses.

So I think it's important to go beyond surveys to watch behavior. And of course, market researchers do this. They watch people in stores to see what they choose and how they make that decision. So I think there's three. And the last one is not used nearly enough, which is to look outside the industry at completely other industries.

For example, I know of a social enterprise in Australia that provides coffee, tea, and biscuits for organizations, and they do that by helping people to come outta prison. You get reestablished in society now. It's a competitive market. They work. How do they become more competitive? Well, actually they went to Toyota.

Now, Toyota is not in their business, but Toyota is very good at knowing what the customer wants, developing the processes, and delivering on time. No mistakes. All those things that are very important for competitiveness if you're going to be in that market and Toyota helps them streamline their systems. So I think that's another way to gather insight. The four things I've nominated here.

How working with market research and insight has evolved

Thor: I absolutely love this and I think they're very helpful steps that you were suggesting. And if we tie those recommendations, those different steps with maybe your experience working with a variety of clients over the years. You must have observed many different companies.

How do you feel that the way that companies work with market research and insight has changed or evolved in that time? Do you have any examples you could share?

Graham: I'll just start by, I think we've become skeptical of surveys. I mean that in terms of the general public, but I also, I think managers have become skeptical of surveys and part of that has been led by very poor results in predicting, I should say, presidential elections. They were so wrong on so many occasions. 

But I've been subjected to surveys. I remember one flight I took with Qantas from Sydney to LA and I was handed this survey for, but it would've taken me 13 hours to fill it out. Honestly, that was the time of the flight , and you know, you just get halfway through it and you throw it, so some of those surveys are useless.

I think there's a bit of skepticism about surveys in general. I see a move towards understanding the customer's journey, understanding the stories, and I think that's a move that I can see now. I'll give you an example on how we did it with a client that was a real eye opener to me, because it illustrated to me the difference between a management perspective and a customer perspective. 

I think there's a bit of skepticism about surveys in general. I see a move towards understanding the customer's journey, understanding the stories, and I think that's a move that I can see now.

So the company imported gift products from all around the world. It was a public company at the time. They would bring these products that have their manufacturer's levels on them. So they're gift products, novelty things, probably around nothing more than about $20 American. Calendars and novelty mugs, those sort of things, right? 

So the CEO when I was working with the groups said, “I think what we need in order to get more sales is a branding exercise. What we'd like to do is to put our brand, let's call it the ABC brand, on each of these products, so people then say, I want the ABC product. “

Now a lot of people on the management team said, “Oh, that's a great idea, and then we'll be then known for this whole range of products.” I said, “Look, why don't we go and talk to some of the customers?”

 Now, the customers were retailers, and then you had the consumers, which were the people who bought the product from the customer. So we interviewed customers and said, “How do you make a decision to purchase the products you do from                    ?”. 

They gave us a list of things I call these strategic factors. Things like margin, customer service, reliable delivery, and so on and so forth. And then we threw this suggestion to them. “Do you think it would make a difference if we rebranded the products with a C on it?”

You think consumers would buy the product and they're very close to consumers right now. “Forget it. Waste of time. Don't do it.” And so the next question was “What do you think the company should do in order to get more sales so that you are gonna stock more of the product?”

And they said “Customer service”, and just came in repeatedly, “Customer service.” I said, “What's the problem?” They said “When we ring up, we get shunted around the office. No one takes ownership of our problem. And here we are standing on the phone and we're a retail outlet. We can't work that way, right?”

So there's two worlds that don't correspond and that happens a lot. Now, this is another question I'm often asked, “How many interviews did you do?” And people are thinking, “Oh my goodness, we're gonna have to do hundreds of these things.” The answer is, the magic number is 10.

The evidence number is 12, and people think, “Why would that be the case?” And it's called saturation, so that if I talk to the first retailer, that's a good example. If I talk to the first retailer and the retailer says, “Look what makes me buy from abc, or the alternative is customer service, product range, delivery, margin.” 

When you play it back to the management team, there's no filtering, and then the penny drops. That's when the insight comes in. Because the management team says, “Well, I didn't realize that. We never understood that. We've never seen it that way.” And there's no filtering that way because it's not just in a report, you've got it now taped and played for the management team.

There's probably one or two other things, and we only get about three or four, you know, might only get three from that particular interview. Then I go to the second interview, the third interview, by the time I get to 12, the magic number, you'll have heard it all before. Now we did 16 in this case because we were contracted to do 16, but also because we wanted to make sure we hadn't made a mistake.

Now I've spoken to other people in the field about this, this idea of saturation. It's a term that's used in the market research field, so you can really get into the mind of the customer and then start to understand how they think about the decision. How they approach that decision, what they're looking for.

And you can ask for definitions of these things about “What do you mean by customer service?” You bring that back from 12 interviews back to the executive team and they go, “Oh my gosh, I didn't realize.” Now you can take that to another step. You can actually record the interview either by video or audio.

And when you play it back to the management team, there's no filtering, and then the penny drops. That's when the insight comes in. Because the management team says, “Well, I didn't realize that. We never understood that. We've never seen it that way.” And there's no filtering that way because it's not just in a report, you've got it now taped and played for the management team.

So that's just one example of what we've done, and it's a real eye opener. In terms of two things, I think first of all, how important it's to go outside and have that conversation. The second thing is how few it took to get to the bottom of the well, and so people shouldn't be deterred from doing it. 

Why data isn't a replacement for talking to customers

Thor: I absolutely love that. So you're highlighting the importance of going outside and having that conversation. And the second element, which is really tied to saturation, is how quickly you actually get to the bottom of the well. And that's super relevant and I wanna tie it a bit to some of the many great, excellent HBR articles you've written.

And I remember you wrote about why data is great, but not a replacement for talking to your customers. So this is tied to what you just said, but could you elaborate a bit more on that? You know, what is it that people often forget?

Graham: Yeah, I remember one phrase, one sentence in that article.

Actually, my worry was that managing customers will be the responsibility of the IT department because it's all gotta be done by it. And so the executives will then simply go back to the corner offices and say, “Well, it's gonna tell us all the answers.” I think there's a lot that can be done with big data.

I'm not an expert in that by any means, you are the experts in this sort of thing. So I won't tell you what you should be doing, but there are a couple of things and I think if you could pull it together, as you have done with your videos and on your site, if you can pull these sources together so people have access to it.

I think the issue about using data as it's stored, we've gotta be realistic here. 

We start to relate customer decisions with other things, but it's historic, and it's back here. Now the customer might have moved on a bit. And in some cases, they completely changed their mind about it. 

This is fantastic because the problem with a lot of information in an organization, it's in different silos. And I remember I had a conversation with the executive of Australia's largest bank here called the Commonwealth Bank, and they've got, I can't remember how many let's say 30,000 employees. It might even be more, could be 60,000. 

But the thing is that they pull all this together about employees. They pull this stuff together about customers and so on, and then they analyze patterns, and I think there's some value in that. 

But in that particular article, I put it out the other day there and again, it got about 35,000 impressions in about four days, which for me is quite large. I think the issue about using data as it's stored, we've gotta be realistic here. 

We start to relate customer decisions with other things, but it's historic, and it's back here. Now the customer might have moved on a bit. And in some cases, they completely changed their mind about it. 

A good one is, in Australia at least, people are changing their minds quite rapidly about electric vehicles. It's been a problem. Australia's very large, so getting recharging stations across the country is the problem when the land mass of Australia is the size of the United States, and most of it is empty. Because we only got 27 million people here. That's not an invitation for everyone to come, by the way.

You can imagine the problem with electric vehicles, if they've only got a driving range of 200 kilometers and you gotta charge it. But what's what you can see now is that shift. And now that shift is gonna catch a lot of people. They're in the old way of thinking, gonna catch them off guard. 

It's not to say that you shouldn't use big data.. But you don't get the journey of the customer. You don't get the emotions of the customer, and in some cases you can't see certain things just coming around. 

And there's plenty of other things there. But if you were sort of tracking this in the conversations of the customer and the potential buyer of cars, you'd be able to pick this up a little bit better. That was really the message of the article. 

It's not to say that you shouldn't use big data, you shouldn't be doing the things that you are doing. I would be fascinated to see what you could pull out of what you are doing. I think it'd be really, really interesting. But you don't get the journey of the customer.You don't get the emotions of the customer, and in some cases you can't see certain things just coming around. 

I've heard that before. People are thinking about buying online rather than buying in person. They're too busy, husband and wife at work all the time, and they're looking to go to a cinema and they're wanting someone to look after their child. “Why don't we provide child minding services at the cinema? At the cinema, at our cost?“

I think, “Well, that's an interesting idea. Cause we hadn't quite picked it up.” It's not an original thought by the way, someone in the US is doing it, but you can see what I'm saying unless you got the finger on the pulse, you could miss that.

Thor: I fully agree. And I think that the work we're doing at Stravito is really about centralizing all your market research and allowing you to democratize access to that data. And it's an important component. 

But as you say, keeping your finger on the pulse and never losing track of what's happening right now, because as you say, a lot of things are happening is essential.

Graham: The other thing I've mentioned here is I think there's an attitude in management sometimes that they know it all. And, the English word is “hubris”, which is excessive confidence, arrogance even. And I think of the idea of being humble. 

As managers, and as a team around a table it is very, very important not to say “We know it all, we know what's wrong with those customers”, that sort of attitude, but inquiring all the time, looking for insights, looking for better ways to do things, that's the key to success. 

KPIs for consumer centricity

Thor: I think you're really highlighting a super important element. Something that frequently comes up in my conversations, with insights leaders is the importance.

Customer or consumer centricity and, and how achieving that really requires getting the entire organization aligned with this way of thinking. How would you say that broader company KPIs play a role in becoming a consumer or customer centric organization? And what KPIs do you think are most important for measuring progress or impact in that area?

Graham: Yes. I think the whole thing about consumer or customer oriented is it's gotta come from the top. And we've had a lot of discussion about who's the most important stakeholder in the past. We've talked about shareholder value, and then in this idea of purpose, we've replaced shareholders to customers in some cases.

 And then the Business Roundtable in the US 2019 said, “Well, actually it's all about stakeholders”, which was a huge breakthrough because I've been talking about stakeholders for 30 years, and I'm not the first one to talk about it by any means. But, having brought up stakeholders in our conversation here, I think it's important to think about it in that way.

It also has got to come from the top, as I stumbled on that thread. Gotta come from the top and how we think about things. So the importance of customers,  if it's not in everything that the CEO says, and other managers, then it's not going to take off. 

The importance of customers,  if it's not in everything that the CEO says, and other managers, then it's not going to take off. 

Now as far as KPIs go, the way I develop strategic plans, and there's nothing wrong with strategic plans, although there's a lot of stuff out there that says there's no such thing, 

So when you start to look at what you're doing from the outside in, you ask questions about “What do customers want?” For example, convenience store, location, hours of operation, range of good sold store presentation price. “Where are we positioned to have a competitive advantage?” That's the strategy part.

Now measurements are two way streets. We wanna measure how well we are doing with the customers on those very same things, which is quite economic. We've identified the strategic factors that are important to customers of a convenience store or any business. 

We've then said, “This is where we stand, we wanna be the cheapest”, or “We don't wanna be the cheapest, we wanna have the best customer service”. That's gonna be our hallmark. Now we develop metrics around those things, which are the things that are important to customers, but we also measure the success of those metrics or success of our efforts by revenue flowing back to the organization.

So that two way street is really important on a scorecard, and it's important for all stakeholders, employers as well, because they have that same relationship. So it's not just enough to measure revenue, or market share. But you have to also measure the things that drive those results.

On diversification strategy

Thor: Which we could tie to what you said about, outside in and inside out, right? It's like, one is from the internal perspective and one is from the external perspective. 

But you've also written extensively on diversification strategy, in fact, a whole book. So what insights do you think companies need to have when evaluating whether or not it's the right time to move for them?

Graham:  It's an interesting endeavor I took on to write that book I'd written about diversification.

What I really wanted to do with that book was to see how successful diversifiers do it, what happens within a successful, diversified business. So I looked at a number of businesses. They had to  get  over a 10 year period, at least 14% return on equity. And having chosen those businesses, I looked at what they did, in other words, their management practices. 

The first thing I'd say is people seem to get frightened of diversification because there's a literature there that says you shouldn't do it. But on the other hand, what we find is diversified firms that are successful. So that's a contradiction. 

The big mistake I think that people make in diversification is they diversify and then they kill off the diversified entities by bureaucracy, so they don't allow them to run their own shows. 

The big mistake I think that people make in diversification is they diversify and then they kill off the diversified entities by bureaucracy, so they don't allow them to run their own shows. 

We have a very successful diversifier in Australia called West Farmers. It's probably Australia's eighth largest company. And it's diversified in the sense that it has a big chain of hardware stores. 

It used to be in retail, which was a food supermarket that recently floated, but it's in a number of other things as well. What it does is it allows those businesses to run independently without interference from head office.

So you might wonder, why do we need a head office? And the answer is, it coordinates and allocates funds. So it then has a role of building the culture and there's a sort of west farmer's culture, but then there's another subculture within each of the industries. It allocates funds to whichever area at the time is doing well, and you know, businesses can come up and down. 

So I think that there are about five different features of a successful diversification. The point I'd make is one, don't be frightened to diversify, two, make sure you do it properly, and three, one of the elements of doing it properly is to allow autonomy to the diversified entities. And not try to continually crush them by this sort of bureaucratic conformity, which can happen.

How to avoid "strategy as usual"

Thor: I think that's a super powerful insight. I think that autonomy is probably forgotten many times. The way I gather is, it's the actual fundamental part to make it successful. 

If we think a bit about our audience, a lot of them of course are insights professionals, and if you could give them some thoughts or advice, what opportunities do you think there are for insights professionals to make true business impact and challenge the status quo, or as you've aptly described it, "strategy as usual"?

Graham: Yes. That's from an article I wrote about strategy as usual, and I'll just give the story behind that article first. This was a situation where I was standing up in front of a group of executives for the annual strategic planning event, and as we went along using the whiteboard flip chart, around nine, it's probably about quarter past 10. 

This was a few years ago, and from the back of the room I heard this voice from Frank, and Frank said, “I don't know why we do this every year. It always turns out to be business as usual.” And at the time I was, you know, pretty young into the consulting game. I said, “Oh, this is a bit embarrassing.” But it was a really good point because they had done it the year before and the year before that.

From the back of the room I heard this voice from Frank, and Frank said, “I don't know why we do this every year. It always turns out to be business as usual.”

 I wasn't involved in it at that point. And while Frank was saying “Nothing seems to change as a result of these meetings”, and that was a moment of truth, because I thought, “Well, is he right? Was he wrong?”

But it was a really good point because they had done it the year before and the year before that. I wasn't involved in it at that point. And what Frank was saying is, “Nothing seems to change as a result of these meetings.” And that was a moment of truth because I thought, “Well, is he right? Or is he wrong?”

It took me a while to realize he was right.

At the moment I thought, “I can't really go down that path.” And at morning tea, when we had the break, everyone's coming up and saying, “Oh, sorry about Frank.” “Sorry about Frank.”  “Oh, that's just Frank.” “Don’t take any notice of Frank.” All that sort of stuff.

But Frank was right. And I think that's what I was driving to in the business as usual, strategy as usual: that there is a tendency for people to meet each year for their annual retreat, maybe it's a day or two, they roll over what they have done the year before, add a bit to it.

But it doesn't go into the depths of the “so what?”’s, you know, “What if?” Well, “What if, then so what?”’s. And that's when insight arises, you know, and say, “What if we did this? What if we did that?” And Frank was saying, “Look, it’s just basically a budgeting exercise.”

There is a tendency for people to meet each year for their annual retreat, maybe it's a day or two, they roll over what they have done the year before, add a bit to it.

But it doesn't go into the depths of the “so what?”’s, you know, “What if?” Well, “What if, then so what?”’s. And that's when insight arises, you know, and say, “What if we did this? What if we did that?” 

So that's why I wrote that article. And again, it did resonate with a lot of people. I think,  as far as the people that are involved in this, in any organization, just be aware of the fact that there is a tendency to just kick over the traces and continue on. 

Try and design these sessions so they really are insightful. And that can mean thinking completely differently, setting up groups that now think, “Well, we're the ones that are supposed to say, how this business could fail.” Think about all the ways business could fail. Just an example of thinking about what might happen to our product line if someone came up with this.

So that the session now becomes a bit less of a group thing and more of a combat as a contest. That we're contesting some of the taken for granted. So the customer insight professionals should be the ones that are saying politely, “We're going through the same stuff”. Let them be frank.

“I dunno why they do this. We do this every year. It always turns out to be business as usual.” They could be the point guards that watch out for this kind of tendency. And it is a tendency, it's a thing that we all do. It's a natural thing to get together and say, “Okay, so how do we just keep this machine running?”

But the other side of it, the insight is to say, “What could happen that will completely boil us out of the water? What is it that we're missing? Is there something that we haven't seen?” That's the kind of insight piece, which I think you can do.

Who in the world of insights Graham would love to have lunch with

Thor: Thank you so much for that advice. I think it's very helpful and I know it might not be an easy thing to do, but it's definitely part of what we need to do as insights professionals in large organizations.

Dr. Graham, unfortunately, we've, we've gotten to the end of our conversation today, which really hurts me, but I do have one last question I want to ask you. It's a question I love to ask,  “Who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?”

Graham: That's a really interesting question. And you know, I saw something yesterday, and this is not because he's Swedish. He won the Nobel Prize for medicine and has something to do with DNA and the Neanderthal man. Not so much the man, but Neanderthal time. And they asked him what drove him along, and he had the one word “curiosity”.

I hope I'm not misquoting him here, but I think I heard him say “curiosity”. What drove Darwin? Curiosity. What should drive consumer insight people, the people we were just talking about a minute ago? Curiosity. 

So I'd like to have lunch with him and just to find out what curiosity means to him, how it's driven him over the years, and any advice he might give people like me about maintaining curiosity.

Summary

Thor: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I believe Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize in 2022, and I absolutely love the fact that you brought Charles Darwin into the world of insights. I think that was such a powerful connection, that I think many of us had not made. 

This has been such an inspiring conversation, Graham. I think the perspective you brought from the disciplines of strategy and performance measurements is incredibly relevant for insights leaders looking to integrate insights into more areas of the business.

And in particular, I think you've really underscored the importance of what they do. I bring with me a lot of learnings. I think that when we talked about insights, you reminded us that it's really the “aha” moment. It's the things we've never understood before.

And the importance of push, push, push to get those insights, because at the end of the day, it is important because it gives you a competitive advantage and a break. That it allows you to do is an advantage. 

You also gave us a couple of pieces of advice, to one, think about introspection and you talked about how Charles Darwin walked, to free up the mind and to unpack hairy problems.

Two, to talk to stakeholder groups, to customers on how they make the decisions to actually choose one choice of another, and listen to the journey that they took to get there. And three, avoid socially acceptable answers by actually watching and monitoring people's behavior. And four, look outside the industry in which you are to completely different industries for inspiration.

I love the fact that you said that you've seen on multiple occasions how the penny drops for the management team when they access information and there's no filtering, and how that underscores the importance of getting outside of the building and having those conversations.

And that in fact, although you'd love to reach out to hundreds of people, the magic number 10 or 12, tells you something about how quickly you can actually get to the bottom of the well.

I know I've learned a lot from talking with you today. As a matter of fact, I think it's been a masterclass in insights and strategy, and I'm sure our audience has enjoyed it as well. Dr. Graham, thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you

Graham: Thank you very much for the opportunity and all the very best. Hope we chat again.

Thor: I hope so too.