It’s development season for many of us in the corporate world—time to reflect on past performance and identify where we will focus our energy over the next year to move ourselves and our companies forward.  To help, I’ve pulled together resources that researchers can use for their own development, and tools managers and department heads can use to prioritize team training initiatives.

Market Research Skills Framework

We have identified 18 skills across six competency areas that improve research impact on the organization.  Yes, foundational research skills are important, but focusing on more consultative skills like business problem solving, influence, and synthesis is what will really help you move the dial in your organization.

Researchers, use the maturity levels we have outlined in our Research Skills Framework to identify your self-development opportunities. 

Heads of Research, launch our Research Skills Diagnostic to assess these skills across your team.   You will receive a team report outlining the top strengths and development opportunities for your group, and individuals and managers receive more directed reports to help with one-on-one development discussions.

Researcher Development Resources

We have organized tools and templates to help researchers improve their performance across the 6 core research competencies:

1. Foundational Competencies-utilizing the most appropriate methodologies and analytic techniques in a timely and efficient manner
2. Insight Generation-shifting your primary contribution from accurate customer and market data to deep insights that lead to new business opportunities
3. Business Problem Solving-using business problem-solving skills to uncover the highest-value questions to investigate and provide business-relevant recommendations based on their insights
4. Influencing-using emotional influencing skills such as conflict resolution, versatility, and empathy to maximize your impact on strategic decision makers
5. Communication-understanding distinct learning needs and decision-making environments of your business partners
6. Synthesis-creating a concise articulation of the assembled knowledge, drawing together key insights and supporting information for your organization

Staff Management Resources

Research’s growing strategic role in the business requires staff to shift from primarily technical roles to ones that can provide insights, business recommendations, and consultation. Creating the right mix of technical and strategic capabilities, however, proves especially difficult for many functions as team sizes remain static or shrink despite escalating demand.  Research managers, access MREB resources to help with:

• Hiring-locating talent with relevant skills for realistic, specialized research job profiles, and an intellectual curiosity that makes them more likely to generate high-quality insights
• Research Training and Development-sandwiching effective research training initiatives between pre-training motivation and post-training reinforcement activities
• Career Planning and Evaluation-developing metrics that link to each Research role as well as the function’s overall goals and expand career opportunities to motivate and retain high-potential researchers

Before Smartphone and GPS navigation systems, losing your way meant pulling off and asking for directions. We have gotten so used to consulting a small screen that we have forgotten what this was like, but asking for directions was often not easy. Not because people weren’t willing to help, but because there is often more than one way to get from point A to point B. There’s little more frustrating that being lost, and feeling even more lost when a simple ask results in a long debate between would be rescuers on how best to get to the destination – “just tell me whether to turn left or right!”

Multiple sources of information in a company can similarly send business partners in different directions, slowing decision making and frustrating business leaders. Research at Adobe decided during a project launch, to employ a multi-step synthesis process aimed at developing “turn left!”-style unified recommendations for business partners.

Adobe’s process includes three steps which identify which sources and divergences should be focused on, reconcile conflicts, and lead to unified recommendations:

1. Develop an understanding of source relationships using Touchpoint modeling

Adobe begins by highlighting the relationships and relative importance of various data inputs in a predictive Customer Touchpoint model.

2. Use a predictive dashboard to focus analysis on unexpected findings

Key metrics are put together in a predictive customer dashboard.  The dashboard highlights discrepancies between predicted and actual results, allowing the team to focus synthesis efforts on unexpected findings.

3. Bring together experts to resolve conflicts and develop unified recommendations

Adobe holds regular synthesis sessions which bring together researchers, source owners, and business partners to develop a unified set of insights and actions.

Using the multi-source synthesis process has improved Adobe’s ability to drive business outcomes, by streamlining insights and putting forward unified recommendations.  MREB members, learn more about Adobe’s Model Based Synthesis.

This guest blog comes from Judy Wang, a researcher at the Customer Contact Council. Check out the CCC blog for more insights related to customer service and support.

Over the holidays, I had the fortunate opportunity to travel overseas. Upon entering the country of my destination, I went through the lengthy process of declaring my travel items, presenting my documentation, and announcing my intent to stay– all to a smiling, courteous customs agent. Next to the agent was a keypad prompting me to rate her service using a series of different smiley faces. Pleased with her friendliness and the relatively painless interaction, I pushed the smiley face with the huge grin. As soon as I did, a similarly huge grin spread across her face and the agent gushed her appreciation for my feedback.

I was startled.

Had she known about my choice? If I had selected the frowning face, would her reaction have been different?

Of course, I would never know, but that got me to thinking about the ways that we unintentionally introduce bias into customer feedback.

• Bias from the customer. In this instance, the fact that I was rating someone (who may or may not have access to my response) in their presence likely made me respond positively. No one wants to seem like a jerk, and the potential of voicing negative feedback right in front of that person can make someone avoid that awkwardness altogether by just responding positively.
• Bias from the rep. Similarly, reps can introduce bias into the system when they’re given the ability to decide who participates in surveys. This is especially true in phone interactions, when reps ask customers to give feedback after calls. Of course, when compensation and evaluation are tied to this feedback, reps have no reason to invite customers who have just had a difficult interaction. Many of you voiced this concern in one of our online Discussions posts, noting a suspiciously high trend in scores after reps are given the ability to choose which customers participate.

Do either of these biases exist in your survey strategy? Are you unintentionally biasing your survey scores positively?

Think about your survey process, and if you do involve reps too intimately, consider creating double-blind survey experiences. What we mean is: introduce anonymity into the process to remove the element of personal bias on either the customers’ or reps’ end. By doing so, the customers won’t feel pressure to respond positively to the rep’s face, and reps won’t have the ability to screen out unhappy customers. This can be an automatic voice prompt inviting customer feedback at the beginning of each call, or a button reps press that randomly terminates or transfers the calls. This way, you’ll get better data – and an unskewed sample size.

Related MREB Member Resources:

• Building Technical Competence in New “Consultative” Hires
• Research Methodologies Resource Center
• Researcher Training Materials

A framed quotation hangs on the wall at Albert Einstein’s office at Princeton University. It goes something like this-

‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’

While there is debate about whether Einstein actually said it, or it is something he just liked, the essence of the quotation is not for debate. Essentially, we do not need to use every resource that comes our way, and not every resource matters in our research projects. At MREB we had earlier talked about analytics and its use in research process. We have looked into instances when analytics should not be used just because it is available. For every research project two main points should be considered about integrating analytics into other research methodologies.

1. Does the project require a deeper understanding into consumer behavior?

2. Are you able to spare the time and staff resources for the duration of the project without compromising your existing projects?

So, just because you can count on a resource, does not mean you must use it. MREB members, learn more about this decision tool. You can also access our Topic center on Analytics, the full report on Integrating Analytics on Market Research, or the case study on Norwich Union’s Value Based Resource Allocation Model for an in depth look.

Late last year I blogged about the value companies are placing on increased productivity, and outlined 3 attributes of the new high performer.  We found that those who are more adaptive, collaborative, and engaged will be the most successful.

A new list released by CareerBliss.com reveals the companies that seem to foster this type of environment best: the 50 happiest companies in America.  It turns out that the companies that look for employees to use their skills and abilities to solve interesting problems are the new “it” places to work.  We’ve been focusing on the importance of environment for researcher success for years, and I for one am happy to see a fair number of our members among CareerBliss’s list.

So, as you are starting our year out in your Research department, let’s take a look at a few things that you could do to improve your own happiness at work:

• Understand the impact you have—do you know how your work pushes corporate strategy?  Spend some time linking your daily activities to broader company goals.  Researchers at Kimberly-Clark formalized a process for documenting and internalizing overarching corporate strategies, and then tie these strategies to ongoing work.  When you apply this type of strategic tie-back to your activities you’ll be able to provide better business partnership and you’ll see the real impact your day-to-day has on the broader scheme of things.
• Value your partnerships as connections—cultivating relationships can be a great source of satisfaction, both personally and professionally, and as researchers, we work with all kinds of folks: teammates, business partners, suppliers, etc.  Lots of opportunities to create positive interactions.  We’ve blogged before about working with people you don’t like, but we also like to focus on creating better, stronger relationships with suppliers, business partners, and fostering the best research environment possible.  
• Use your judgment and expertise to solve problems—trusting your instincts.  Researchers are best positioned to use accumulated knowledge AND new data to inform decisions.  Being able to use your skills and knowledge is hugely rewarding, and as a researcher you need to decide, don’t drift.  

What are other ways that you seek enjoyment and fulfillment through your daily work routines?  Please share in the comments section below.

This post comes from fellow CEB researcher Tim Bruno of the Marketing Leadership Council.  For more marketing perspective, check out the MLC blog.

Being good at everything would be a phenomenal problem to have.  Unfortunately, that’s just not the case for most of the companies in the world today.  But bear with me for a moment and visualize this utopian state at your company:  Marketing planning is optimized.  Your go-to- market approach is winning.  Operations, finance and service are all working in lock step.  Everything is perfect.

If this was the case, what would you do?

Many of my members would say: look for areas of constant improvement.  And many more members would say: we can be more customer or consumer centric than we are today.

Being more customer centric is a lot to bite off and chew.  That said here are four design principles that can guide your own conversations on the topic:

1. Start with the customer experience.  The customer experience is often considered the central role in defining a firm’s level of customer centricity.  MREB members, learn more about embedding customer experience with Using a Customer Journey for Synthesis and Strategy.
2. Create an executive-level chief customer experience officer.  Many members have expressed a keen interest in this topic – so much so that there have been some peer forum discussions on the responsibilities of the role.
3. Rotate employees into customer facing roles.  Many firms intent on developing a customer first culture see the value in rotating key employees into the front-line or research positions.  In MREB, companies like Eli Lilly have improved customer centricity by using rotations to form a bridge between Research and other departments in the organization.
4. Flatten and decentralize your marketing organizational structure.  Many may consider this a bold design principle and one that diverges with centralizing a chief customer office, but it should be in the conversation.  On a related note, one of the reasons members opt for a decentralized marketing structure is to place more focus on differing customer dynamics that occur throughout their markets globally.  MLC members can view the Council’s overview of org structure models here.

Curious to hear from you.  If you have any other design principles to add, let us know in the comments section below.

In a 10-minute scan of business headlines I came across literally dozens of blogs and articles on prioritization: mastering productivity and efficiency to ensure success in the New Year.  From a personal prioritization point of view, a common theme remains focusing on what you’re good at.

 I’ve blogged before about differentiating yourself by playing to your strengths.  Don’t try to be the bionic researcher; you’ll get more done more successfully if you focus on your strengths (click here to access 4 tips to help you identify your strengths). 

But one of my favorite posts on personal to-do list prioritization comes from Mike Michalowicz on openforum.com.  Mike establishes a prioritization process where you label your to-dos:

• Dollar signs next to income-impacting to-dos
• Smiley faces next to client-facing needs
• Stars next to things due today

Check out his post to see his recommendation for sorting and prioritizing your check-list, Vegas slot style.  As you can imagine, items with a dollar, smiley, and star need to get done first.

Beyond the personal to-do list, researchers also have to prioritize the larger research agenda for the organization.  There are two main areas that you need to consider:

1. Focus on Issue Diagnosis-projects should answer key unknowns that impact strategic decisions.  MREB members, access our Issue Diagnosis Center to read how Johnson & Johnson inventories knowns and unknowns, and how Lilly gets line partners to ask better questions.
2. Prioritize Ad-Hoc Requests-it’s all about transparency: define simple criteria to prioritize ad hoc requests, and make sure your business partners understand it.  This will allow requestors to “game the system” to make sure that you accept their project.  But what they will really be doing is asking better questions.  MREB members, visit our center on Research Agenda Prioritization to see how Norwich Union, FedEx, and others do it.

Related Blogs:

• 4 Tips: Identify your Strengths
• Development Series: Play to Your Strengths

We have argued frequently that researchers are in the best position to provide strategic guidance to their organization.  As researchers we think about things like how you can get more folks to benefit from insight by sharing our foundational knowledge and how to embed customer knowledge in a way that fits executive decision-making processes.  That’s right…STRATEGIC thinking!

Innovation Excellence recently published a blog on  5 characteristics of the best strategic thinkers, and I think many of these will be familiar to your daily research lives:

1. Open yourself to perspectives from multiple sources—this isn’t about having more data points than others, it’s about putting them together properly.  We’ve done the analysis, and know that decision makers feel more confident in their decisions if they used more data points to get to them.  But we also found that decision makers struggle to make the best decisions without help with interpreting the data.  Researcher synthesis skills can give you a real leg-up in the strategic decision-making process.
2. Incorporate BOTH logic and emotion into your thinking—emotional drivers matter, especially when you’re trying to get the organization to take action.  We have found that the most successful way to re-educate executives when their assumptions are wrong is by engineering learning moments: using multi-sensory experiences that make the decision makers feel the emotion that comes with new, convention-breaking insights.
3. Seek options beyond today’s reality—don’t let the current state of affairs have too much impact on future decisions.  A great Research example of this is the trends trend.  Decision makers like to ask for trends to try to identify “the next big thing.”  But we’ve seen companies have much more success growing their company when they shift Research’s focus from megatrends tracking to opportunity identification.
4. Question both the familiar and the to-be-determined—in other words, be curious.  As the Science channel promo goes: Question Everything.   We’ve done the quant on this too, and have confirmed that intellectually curious people provide significantly better insights to the organization.
5. Accept open issues—this may be the most difficult for us.  As researchers, by nature we are looking for answers.  But the most successful Research departments are the ones that encourage principled risk-taking.  Waiting for all of the facts to come in to make the “right decision” will keep you waiting around forever.  Use your judgment when guiding the organization: it’s how true insights are made.

Happy 2013!  From improving presentations to creating better insights or identifying new research methodologies, there are a number of research-related resolutions to set out on this week.   

To help you get back into the swing of things and get you going on your resolution to-do list, take a look at our most popular content over the past year: 

Most Popular Blogs

• 10 Tips for Effective Presentations
• 5 Steps to Better Listening
• Just Say No: 5 Smart Ways to Disagree with Others
• Personal Commercial: 30-Seconds to a Good Impression  
• 4 Tips: Identify Your Strengths

Most Popular Research

• Skills for the Next Generation of Market Researchers
• Embedding Customer Knowledge into the Business
• Unlocking Insight from Social Media
• Using a Customer Journey Model for Synthesis and Strategy
• An Introduction to Storytelling

Most Popular Web Resources

• Iconoculture Weekly Consumer Insights
• Analysis and Insight Generation Resources
• Insight Generation Toolkit
• Knowledge Management and Synthesis Resources
• Research Methodologies

We’ve also got a list of some of the research initiatives we are working on in the first months of 2013:

Upcoming 2013 Research

• Knowledge Portals
• Market Research Gamification
• Utilizing Online Communities for Market Research
• Data Visualization

We’d love to hear about your upcoming initiatives too; let us know what you’re working on in the comments section below.  Happy New Year everyone!

Many Research functions today are hiring “consultative” candidates in their quest to become consultants to the business. Most Research heads want these consultative hires to take on a mix of consultative and core research responsibilities. But they are realizing that these new consultative hires lack technical research skills of traditional researchers. This lack of technical research skills can reduce Research’s credibility with the business and lead to action on incorrect research.

To prevent these pitfalls, here are 4 tips from progressive companies on hiring and training technically competent consultants.

1. Define technical skills new consultative hires need: Companies must clearly define technical skills they expect new consultative hires to develop. In general, all consultants, even leaders, need basic technical research skills to influence business partner decisions, manage expectations, and supervise technical specialists on their team. At a minimum, consultants need to understand “how” to conduct research, while technical specialists or vendors execute the study. Some consultants may need to develop specific advanced research skills to perform their research responsibilities.
2. Test for technical aptitude but avoid the “Bionic Researcher” trap: “Bionic Researchers” equally skilled at research and consulting are extremely hard to find. When hiring consultative hires, companies should test for technical aptitude but not technical excellence. Leading companies test for a basic knowledge of the research function and process, baseline technical acumen, and an interest in learning technical skills.
3. Be prepared to invest in building technical skills: Companies should be prepared to invest time in training since on-the-job training alone will not be sufficient to up-skill consultative hires. Consultants often need six months to demonstrate progress and at least a year to reach the required skill level. Leading companies use a combination of best-fit internal methods (such as simple tools, workplace assignments, and immersion) and external methods (such as courses, certifications, and conferences) to build skills. Companies that cannot make this investment should check for technical competence—not just aptitude— at the time of hiring.
4. Workflow embedded, continuous learning is more effective than point-in-time approaches alone: Progressive companies realize that a mix of learning, doing, and coaching works best since up to 70% of skill-building takes place through workplace assignments. And, simply sending a new hire to a conference or skill-building class is not enough.  Even if formal training provides structure and scalability to skill-building efforts, managers must create opportunities for new hires on the team to practice what they have learned through workplace assignments. The mix of learning and doing is often facilitated by peer coaching.  Peer coaching provides an informal environment to ask questions, highlight pain points, and jointly work through solutions.

MREB members, learn more about how companies like CareFusion, Cummins, and SABMiller approach technical training in our new whitepaper, Building Technical Competence in New “Consultative” Hires.

Related Blogs:

• Upskilling Consultative Team Members on Technical Research Skills

Related Member Resources:

• Building Technical Competence in New “Consultative” Hires
• Hiring Market Research Talent
• Market Research Talent Development Trends
• Dedicated Synthesis Role (Motorola)