Transforming Insight Podcast

One year on, Ruth returns to take stock of where things stand through the “Working Well Together Charter” - a practical framework built around six core principles designed to make client-agency relationships more intentional, more respectful, and ultimately more productive. Those principles cover everything from respecting agency time and the right to disconnect, to committing to open communicatio...

With over 15 years of experience spanning Insight, research, market intelligence, and voice of the customer, Jo arrives at Admiral fresh from a significant tenure at TalkTalk, where she helped build something that every Insight leader will recognise as the holy grail: a value log that quantified the real monetary impact of Insight on the business. It's the kind of initiative that doesn't just demo...

Laura shares the core principles that have guided her approach throughout her career:  Understanding the unique context and needs of each organisation before reaching for new data; Tapping into the wealth of knowledge that already exists within a business;  Always, always stepping into the shoes of the consumer Get to know your stakeholders These might sound like fundamentals, but as Laura makes c...

Together, they explore the barriers that prevent Insight professionals from sharing their opinions; barriers that emerge regularly at the IMA's Insight forums. Lack of confidence, misaligned stakeholder expectations, gaps in training, and a preference for staying in a purely technical role all play a part. And left unaddressed, they quietly limit the impact Insight teams can have. But this episode...

Thomas walks us through the vision that has guided his team's development — anchored in three powerful questions: Where do we play? How do we win? And how do we keep winning? It's a deceptively simple framework that has proven robust enough to carry the team through seismic shifts, from the pandemic to the age of AI. What stands out about Thomas is the clarity and ambition of his thinking. Rather...

Eddie takes us through how his team at Sage has shifted from traditional research cycles to a more agile, consultative model, one that keeps pace with rapid technological, political, and economic change. It's a mindset shift that will resonate with any Insight leader feeling the pressure to do more, faster, and with greater impact. We explore how AI and digital tools are transforming the Insight f...

Personal impact isn’t just a quality for Insight leaders to focus on; it’s something we should all consider if we want to thrive and survive in a fast-moving, rapidly changing corporate environment.  And it’s a critical thing for us to consider when the world of Insight as we have got used to thinking about it is unlikely to last long in its present form. Wherever you are on the AI-adoption curve,...

Ria's transition from traditional Insight roles into marketing and digital positions demonstrates how embracing broader responsibilities can amplify an Insight professional's influence and impact. She highlights how marketing budgets face intense scrutiny, requiring Insight professionals to demonstrate tangible commercial value using language that resonates with senior leadership rather than tradi...

How are you feeling about the environment within which your Insight team will work this year? Do you work in a market sector that is thriving? Is your company growing its share of that market? And is the Insight team recognised as a key contributor to your organisation’s growth? Or do you see challenges all around you – challenges for your market, your company and your Insight team? Are you expect...

Lisa and Emma share their experiences from the IMA’s recent Insight forums, highlighting the positive atmosphere and the encouraging conversations around the role of Insight in driving organisational change. They address the initial concerns surrounding the term "activist" and how, upon deeper understanding, it resonated positively with attendees. We also explore the current state of the Insight i...

Ten years ago, Steve Wills and I became rather obsessed by this book, and it helped contextualise some of our thinking on Insight farming – the critical habit of discussing new research and analysis findings, checking facts and figures that seem at odds with existing learning, investigating contradictions, and building picture summaries drawn from multiple sources. It’s not just the summaries them...

I hope you agree that these are all critical aspects to consider if we want to lead or play a part in the transformation of our Insight teams. By documenting and developing our ideas for each, we can clarify our ambitions, sketch out our designs, consider helpful habits, who we will need to talk to, and how we are going to review progress. But is that enough? I think the truth is that every Insigh...

Some of the IMA’s most successful Insight leaders have gone one step further, and estimated the value that the Insight team itself has added each year, ultimately expressing this as a return on Insight investment. In today’s episode, James talks to two senior UK Insight leaders, Danny Russell (ex Sky and O2) and Suzanne Lugthart (formerly with ebay, ITV and Rightmove). They have just launched a ne...

Management guru Peter Drucker said many years ago that “what gets measured gets managed” which many have adapted to ‘what gets measured gets done’. Similarly, the second habit of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , was that we should all ‘begin with the end in mind.’  That’s why I decided to make the 8th P of the Insight Leader’s Playbook , P for Performance . Please could I ask...

So the 7th P of the Insight Leader’s Playbook is for Process. Process might not always sound the most exciting topic but the way we approach can often make the difference between a productive, effective, efficient and successful Insight team, and a group that is doing its best to survive another spin around the corporate hamster wheel. To quote James Clear from his bestseller, Atomic Habits : “ We...

We start with AI: Where have Insight teams moved to in their adoption of AI tools? How do they feel about that adoption? How can we learn from each other as we all explore new tools? Then we look at the roles which we think are going to be increasingly important for Insight people in the future, starting with the role of ‘foresight pioneer’. Most Insight teams include some foresight work in their...

Clare and I shared a stage at Quirk’s London in May, and we were reflecting on the amount of disruption in the corporate Insight world at this moment. Reorganisations, budget freezes, headcount cuts, senior roles disrupted… we’re seeing it all. And – spoiler alert for next week’s roundtable episode – I personally don’t think this period of change is going to end any time soon. In this environment,...

Any small business owner writing a playbook would want to consider their company’s products and how they’re packaged. Similarly, as Insight leaders, I think we should review our Insight team’s products each year (our output), and how our products are packaged (our communications).   In this episode we look at: Working on our Insight teams (0.50) Regular products (2.49) Insight investigations (3.42...

This has a particular bearing on how we approach the prioritisation of our work. In episode 72 we explored the twin importance of Insight leaders assigning time to identify the biggest business issues they could research in more detail, and the benefits of developing more agency over which topics would then be their teams’ main focus. If we overlay a commercial mindset, we can make sure that we’re...

But whose priorities are we talking about? Who identifies the business issues that Insight could investigate? Ho much agency does the Insight have in allocating its own time, budget and focus? In this episode we look at: The Insight prioritisation matrix (1.30) The paramount importance of proactivity (4.17) Making essential choices (7.40) The daily discipline of prioritisation (10.55) Value-based...

In our conversation, we look at the busy workload of both client-side Insight teams and market research agencies, and the empathy that the best of each demonstrate for the other. This includes the well-being of all concerned in the research process, and steps we can all take to help each other. Central to the discussion is AURA's Working Well Together charter, which has been designed to foster hea...

James is joined by IMA Senior Insight Adviser, Roy Hammond, who developed a more strategic approach to managing agency relationships at Barclays. In this week’s episode: We can’t just rely on the people we manage (1.30) Don’t forget internal departments (3.06) Roy Hammond’s approach to the strategic management of agencies (8.46) We’re never trained in how to manage partnerships (11.27) How do we m...

James is joined by Emma Jones, the IMA’s Head of Content, and Lisa Dutton, Head of Customer, to look back at the term just gone, and forward to the summer term to come. In this week’s episode: The need to embrace ‘uncomfortable influencing’ Tactical tips for managing difficult conversations The bunch of fives… what’s the worst that can happen?  What do CEO’s think about Insight? The need to unders...

James is joined by Lara Meyer, an expert on Insight team stress and well-being, to discuss the ongoing importance of developing Insight professionals and nurturing our teams amidst rapid technological advancements. Lara shares her personal journey, highlighting the necessity of balancing high performance with well-being for sustainable success.  Burnout can creep up on even the most resilient amon...

Arguably it’s never been more important than it is today, because the environment in which we are generating insights and impact the business is changing fast, and the tools that we and others have available are also changing. That gives us some key questions to address: What types of activity should we prioritise? How many people should we have in our teams? How can we make the case for extra hea...