For 2020: Activate Your Teams, Not Just Your Research
Jessica Tornek is the President of Momentum by Hypothesis. Contact her at jtornek@hypothesisgroup.com.
We activate research. My team, Momentum by Hypothesis, gets to take what one of our clients calls “juicy research” and turn something we’ve learned into something we do. We help companies move from insights to go-to-market implementation with playbooks, strategy, messaging, and roadmaps.
But here’s the thing too many people overlook: you can do all the planning and strategizing in the world, but you can’t implement until you activate people – a team or an entire organization. Researchers, strategists, CMOs and product designers don’t turn research insight into marketplace reality on their own. It takes a proverbial village to get it done. Activating the organization requires more than educating and informing; it’s about rallying the organization behind the insights. It’s a rational and an emotional process. An activated team understands, believes, champions, and applies the new learning as if it’s their own.
What we know – what we see is true 100% of the time – is that the key to activating a team is not just about what you say, but how you say it. The way your team reads, sees, hears and experiences the insights makes or breaks activation. Done well, these 3 techniques will never fail because they increase the impact of your communication exponentially.
Visual Deliverables (See It)
I’ll be transparent here, this is where Hypothesis has staked its claim, but this isn’t just a humble brag. We’ve seen that visual deliverables have a powerful and lasting impact. When an insights story is beautifully designed, polished and professional, it looks and reads more like a magazine article than a PowerPoint deck. Visual deliverables capture attention sooner and hold it longer. Graphics developed by information designers make the complex simple and use design elements to focus readers on the most important pieces of information while simultaneously providing support and data where needed. Good design gets people excited about great research. How often have insights reports gone viral in your company? Ours do, all the time.
Immersive Experiences (Feel It)
Installations literally bring research to life in three-dimensions. We’ve created museums installations, VR-360s kids’ bedrooms, and beyond. Teams don’t read results and imagine the world of the customer – they enter it and experience it. In an installation, the organization is activated through emotional, empathetic understanding. Installations create a first-person identification with a customer that could never be created from bullet points on a page. Installations are particularly great environments for activating over-scheduled organizations when you need to create time and space for focus, discussion or creativity.
Workshops (Do It):
Workshops aren’t new, but it takes a particular kind of workshop to activate an organization. The goal of an activation workshop is to pass ownership of the insights from the agency to the client. How do you know if your workshop will really activate people? Here are some signs to look for:
Your group talks more than your moderator. Your moderator shouldn’t need to be the smartest person in the room. The less he/she talks, the more it means the team is engaged in the conversation and taking on their own learning. The group shouldn’t be passively listening to the big headlines, they should be allowed to discover the big aha’s for themselves.
There is conflict in the room. No one needs to yell or fight but there should be plenty of discussion, challenging and opportunities to work through issues and questions. Hopefully your research uncovered new information and perspectives, and change comes along with taking in new information. It’s natural for people in various roles to disagree about change and a truly activating workshop will make room for those conversations to play out.
You meet your goals but don’t stick slavishly to the agenda. A truly activated team will get caught up in conversation or they’ll riff on great new ideas. They won’t be hemmed in by a schedule that was planned days or weeks in advance, nor should they be. A good moderator will wander from the agenda to take advantage of the team’s curiosity, interest and passion. As long as the goals are met, an activated team is more important than a rigid schedule any day.
So, as the new year approaches, build the idea of people activation into your 2020 research strategy. Let your team see it, feel it and do it. By the way, we can help. Email me at jtornek@hypothesisgroup.com