Center for Strategy Research

• 
• Vol. 11, Issue 7, October 2016

Hello!

This month’s edition of Research with a Twist is nothing if not timely. Read on for CSR’s October newsletter, entitled, “The Past, Present and Future Walk into a Bar…”.

— Julie

The Past, Present and Future Walk into a Bar…

I wear a lot of hats at CSR. As many of you know, I’m President and owner of the company. I’m also Chief Financial Officer, and HR Director, and Chief Bottle Washer on an as-needed basis. But my favorite role, perhaps second only to working with CSR’s clients, is that of resident Grammar Queen. Dangle a preposition anywhere in my proximity, and that’s an abomination, up with which I will not put!

The Grammar Queen in me loves the meme that I saw recently on Facebook: “The past, present and future walk into a bar. It was tense.”

The Grammar Queen in me also wants desperately to put an Oxford comma in that meme, but that’s a separate issue. The reason this joke is on my mind is that I’m reviewing the brochure for The Market Research Event in Boca Raton next week, planning which sessions I will attend (other, obviously, than the one I am co-presenting- see sidebar). I’m perusing the schedule, noticing that many of the titles include “future,” “next generation,” “innovation,” and “disruption.”

As I think about it, this focus on “what’s next” is a common focal point for this particular conference, as well as many others that we attend. Realizing this got me thinking about the connection between market research and the passage of time, specifically:

1. Today is a gift: That’s why it’s called “the present”

I know everyone wants us to think that the present is a great place to be. I agree with this sentiment, completely and wholeheartedly, as long as at present I am sitting on a beach with a good book.

Like most of us researchers, though, I’m not usually on the beach. I’m visiting or on the phone continuously with clients, colleagues and vendors, and reading data tables, not mystery novels. And then, there’s putting out fires. Sometimes, lots of them, and sometimes, thank goodness, not so much. It’s the nature of conducting primary research — there are many, many moving pieces, and any of them can stop moving and bring a research initiative to a dead stop. For the most part, being in the moment is the only way to get stuff done.

Designing research, though, is essentially a strategic, and therefore, forward-looking activity — we’re collecting information in hopes of predicting what would lead to the best outcome for our unit or our organization. We, of all people, realize this at CSR. I don’t exaggerate when I say that our middle name is “Strategy.”

2. Back to the future

Taking some strategic thinking time away from the daily hustle, to focus on “what’s next”, is critically important for researchers, so that we can evaluate what’s new, what’s possible, and imagine what the future of our industry and our company might be. In a seminar about how researchers and business leaders can learn from military strategy that we gave a few years ago, we likened researchers to the antennae of our companies. And as with army infantry, our role is to serve as the antennae of our companies, sensing market and competitive trends so that the rest of the “body” can use that information to adapt to current conditions.

Conferences are a great place to exercise our spidey-sense for the betterment of our organizations. At these gatherings, we get to see all of the new “goodies,” such as technologies that can make our jobs easier or more effective. And we get to listen to forward-thinking speakers, who have titles like “Futurist” and “Chief Innovation Officer”, share their predictions on a wide range of business issues.

What we learn about the future makes us better researchers because we can use it to improve our ability to connect the dots. The more educated and thoughtful we are about the possibilities in our industries and markets, the better we can be at interpreting the behaviors and perceptions of our own customers and prospects. For example, if I know that the top priority for Millennials is to improve the world, I’m less likely to interpret their feedback as “lack of ambition,” and more likely to see it as “ambition for something other than work.” This kind of insight can make a huge difference in how we might market products and services to this group.

3. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it

That said in praise of present and future, let’s give the past some credit, too. While we’re thinking about what’s going to happen next, it’s also important to remember that human nature doesn’t change very much, and many of the challenges we face today were similarly faced by leaders yesterday. This is called being “classic”; you know we love our historical icons, including Lincoln, Longstreet, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Shakespeare!

In research, the core, the pith of what we do as market researchers is to “understand what people really think” (some of you may know that this is CSR’s mission — it’s on our company stationery!). Emerging trends can appear at the time to undercut this central focus of our industry. For example, in years past many observers claimed that big data analytics would supplant the need for market research: after all, if we know what people did, why do we care about what they think?

Well, despite these claims, we’re once again headed “back to the future,” still thriving as market researchers, in yet another year, circling descriptions of interesting sessions about “disruption” at another annual conference! Does anyone else have that Rolling Stones classic about time being on our side in their heads right now?

Here’s the Twist: The joke that, “the past, present and future walk into a bar. It was tense,” is on our minds as we prepare to attend The Market Research Event. The day-to-day management of research studies requires us to be on our toes, in the present moment. However, learning about “what’s next” can make us more strategic and insightful. Remembering lessons from the past help us gain insight, too, especially when we remember that one person’s “old” is another’s “classic.”

— Julie