Insights are key to shaping the right Impact Drivers for a solid plan with a clear logic between WHAT you aim to achieve and the HOW to make it happen.

And insights are far more than data, dashboards and analysis.

In commercial roles I have enjoyed so many talks with colleagues who meet and speak to real customers every day.

The Sales and Account Managers meeting real customers in real life.

The Customer Services Teams speaking to customers about orders and logistics.

Listening to what they hear and see, how they sense customers react and don’t react. Reasons why an initiative didn’t get buy-in with a customer.

I have found myself in a chicken farm in Romania listening to the farmer’s insights on egg packaging.

Observing a carpenter’s work on the roof of a family house and speaking to the guy about his experience from installing a new type of roof window.

Being with a Sales Rep at a customer visit, learning firsthand why the customer did NOT want to join the latest promotion.

Partaking in the annual negotiations with big retailers impacting the P&L for the entire next year, learning what these Retail Buyers really cared about.

These conversations and observations helped learn things that any dataset or dashboard could never teach me.

Things that made us go back and re-visit plans.

Improve the approach for a product launch.

Adjust portfolio strategy because of an opportunity arising from talks with a Retail Buyer.

Change the promotional execution scheme to maximize impact.

 

Dashboards do not reveal soft knowledge

There is so much soft knowledge hidden with each of the colleagues who meet real customers every day.

Things that you cannot read in your data, things you cannot see in the most recent version of the dashboard.

Listening and understanding these observations has been a real key to unlock insights that so easily get overlooked.

Knowledge and Insights about Impact Drivers that can make or break your plan for HOW to achieve WHAT you aim to achieve.

And all this knowledge is sitting with front line colleagues in our own organizations.

So much ‘soft’ knowledge.
Of so great value.
It just need to be captured.

 

In times of big data-obsession, how can we nurture this soft knowledge?

Capturing these soft insights is far more about habits than it is about big structures.

What anyone can do: Listening and wondering and listening and…

The soft knowledge I talk about here is tricky to put into a structure.

It is bits and pieces of knowledge that over time turns into aha-moments and insights. It is the anecdotes and the observations that over time shape a nuanced picture of reality.

You can easily do a few things to nurture this:
Listen.
Ask questions.
Why did it not work?
What made the customer say yes?
What do they like about solution?
What did they wish was different?

Start wondering and discuss openly. How come they like it differently? What could we have done better? How can we turn that knowledge into an opportunity?

If you can put aside 1 hour this week, then call 5 of your Sales Reps and ask a few questions about customer feedback to the recent activity.

This soft knowledge is already in your organization and it only needs to be released. Captured. Discussed. Digested. Used for your Impact Design.

And when the soft knowledge is combined with the data in your latest Dashboard, it can help explain WHY data look as it does. It can reveal insights helping to adjust actions, that lead to a different performance in your dashboard.

And it can play a crucial role in defining the Impact Drivers for your next initiative or for your entire business when building your understanding of your Growth Equation.