The power of elastic thinking: Connecting insights to decision making

Ryan Barry:

Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, the podcast powered by Zappi. My name's Ryan. And I am here, as always, by my friends and co-hosts, Patricia Montesdeoca and Kelsey Sullivan. Patricia just married her daughter, and Kelsey just got back from Hawaii. You ladies are a vibe today. How you doing?

Patricia Montesdoeca:   

We're great. And Easter was, what? Fantastic.

Ryan:

Kelsey's trip looked fun. I was Instagram stalking her. She did a lot of hiking. She looked like she was having a blast. And I used your trip to convince my family that we need to go to Hawaii, even though the flight's very far. So we'll do it.

Patricia:

Do it. Stop in San Diego.

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly. I would like to go to San Diego. Fun fact about me. I was actually supposed to go to San Diego State University and I stayed in the great state of Rhode Island because my mother got sick and thought it was the right thing to do. And here we are.

But San Diego's a beautiful place. It's 70 and sunny all year. How the hell can you beat that?

Speaking of California, today's guest is Oksana Sobol, the insights leader at Clorox Company based in Oakland, California. Oksana is somebody who I've known for a really, really long time. And she's just recently taken the top insights job at Clorox. And has a really interesting approach to life, to productivity, to the future of insights. And she gives us a glimpse into her wonderful brain approach and strategy today.

So I'm going to shut up and let you get to Oksana's interview.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry:

All right. Very excited for today's conversation with an old friend of mine, Oksana Sobol. You know that you're one of the first people I ever introduced Zappi to back in 2014? I appreciated you then and I appreciate you now.

Oksana Sobol:

I remember that very well, Ryan. I remember how we met at a conference in New York and I distinctly remember thinking, "How many cups of coffee did this guy have today already?" And I learned since then that those are just your baseline energy level, that's how you roll.

Ryan:

That's true. And you know what? I probably did have more coffee then. There's a pre-post COVID thing. One of my behavior changes, well one of them was I started exercising, which we've spoken about, the other is you know that people always email you, "You want to go out for a coffee?" I used to actually do that. Now, I only have one cup of coffee a day. And so yeah, you're right, this is my energy level. I'm just energetic. So what was your post-COVID change? Anything new that you did once you had the break of the pandemic?

Oksana:

A lot of new things. I think we all collectively got into this productivity enhancement train, right?

Ryan:

Yes.

Oksana:

And started doing new things. So yes, exercising, new ways of exercising, taking better care of ourselves. And a new thing I'm trying now, I'm not sure it'll last very long, but eating only raw vegetables and seeing what that does to productivity levels, there's a theory like that as well.

Ryan:

And so how long are you into this experiment?

Oksana:

It's been a few weeks. And yeah, so far I would say it's good, it's working. Not very tempted by steaks.

Ryan:

So actually, we didn't build this into our chat, but we might as well have some fun. So Oksana is the Insights Lead at Clorox. She is teaching advanced mathematics to students. She is a philanthropist for her home country in the Ukraine. She is a mother, a friend, an avid outdoors woman. So how do you actually get all that done in a day because you're a busy lady?

Oksana:

Well so I think it's about goal-setting, right? Because there are a lot of things and there are only so many hours in the day. So we have to be very clear about what it is that we are trying to achieve with each. And so being a researcher, I know a framework called Jobs to be Done. And so that's how I think about my life too. What is my job to be done as a parent this week, this month, this year? And what are the goals I'm trying to achieve? What are my jobs to be done as a teacher? And I just have to put in there that it's advanced math, but for elementary school level.

Ryan:

Oh, well still, I still think you're badass. And you know what? We talked about this in a social connection that we had, but the kids are the future. So I appreciate you putting some smarts into them because they're going to save the world, they're inheriting from all of us.

Oksana:

This is probably the most rewarding thing that I do actually, so seeing those couple dozen kids coming in for the lessons late Friday afternoons and on the weekend and just seeing them progress and develop confidence, especially in the STEM related field. And just seeing them come in at first, you see how people are intimidated by math because the impression that we get what it is, and when they actually dive into what it is and have fun and see how it's a tool for understanding the world, how their confidence builds and how their problem-solving skills build, and that is just an absolute highlight.

Ryan:

So I had some experience doing post-secondary education and it's just really rewarding when you see the people who get it and the penny drops and there's intrinsic motivation. I mean because at work, people have to listen and play nice. But outside, I mean they're really just sponges for learning. So we had another conversation before we hit record about job titles related to Jobs to be Done. I'd love to get your perspective on this because I think you're spot on by the way. Why do you think job titles are not as important as the world makes them out today?

Oksana:

Oh, yes. Okay. So I think there are a lot of organizations that are becoming flatter, that are removing non-value add layers. And that seems like the right thing to do because that shortens the distance that the information has to travel in the organization. So with every note that information has to pass, it'll get distorted and by the time it reaches the decision maker, the more nodes it has passed, the more distorted it will be. So I think that's a trend that is going to continue. And so that is also a trend that is reframing what is attractive about a job, right? So a few decades ago, it was a lot about what is the title and what is the level. And I think now, increasingly people recognize that the exciting part is what is the job to be done?

What will this role enable me to do? What will it require me to do? What can I achieve? What can I contribute? And also, how will it stretch me and grow me and what will it require of me? And that has nothing to do with the level, it has nothing to do with what it's called internally or externally. It has to do with understanding this space that you can now impact. And so in our insights organization, I shared with you that we use the word, "Lead," right? So there might be a shopper insights lead and an insights capabilities lead and a dynamic deployment pod lead, right? And so what is the job to be done in each of those roles, not what is the title, what is the level?

Ryan:

I love the thinking for two reasons and then I want to talk to you about insights in your journey. But reason number one, I love the point you make about how much more complexity gets added with layers of communication. And I'm firmly of the view that people closest to the problem should be the ones making the decisions. And if everybody has... So Consumer Insights podcast, if everybody has the voice of the customer on their desk, then it's going to be on their desk versus some other person's desk that they may or may not choose to call. And I'm just firmly of the worldview that businesses that get that will win for the next 20 years and businesses that don't will slowly die.

Oksana:

I completely agree with you, a huge fan of decentralization and pushing decisions, making authority to where information resides, right? That's where the rabbit meets the road, that's where the information is, that's where the decision should be made. It makes it faster, it makes the information fidelity higher. And this point was really driven home for me interestingly enough about a year ago when I got involved in supporting Ukraine because this is an example of a very decentralized organization. So all the volunteers are people who come together and they just get stuff done. And it was such a tremendous contrast. This was unfolding against the background of a supply chain crisis.

So these very large companies with resources and everything else in the world could not get things over or could not order parts or had shortages. And meanwhile, we were just shipping everything that was needed and the needs were constantly evolving and changing. It wasn't easy, not all of those items were easy to get, not all of them were easy to get across the ocean logistically. But because it was a decentralized organization, it all happened and it all happened very quickly and efficiently. And so just observing that really was such a vivid illustration of the power of a decentralized organization.

Ryan:

But also, the power of passion and intrinsic motivation. I mean I think the rest of the world has been really backing, with exception of a few places, the strength and the resolve of your home country and the people and how everybody's bonded together. And so I commend you for all the hard work you've done and just rooting for everybody in Ukraine. What a trying situation. But you always see people's true colors when their backs are against the wall. And so it's just been inspiring to me to watch people like you do great things for the right reasons.

Oksana:

Absolutely. And huge thanks to everyone who has been supporting and contributing.

Ryan:

Yeah. Let's just hope this ends and peace can be resolved. But it links to work, right? So in the case of volunteer work, decentralized organizations to help a country and a great group of humans navigate through something that should have never happened, you can translate this back to this decentralized nature of work in the sense of intrinsic motivation, empowered environment, Jobs to be Done is how we should start to think about career because money and title will either come or don't matter in that context.

And I can't tell you how often I'm talking to people and they're still conditioned through society of sonnets I think in a linear basis about their career journey. And so many folks that I met with, I mean we were innovating together when you were an insights manager and in that organization, you could have been viewed as junior at that time. You weren't nothing but junior, you were badass and you were innovating and trying new things. And so I just always encourage people not to worry about the title and worry about the thing that gives their superpower and purpose and the rest of the stuff comes.

Oksana:

Totally, you took the words out of my mouth and added the one ingredient that I was going to add, which is purpose or mission, right? Do you have that clarity of direction? And then you were talking about the linearity of career path, we talk about yes, people used to think about it as a ladder and even that language.

Ryan:

True.

Oksana:

It is not a ladder anymore. I think it is more like a rock climbing wall, right? You can go in any direction, you can go up, down, diagonally. Oftentimes, it's like where is even up and down? It's very subjective and relative. What's important is that you are contributing. Are you excited about what you are doing? Are you learning? Are you growing?

Ryan:

I think learning and growing has always been the thing for me and that's still the thing that I'm excited about. Now, of course I have the contradiction of having a fancy job title, but that's never been the thing. It's the journey. And I love the way you frame Jobs to be Done. I talk about this a lot internally. It's really a calming way to start to look at problems. What is the problem? What are the jobs to be done? So I think it's fascinating that you've inverted this into your personal life because I've never heard anybody do that before. It's really quite unique and clearly it's working for you because you're a productivity machine.

Oksana:

Well and when we were talking before, I told you I don't know what your title is because you are a brand name. Ryan Barry is a brand name and everybody knows that you are there because you're blazing the future of the industry. You were always on the cutting edge. You will say things as you see them, right? There are certain things you're known for and that's the image that I have in my head. I don't go and check where you are in the hierarchy.

Ryan:

Thank you. It means a lot to me coming from you because I viewed you the same way. So I guess I should get to the first question that I sent you in advance for everybody's benefit. None of this was on the script, we're just having fun. I've been really impressed with you since I met you. We've done a lot of great work together. So for everyone's benefit, Oksana's worked at Nielsen, worked at Mondelez, and has been at Clorox for a long time. In a few minutes, we're going to share arguably the most innovative structure of an insights department that exists and I can't wait for Oksana to tell you about it. I've got two questions for you.

As you've mapped and developed your purpose, as you've developed in these different jobs, these different roles, these different responsibilities or contexts, what are some of the things you've had to do... I ask this question a lot because I think unlearning is important. What are some of the things you've had to learn and unlearn along the way? And after you share that, I want to know through all that, knowing what you know about where this world's going, what do insights people need to be working on? What are the skills they need to be harnessing?

Oksana:

Yeah. Okay, so those are two questions.

Ryan:

Two questions, a two for one to get us going here.

Oksana:

Okay then. Right. So my journey started actually in brand management at Vodafone in Ukraine and Czech Republic. And that still serves me to this day having walked in a brand manager's shoes for a couple of years. What was super interesting about those roles is that they actually did not separate our brand from insights. It was one blended role. And so again, that speed, right, of decision making when you have data at your fingertips. But probably the biggest lesson that I learned in those roles is in telco, data has always been there for you because anything everyone does on the network, it's right there. You launch a game on Friday, on Monday, you can see who downloaded it. So looking at data and being data-driven was just a way of life. And I think if you are savvy with the data, you are free as a marketer.

Data literacy sets you free is the takeaway. You don't have to walk behind anyone asking for a data pool or what's going on with your business. And I think that's true whether you're a researcher or marketer or salesperson. And now, I feel it is the time when that mandate for data literacy is probably more urgent than ever. Research agency side, you mentioned Nielsen, fantastic company. I am so deeply grateful to Nielsen for two things in particular. One, when you work at a company like that or a company like Zappi, you get to see a lot of clients. You get to work with a lot of companies in a matter of just a few years. And what that does, it just broadens your horizon and it shows you that the world is multidimensional. There isn't one best way of doing things. Heck, there isn't even one marketing philosophy.

You get to see that people have philosophical disagreements about how to approach a certain marketing issue and both could be right. So you acquire that tech texture and depth. But what I'm also deeply grateful for is just solid research hygiene, and that's something that doesn't get brought up as often, but I think it should, right? Because if you have solid research hygiene, it's like you live in a matrix and everyone sees the world how it presents itself, but you see the source code. It just becomes second nature to you. You learn to actually develop insights out of information because information can be found or extracted, but insights have to be developed. And that's what research agency site experience gives you.

Ryan:

Incredible. What an incredible metaphor. And the matrix is going to perpetuate, we'll talk about this more, but this data cube's only becoming more of a thing. So you have to be able to see it. That's fantastic.

Oksana:

You have to be able to see it because now, the source code is coming after you. So unless we're able to manipulate it yourself and understand what it means, you're left helpless in this world that's so overwhelmed with data. I've heard J. Walker Smith put it at a conference as the more, more, less, less problem that insights faces today. And the more, more aspect of it is more data, more question, but less resources and less time.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Oksana:

So client side experience with Mondelez and now with Clorox, my world got flipped upside down again, entering that world, reentering that world because what you do on the agency side is you focus on finding the truth. That's the job. You've got to find the truth and bring it to a client what they do with it from there sometimes, who knows. But when you are at a client, you can quickly realize that developing the insights turns out to be maybe 40% of the job and 60% of the job is getting the organization to pay attention and do something about those insights. 

So, "Influencing." And I'm actually not so sure that that's the best way of doing things or moving forward and I suspect we'll come back to that point later.

Ryan:

We will come back to it. But it's refreshing to hear that because it's the more and more, less, less one of the reasons why we're spending time proving the value or explaining the value, not showing it. And yeah, it's a really good insight that you have. Everybody listening that's corporate gets it.

Oksana:

You also asked about qualities.

Ryan:

Yeah. So from that, you're now leading a team, right? So what do you look for in people?

Oksana:

Yes. So I've heard some things mentioned consistently in response to this question on the podcast, and those are things like curiosity, I think pretty much everyone said that. And then consumer empathy, things like storytelling. Agree with all that. That is a requirement if you're going to pursue a career in research. But now, here you are and how can you be an outstanding researcher among the great researchers who have all that? And so this is what I've noticed in this role. Number one, problem solvers. So those are the people you see immediately because of how they react to challenges and opportunities and they're energized, right? When they see something that could be better or something that is off, they are the ones who will come to you to talk about it and they'll immediately get fired about what are the different ways to solve it? And these same people are excellent consumer problem solvers.

They are problem solvers for the function and they're problem solvers for the business. I think what distinguishes them is their ability to rapidly shift perspectives. So they look at the situation from multiple angles to figure out which angle is the most generative one, which one gives you the best handle to dislodge this problem. So problem solvers, elastic thinkers is what I would say. Number two, and I heard Stephen Gans, who was also a guest on this podcast, I heard him say at a conference marketers thrive on change, but insights people, not so much. And I know where he's coming from, but I think the best among the researchers do thrive on change because they want to be on the cutting edge of the culture of their industry and of technology. So when something like generative AI rolls around, their first reaction is not how will this impact my job? Their first reaction is how can I get my hands on this thing because I have three ideas on how to use it in my job already?

And then the final thing I would say is that empathy for consumers got brought up and absolutely, yes, of course, but then there's empathy for the business and decision makers. And so without appreciating the realities of a business and the constraints that the decision makers are up against, the recommendations will not be very actionable. So now, we live in an inflationary, maybe recessionary environment. Who knows? We don't know yet. And so there are many publications that the advice they're giving is not wrong, but it's a little bit useless because there's no empathy for the reality of businesses that operate in categories where volume is shrinking right now and where operating margins are contracted. So you will see the good old device developed for prior recessionary environments about you've got to continue investing in innovation, you've got to keep up your communication, you've got to just keep doing everything.

And again, that's not wrong advice, but unless it comes with a money printing press, something's got to give, right? And if there was more appreciation and understanding of the reality that the business decision makers are in, maybe we could actually see some advice that would be helpful.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's true. In your category, well one of the categories Clorox operates is particularly fascinating this time. I mean when was there ever a time where household penetration was higher in cleaning than 2020 and 2021 followed abruptly by major supply chain issues? I mean it's really fascinating. So you need empathy to understand that.

Oksana:

Yes, and that is true I think for a lot of CPG companies because... So the pandemic driven environment, yes, there was an element of safeguarding health and anxiety and other things intertwined was demand. But really, I think the longer lasting artifact of it is not so much that as time at home, right?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Oksana:

A lot of us just spend more time at home now than we were in 2019. And that means we need more trash bags and it means our children are creating more messes and it means we are preparing more meals at home. I think the statistic I've seen is that 80% of meals were coming from outside of home before the pandemic and now it's 50. So that's a huge change for anyone who is manufacturing food products or snacking products. So everyone is dealing with some flavor of it in CPG.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to go back to the first two points. So you brought some new thinking today. I really appreciate that. So all the other stuff we talk about is table stakes, folks. I dig that. Problem solving. So one of the things I've had to learn as a leader is, or I guess unlearn it, I started my career being a doer. And as a leader, you have to know when to fall back and when to coach. And so it's not natural for me, right? And one of the things that I've found the most motivating is when a smart motivated person sees a problem, you could see it in their eyes, their eyes light up and they see it with passion. And so then the example you were saying of somebody who's fired up and excited to solve it.

And I think businesses, and we'll talk about this when we get to the structure of insights that you're driving, there's not enough time spent on actually aligning on the problem. So people will use words and pretend they understand each other. And I was in a meeting just yesterday and the word, "Always on," came up and everybody actually meant something different, but the word, "Shortcut," basically cost the meeting 30 minutes because it went in a circle. Do you see this in your world?

Oksana:

What really resonated with me is what you said about problem solving and different perspectives. And so this will get into some organizational choices. But here's what I've noticed in working with children with mathematics, there are so many parallels because really what I focus on is if you understand a math problem, the solution will come. The hardest part when you see a complex problem and you don't even know which way to look at it is because you did not understand it. So we invest time in understanding because what will often happen in math and in business life is that a problem will pose as something else, it'll present itself as a combinatorial problem. But once you've talked about it, it's really an invariant problem. And the moment you identify it as an invariant problem, the solution just flows. There's no limbic friction in developing the solution because you've recognized the nature of the beast.

And I think that's very true in the business world also. We will talk about some of that a little bit more in detail, but then you also touched on the executional aspect, right? And so there's this aspect of absorbing the problem and trying to understand it. And this is when I think it's so important because the key is shifting perspective and looking at is it a permutation? Is it in variant? Is it something else? You want to get as much diverse input at that stage as you possibly can. I go to anyone and to everyone and just chat about this is what I'm seeing, what are you seeing? What are you thinking? And I love working with people who are very different from me stylistically in terms of where their biases are and my biases are, that's where you get the richness of it. That's the divergent phase.

Once you are in the convergent phase, what we've discovered in these couple of months of operating this new model is that it is actually very small teams who are very effective at driving that solution forward, right? So diversity of perspective debate, fantastic and very necessary at the divergent phase. 

But if you don't snap out of that mode and go into now let's get it done, now let's log in and get it done mode, you will see a spin at the execution phase. And so we've been breaking complex problems. So really complex problems are just a set of simple problems that interact and that's what creates the complexity. So we've been trying as much as possible to break complex problems into simple problems and attach teams of two or three people to the execution phase of each of those problems. And that's where we've been able to move very quickly.

Ryan:

That's really good advice. So a complex problem is the sum of a bunch of small problems. Once you fully understand the complex problem, you break it up and those are the sub-teams that you then empower to execute?

Oksana:

Yes, that's exactly right. You solve each simple problem individually, but then you still have to keep in mind that there is a layer of complexity that arises from the interaction, right? So the sum of parts adds up to something different than each part individually. It's like an emergent property, right? Once you put the pieces back together, something emerges that is not inherent in any of those pieces. And so that's where the orchestration of it all comes in that you've got to make it all work together.

Ryan:

Yeah, that's right. And balance execution versus the communication through the network. And you said, one of the big things you had to learn being a corporate insights person was 40% of your time spent basically socializing and communicating. So with change being constant and problems being important, let's talk about consumer insights. 

So you and I have talked about this a few times together. I think it's a well known problem in our industry that businesses want to be more customer-centric. It's hard to change people, it's hard to change processes. And increasingly, technology is easy because it's exponential in terms of what it's enabling us to do. So what do you think has historically held back the marketing industry from being customer-centric within organizations? What's the problem from your perspective?

Oksana:

It's probably not one thing, but I think part of the problem, and this is the moment where I'll start getting hate mail, but part of the problem is about... This is how insights organizations have positioned themselves. So there was a time, remember there was a time when there were a lot of conversations about fighting for some seat at some table?

Ryan:

Some fictitious table, yes, I remember this table.

Oksana:

And this is a total pet peeve of mine, right, because this notion of some mythical decision making table just runs so counter to decisions should be made where information resides.

Ryan:

Right?

Oksana:

The flatter structures are better, smaller teams at execution phase are better, right? But there was time. And so there was this notion of insights that wanted to, "Own the consumer," or if we cannot own the consumer, at least we'll own the consumer truth, right? 

Part of that, is marketing organizations have learned to rely on insights to give them this sense of certainty and this sense of security, right? And checklists and checkpoints, is this concept green or is this red? And if it's green, it means I can launch and if it's red, I can't. And what gets taken out of the system in the process is that insights really is not a crutch and marketing is really not a painting by numbers exercise. You cannot paint your way by numbers into consumer demand. It's called a demand creation function and not a demand finding function because there isn't some demand sitting out there to be analyzed, discovered, analyzed by insights and tap intel.

You have to create something that wasn't there before through understanding of consumer needs. But somewhere in the process that got lost and you learned a lot about what's the score and what's the green, and I think you called it grading homework. 

And so that fun, creative, bold, risk-taking part of brand management jobs became mired in data and more data and follow-ups and more follow-ups. And how can we have complete certainty and almost to the point where making no go decisions based on what comes back. But there's really no amount of data that can make the decision for you and also the consumer cannot make the decision for you. It is still the marketer's job to make decisions and it is the insights job to help them make better decisions. And that's how we've defined our mission for insights here is insights spark growth by illuminating consumer led paths to better business decisions, right?

So the outcome is a better business decision, it's better informed. And the way to do it is by bringing in information about the consumer, the marketplace, competitive intelligence, foresight, whatever the task required to help the decision maker be more informed about their options.

Ryan:

I really appreciate your empathy for marketers in this because a lot of people in your shoes, it's a pointing fingers game, but you're right, it's been particularly in times of tension in PNLs, risk taking is a little bit harder to do. And I mean how many businesses have bonuses tied to market research scores? And to hear a really progressive high profile insights leader talk about insights as it should be, a lens in a decision, is really refreshing because it's a lens in a decision. It doesn't take away from intuition and creativity and all the other wonderful things that help businesses innovate and grow.

And I think to your point of elastic thinking, businesses are less elastic because of the complexity of networks and the people are part of the businesses and it's increasingly hard for people to change the process, navigate the politics to drive the change around this problem. And you're doing this, so you see this problem clearly. Talk to us a little bit about how you're attacking this problem within your business and how you're setting up insights to spark that creativity, to enable marketing, to make bold creative disruptive decisions.

Oksana:

Right. Okay. So if the objective is to get stakeholders to be closer to the consumer, what is the role of insights in that? And I think it has something to do with getting decision makers to be more invested in the consumer. And so then the role of insights is not to own the consumer truth, but it is to help businesses build consumer empathy and help them uncover that input that leads to better business decisions. So if you buy for a moment into that idea of what insights ultimately delivers for the business is better decision making, it's actually not a trivial idea because it will lead you down the path of some fairly profound change. So firstly, you will engage and spend more time upstream and how we talked about understanding the problem, right? Because traditionally, a lot of the conversation revolves around good questions and how do we ask good generative questions, right? There is training for that.

We now engage one step upstream and start the conversation not with what is the question? That's how it still comes to us. I have this question, this is my question, let's take a step back and talk about what is the decision that you have to make? What are the options that you are considering and choosing amongst? Are there possibly some options that you have not considered yet that we can help you explore? What constraints are you up against? 

So developing that stakeholder empathy and understanding of the problem. And once you've done that, questions flow, you don't need training to develop great questions if you have aligned on understanding of the decision and the problem. So that's where we start. We start research briefs not with what is the question to be answered? What's the research objective we started with? What is the business objective? And what decision flows for you out of that objective?

Ryan:

I love it. I didn't really put this together when we first talked about this, but I'm now in this moment reminding myself how important it is. If you're trying to spark creativity to make better decisions, you're enabling them at the point of enforcing that level of problem, it's really clever. And we talk a lot about catching marketing and other functions in stride with consumer data, and that's how you do it. You bring it to a level of abstraction that is the end decision they need to make. I think that's fascinating.

Oksana:

Because you have to dock back to it at the end, right?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Oksana:

If a decision is not stated to you, it's still there implicitly. And what's worse is the business stakeholder might not have even articulated it to themselves very clearly. So everyone walks away with this vague notion, we have this question, let's do this research. Then research comes back. And what sometimes ends up happening, it's like a space shuttle that keeps orbiting the mothership, but you can never quite dock because the docking point has not been created. And it's actually just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, so there are companies who specialize in optimizing decision making, so decision intelligence companies like Cloverpop, and they estimate-

Ryan:

I'm a big Eugene fan.

Oksana:

Oh, yes, Eugene. Right. So Eugene told me that when they do audits and look at data from their decision making systems, what they see is that up to 80%, 80% of insights and analytics work is wasted in some organizations. And so the exact quote here is, "Insights and recommendations are ignored by decision makers almost 80% of the time," right? Which is just mind-boggling. 

And so when they say wasted or when we say wasted, it means not that the work was not great, the work could have been amazing, but there's no trace of that work leading to a business decision, right? And part of the reason could be because it was not connected to a decision to begin with. 

So the insights person ends up walking with his dad behind a marketing salesperson trying to get their attention, trying to inspire them, trying to prompt some action. Meanwhile, they are someplace else. They are solving for something else that's on their mind and they say, "This was great work, fantastic, thank you." And off it goes into the drawer, never sees the light of day.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely. So in a business like Clorox where it's basically you could argue eight different companies, nine different companies, how do you avoid the waste and how do you structure around decisions? And then all the wonderful talent you have to let Clorox know what it knows, but also to really accelerate decision making.

Oksana:

There are probably multiple ways of tackling this, right, once it becomes your goal to produce actionable research and let's tie it to business decisions and try to understand how and where it's best positioned to influence them, right? So you close the loop all the way to the end. You could make several choices. The choice we've made is to flow our most valuable, our most scarce insights resources to where the highest value decisions are being made at a given time, right? 

So even a company like Clorox that is not enormous by CPG standards still has multiple businesses. It operates in multiple categories and multiple geographies. And it cannot be the case that at all times, you need an innovation expert on every single business and your net revenue management expert on every business, right?

So the choice we've made is to pull these expert resources and flow them in an agile manner to where they can add the most value by informing highest value decisions where and when they happen. So this, some versions of this are called the agile resourcing model and it's not entirely new to the world, but I think Clorox might be the first one to operate it in insights on this scale.

Ryan:

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean there's businesses that are naturally centralized, telco or QSR where it's one brand. But in CPG, I mean it's a unique solution to a hard problem where you're choosing to put your best people in one place and then fluidly allocate them, whereas most businesses are like, "Well we need an innovation manager, a brand manager, an insights manager per P&L line." And it's this very linear deployment that exists. So I've not seen anybody do this.

Oksana:

So there's a question of allocating resources efficiently and with impact, right? And that's the part we're referencing. The other part of it is the part of getting closer to the consumer from a business stakeholder perspective because if the resource is not sitting with you day and night, you've got to request, right? You've got to send a research brief to receive that. And that's where you will have to sit down and think about what is my objective? What is my decision? What is it that I am requesting help with? So that does two things, one, clarity, and two, now the business is invested, right? The business has requested this help and took the time to think about what their need is so that when the work gets done and it comes back, that helps you ensure that it doesn't go into that 80% drawer, right, where they have moved on and situation has changed.

This is something that is considered a high value decision. So there is an invested stakeholder, a stakeholder who's very interested in you coming back and helping them make that better decision. And so that also pivots some of the focus from the storytelling aspect of insights, which I think there's nothing wrong with it per se, there's a time and place for it, but it's also a way to be loud without necessarily being heard, right? So the key is when you bring those insights back, you are heard because the business wants them and is interested in them and has thought through about how they're going to act on them. And so you land and you dock.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's true. What I like about the briefing besides the level of abstraction being higher to decisions is it does require people to write and think in a way that isn't, "Hey, Jessica, I am going to pretend I'm more hierarchical than you and go run a concept test because I want to." It's forcing the intention and then putting the expert back in the middle, I assume it has benefits of that expert then bringing the learning back into the pool so that the next time a decision comes up, it's, "Hey, we already know this. We can help you with this without maybe even needing to do something."

Oksana:

Absolutely. And so there's the other thing that sometimes there's this knee-jerk reaction question answer, right? Here's a question, let's go find 300 people and talk to them about that question. But really, it's just one of the four ways, and probably there are even more, that insights can add value in that type of setup. 

There is this knowledge management aspect that you brought up that probably maybe there are some pieces of that question that have been asked and answered, and that could be the first place to go, just mining your existing knowledge base. Some of the briefs we have received, some of the most interesting, fascinating briefs actually asked for synthesis. They did not ask for market research. They said, "We are embarking on this exercise, the strategy or brand journey or what have you, and we want to understand and summarize what work has already been done that's relevant to us."

Ryan:

We already know. Yeah.

Oksana:

Yeah, we already know that somebody takes the time to digest, absorb, integrate, think through, and bring that back as a starting point for something rather than an answer for a question. So that's synthesis. 

And then you have this element of real world learning too, where oftentimes we are seeing the consumer environment has become so fragmented and also the pace of change is such that sometimes some of the traditional methods are not as predictive of what then happens in the real world. And so there is also a component, when is the question better answered in a real world environment rather than a simulated environment, right? 

So people are given time and space to think about what is the best way to get this business stakeholder closer to the truth through the entire suite of capabilities available to them, not what is my fastest way because somebody asked me to test the concept over here and I'm dealing with this campaign development over here, and also I'm sitting in eight meetings every day.

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly. And I imagine behind the scenes, there's some degree of intention you're trying to employ of how do we answer certain questions? Because I noticed in a lot of decentralized CPGs that are deployed at the brand level, it is the brief good, which you're solving, but who are we calling and how are we answering questions being done at the project level gets in the way of the knowledge management solutions. How do you go about tackling that problem given technology is so plentiful in this space and smart consultants are also plentiful in this space? And so how do you think about your stack, if you will, as a research department?

Oksana:

So ideally when the system is fully designed and that loop is closed, we call it the insights value creation cycle, right? Where does the engagement start and what does it go through, where does it finish? And how do we make sure to close that loop? The system is designed to actually gather feedback on itself. So it's like insights gathering insights on insights. And even we've seen sometimes-

Ryan:

So meta.

Oksana:

It's meta, yes. And it goes even further because it starts producing organizational insight on other parts of the organization. How do you optimize your entire decision making process? So what you see, for example, sometimes is how can you optimize alignment at the beginning, right? So situations like the brand leads says, "I'm trying to decide how to launch this platform that needs to accomplish X, Y, Z," right? So the researcher can go and do fantastic research, bring back the best platform since sliced bread, here it is. And then surprise, surprise, in walks the sales lead and says, "There's no way I will be able to sell that in. I will maybe take this one skew." Never happened, hypothetical example.

Ryan:

Sure, it's never happened before.

Oksana:

Never happened before, but okay. But why wasn't that known at the beginning? Surely that was known at the beginning, it's just someone who is a party to the decision has not been involved and consulted because if the assignment was we are designing one skew, we would have brought you a different answer, right? So as the system works and produces feedback loops and we collected feedback explicitly as well. 

So after every project engagement, there is a survey sent out to the decision maker and to the researcher in the spirit of continuous improvement. And we identify which notes of the system still need to be fine-tuned. But yes, it can collect information on itself as well as the parts of the organization that it interfaces with. And there you start seeing how to make your entire decision making cycle more intelligent and deficient.

Ryan:

Yeah, you're always learning, you're always improving. I love it. I love it. I'm sure you're all going to be bummed to hear me say this, but Oksana is a busy woman and she's out of time now. We could have had this chat for another two hours. 

I can't thank you enough for sharing your wisdom with us and I'm really looking forward to seeing the impact that this structure makes. I'm of the worldview that we need more of this thinking, more agile deployment, more elevation into decisions, more democrat decision of data and macro knowledge management and optimization. And so I'm just really grateful that you took the time to share the story with us because I think it'll probably make some folks uncomfortable. 

Remember, folks, if you understand the problem and you're an elastic thinker, you're going to be a good future-proofed insights person. So Oksana, thank you very much for investing the time today.

Oksana:

You were so fun, Ryan. Thank you so much.

Ryan:

Thank you. 

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan Barry:

All right, Patricia, what did you think? It was interesting to listen by the way. She was wondering what you were going to say. She told me you were a celebrity.

Patricia Montesdoeca:

Really?

Ryan:

Yes, she told me wanted to meet you.

Patricia:

Oh, God.

Ryan:

Yep, absolutely.

Patricia:

Hey man, I'm all for it. I'm a fangirl of hers, so I think we're in great company. Because you guys know each other and you've got such great chemistry, I love the flow of the conversation. For my wrap up and for my key points, I turned everything on its back, a different order.

Ryan:

I like it.

Patricia:

She started off by completely flooring me. You know you asked her what you learned, what you unlearned? Well, I just took two. Two things that she learned because they floored me, as in floored. Three, actually.

The first one, as a client, 40% of your job is developing the insights and 60% is influencing and getting the organization to activate those insights. I thought to myself, "I've been agency. I've been client. She's so right. Oh, my God." That's not the way it's supposed to be, right? So that piece of information just rattled in my brain.

The second piece of information that doesn't rattle, it just explodes in my brain, is insights and recommendations are ignored by decision makers almost 80% of the time. I'm sorry, but really lots of really bad words come into my brain, which I'm not going to repeat right now. What does that mean? Does that mean we're wasting 80% of our money and all of the time? That's horrible. I'm dying.

Then the third piece started making me feel better. Because I just listened to everything and you know how I process. And I listened to it again. The third thing that she learned that I thought made me feel all better is she learned that we all need to be savvy with the data so that we are free, both the insides people and the marketers. Everybody has to be comfortable with the data, and needs to know how to manipulate it. And we need to live comfortably in a data matrix.

That made me smile. Keanu Reeves fan all the way. I don't mind saying it. I'm good. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, whatever he does, I'm good with it, right? One of my secret crushes.

But I'm all for the data matrix, and understanding it and being able to manipulate the cube yourself. Because I love how she helped us learn that understanding and being able to manipulate that data makes you free.

Now with that context of two really, really bad pieces of news and this fantastic learning that she has, I want to go into what she talks about job to be done. Her focus... Now in today's interview was all about connecting insights to decision making. But she went about it and just really... It just gave us an insight into, as you said, her brain.

She went about it, about jobs to be done. She talks about leads. Or like you said at the beginning in our intro about the top job in insights. She doesn't care what her title is. And you and I were…

Ryan:

Yeah, I love that.

Patricia:

…The three of us have been talking about. So she's like, "It doesn't matter. It's what you're going to get done." What are you going to do? And that reminded me always of me telling people and all of my adult training and work training is, what is your objective? What is your objective?

Every brief has to be what is it that you want to do? So she talked about that from the aspect of a decentralized organization, bringing the information to the people.

But although that's really important, I want to set that aside because I want to focus on the core nugget, which is what job are you doing, right? Because she said when you asked her what's prevented the marketing industry from being free and being truly consumer-centric, she said, "We did. Insights people did." Why? Because we took that away from them. We took the, "what is your objective" away from them? We became... Whether it was because we did it or because the company did it or circumstances, it doesn't matter why, but that's what happened in the past.

We were the owners of the data, the owners of the consumer. Whereas now we don't have time to be the owners of anybody and no one person. We all have to own the data. We all have to understand it because collectively we're going to do so much more with it.

So we need to create a system and a process that we could all understand the consumer because the collective think is much better than the single think. Because then communication is easier, the outcome is better in foreign business decisions. Because, going back to our idea about flat organizations, we get the data to the people who need to make the decisions faster. And the person delivering it can be us or it can be them, or it can be a blended job. It doesn't matter. But the data has to get to whoever has to make the decision in the clearest possible way.

And in order to do that, we have to use what she calls necessary insight people skills, because you asked her that question. So what do we need to do so that we can get the jobs to be done? See what I mean about turning everything around?

In order for us to do the right thing and to make flatter organizations more successful so that the decision making is more informed and can go faster so there's less bureaucracy, we need certain insights people.

She gave due diligence. She impressed the heck out of me because she's obviously listened to all of our podcasts. She knew exactly what other people said, curiosity, consumer empathy, storytelling, yada, yada.

Then she went and took it one... I remember my brain was in pain, then it was exploding, and then it was happy. She just completely dropped the mic when she said, "I'm going to take this further." And I was like. And she said, "We've got to be problem solvers." So I'm like, "Yeah, of course. Duh. Right?"

"Those are the people that you see," she says. I see those people right away because you can see the light turn on in their eyes. It's like, "Oh, a problem. I want to solve that problem. What can we do? What can we do?" And I've known those people. I might be that person, depending on the day. But right?

Ryan:

Depending on the problem.

Patricia:

They live for not only solving..Depending on their problem. But she's like, "Those people, the ones that want to solve problems, they don't always solve problems for themselves and for consumer, but they solve it for the function and for the business. They just want to solve." I love that. And then she says, "To make that even better, the ability to rapidly shift perspectives because nothing is stagnant." What is it that they say? That the only thing stable is change, something like that.

And these people not only can shift perspective, but they thrive on change. They want change. They get bored with comfort zones. And then she says, "Now I'm going to add one more layer to the empathy. You guys talk about consumer empathy, but let's add another layer. We have to have empathy for the stakeholders, right?" Because sometimes they don't…

We're changing, the insights community's changing, but their job is changing, too. We're laying a whole bunch of stuff on them. So if we as insights people, because I consider myself an insights person through and through, although I do all sorts of things now. We problem solve. We shift perspectives. We thrive on change. And we understand their world. We're going to be able to communicate with them clearly and be able to give them the information they need in the way they need it at the time they need it so they can solve the problems that need that information right away.

So she talks about always starting with the objective. Again, jobs to be done. What do you need? What is it that you want to do? And then what can insights do to help you? So we have to start by not asking them what the question is, but us asking, "What decision do you have to make? What are the options that you're considering? Are there possibly options you haven't considered that we can bring to the table? What constraints are you up against?"

And she just took it and put it on its head or this way. And for those of you who are watching it on YouTube, I'm going upside down. What can we do? So the role of insights, in the world of, as we started, how to take connecting insights to decision making. It's all about being the instruments of change and making sure that the company has the data it needs in the way that it needs it at the moment that it needs it because we're being problem solvers. We, the insights people, are being empathetic to the consumers and to the stakeholders. And we're going to be able to communicate all this by not asking the right questions, but getting the right necessary objectives from them.

She floored me. I loved it.

Ryan:

Yeah. She's onto something. They're doing some really cool stuff with centralizing around decision making for a business like that, that's so decentralized, I'm really excited to see how it goes.

For those of you watching on YouTube, you've also had the pleasure of a joyous occasion where you get to listen to Patricia's recaps, which are always wonderful. But the guy behind her is hitting a mulligan. Most golfers cheat. This man behind her is cheating. Do you really think he's going to put a three on his scorecard? Nope. I bet he's going to count that as his first stroke. Let's see. Oh, boy.

Patricia:

Should I ask him? Are you cheating?

Ryan:

Hey, you better not. You're on a podcast you can't cheat.

Patricia:

I've got you.

Ryan:

I did work for TaylorMade, which is a golf apparel company many, many years ago. And we studied consumers basically a whole bunch of attitudes, usage preferences about golf. And the punchline is most golfers lie about their score. And most golfers shoot over 100, which is much, much higher than par.

Patricia:

Like the size of the fish?

Ryan:

Those out there. Yeah, exactly. For those of you out here who play golf, but think you suck? So does everybody else. So just go out there with your friends and have some fun. That's it. That's all you should be doing.

Oksana, thank you. Patricia, thank you. Kelsey, thank you. All of our listeners. Love you lots. Appreciate you. So many more people are emailing now to send thoughts and ideas, and so I'll keep those coming because it makes me happy.

Our next episode is with Matt Cahill, who is an insights leader at McDonald's in the United States. And we're going to hear from somebody who's moved beyond stage gates, who's moved on agile research and has moved to a world of rapid prototyping and inspirational menu innovation. You're in for a treat, folks.

So until then, we'll talk to you soon.

Patricia:

Bye.