From intel to insights: How to empower teams to drive change

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast brought to you by Zappi. My name is Ryan, and I'm joined as always by my cohost, Patricia Montesdeoca, who's joining us live from Colombia. Hola, Patricia.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hello, Ryan. I just love the way you just roll my last name off your tongue.

Ryan:

That's it.

Patricia:

You've gotten so good at that. Yeah, you're good at it.

Ryan:

I need to-

Patricia:

Next thing you know, you'll be speaking Spanish.

Ryan:

... I need to get back into this. I'm trying to convince one of my kids to learn with me and yeah, I really want to learn Spanish. I want to be fluent in Spanish, but I just haven't had time to. And I downloaded this app, which actually is pretty cool, it's called Babbel.

Patricia:

Oh, it's very good. It's a very good app.

Ryan:

By the way, everybody listening, our podcast isn't cool enough to get sponsors, so I'm not actually being paid to promote Babbel. I just actually as a human being downloaded it. But it's a cool app. Basically they teach you how to speak in sentences live. And so you practice the words. But one day I will learn to speak Spanish.

Patricia:

I can just start speaking to you in Spanish and see what happens. We could do that. Julio and I will do that with you.

Ryan:

I have spent time in Central America and have made my way fine without speaking much, because I did study Spanish in high school, which in most American public schools means absolutely nothing, but I know enough to get myself into trouble. You know what I find funny? You don't do this as much as Julio Franco does, but Julio Franco is also from Colombia. And for those of you who don't know Julio Franco, by the way, follow Julio Franco, do yourself a favor. He's from Colombia, but he's lived in the United States for a very, very long time. You wouldn't know he was from Colombia by speaking to him if you met him in a bar in Boston.

Patricia:

No.

Ryan:

He's got a very much American accent, I would say.

Patricia:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Except for when he says things like, "Maria." And all of a sudden, he'll be in the middle of a sentence and be like, "Maria." It's like, "Damn, man." It's unbelievable. So anyways-

Patricia:

You're right.

Ryan:

Julio, we love you. I would like to shout out Julio's late father, Napoleon Franco, an absolute legend in the market research industry, an absolute legend of a man who created wonderful children, including Julio. He has passed after living an incredible life, and this week is actually when his ceremonies are going on. So we're going to dedicate this episode to Napo Franco, who I know you know, Patricia.

Patricia:

Yes. I not only know him, I knew him well. Before I met Julio, actually. That's where I started my research career, in Colombia, and he was one of the people that inspired me. He was one of the four people that brought insights and research to Colombia. So I was gifted and very privileged to have learned from him and worked with him.

Ryan:

You got to work with both Francos, that's pretty cool.

Patricia:

That's amazing.

Ryan:

That is pretty cool. Napo, your son's done pretty good and he's going to keep crushing it.

Patricia:

Totally.

Ryan:

And besides the fact that they were father and son, they have a common love, which is the market research industry, which you and I also share. And today we're really excited. 

We're going to meet with Jessica Southard, who is really, really a wonderful human being, first and foremost. She's got such a cool background. She was in the army and she did a lot of strategic planning of how things were working, and obviously that's translated into a career in analytics. But she's part of a really cool group in the central Mars insights function. And I think there's a lot of central, global, COE, whatever you want to call them, departments out there. And a lot of them aren't as well connected with their teams as they could be. It's the global local tension that is ongoing. Jess has a different approach, and we're going to learn all about that today.

I think Jess and the team around her, both the local partners that she's curated as well as her leaders, have quite literally transformed Mars' consumer insights function in 18 months. Most companies say they do it for 18 months, then they talk about doing it for 18 months, and then they try to do it for 18 months, and then they fail. But not Mars, they're crushing it. And today we have an absolute pleasure to talk to Jess. I'm really excited to get into it. Should we talk to Jess?

Patricia:

Let's do it.

Ryan:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights. Today, I'm speaking to Jessica Southard, my homie. Before I let Jess introduce herself, I got to tell everybody a funny story. So Jess and I met about two years ago. And we're in Boston for an industry meetup. We hit it off. We were vibing. Jess is like, "I'll walk with you." We were hosting a dinner at one of my favorite steakhouses in Boston, and Jess and I are solving world peace essentially on this walk.

For any of you who have never been to Boston, Boston's a disaster. It was designed for horse and buggy travel and then never upgraded for cars despite the Big Dig. But I live there. I should know better. I took Jess on a walk that took us in a full circle, I think on about a 15-degree night. And what impressed me so much about Jess is while everybody else who was behind us was really mad at me, Jess just kept chatting to me and made me feel really good about it.

So Jess, I wanted to thank you for not being mean to me on that cold evening in Boston and for still being my friend afterwards. And I wanted to welcome you to this show. I'm psyched to talk with you today.

Jessica Southard:

Thanks, Ryan. Truth be told, I love to talk and you were filling my bucket by just listening and letting me talk. And you were also going to pay for my dinner.

Ryan:

So that's the secret. If I'm going to get lost in Boston, just make sure I'm buying steak. So Jess, you have a really cool job. I got so much I want to talk to you about around driving change and innovation, but I really want everybody to be grounded in where you're coming from because you have such a unique view of the world.

Jessica:

Oh, goodness. Well, thanks. My view of my world is staring out my window in Tennessee at four inches of snow and two inches of ice right now. But no thank you. I believe everyone has a really unique and special story to tell. Mine starts with, I grew up in the military, moved 14 times in 17 years. Hence, I learned to get to know people. I learned the power of listening, talking, communication. Went into the military myself. So I spent five years in the Army as an intel officer and I joke that that really spurred in me a strong passion and belief in intelligence or in the marketing CPG world we call it insights, right?

So that's kind of where I got my feet wet a little bit. I got out after five years and started my CPG career at P&G. Again, fabulous place to really learn, research insights, brand building, brand marketing, the power of big ideas. I was there for eight years and then they sold the part of the business I was on to Mars. And I'd like to think that that was probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me in my lifetime, other than having three children, because I truly believe Mars is a fantastic place to be. It's a great place to work.

The people are outstanding and it really fits me culturally. So I've been at Mars for about seven years. My current role, I am part of a corporate insights team and I lead our corporate foresight innovation and exploration. It really started off just the CMI insights explorer. Hence our conversation today as I explored the world and the research industry, but it's also rooted in how do we try and build foresight as a core capability and push the organization to be more future focused.

Ryan:

I love your story. That's why I wanted everybody to hear it, because I think the backdrop of how you discovered insights through intelligence is really cool. But a lot of companies try to create similar roles that you're in. You strike me through examples I've actually seen in real life as somebody who's absolutely nailed it. I don't know if it's your genius, your leadership’s genius or some combination of both, but it's not just about tools, it's about actually elevating the bar to foresight.

It's actually helping the business predict what's going to happen and that's something that I think is an audacious goal, but we've talked about this offline. I mean, it's sort of where the industry needs to go because we can all read a data table. If it's not going to change how we work, who cares? Before you just said those words, I didn't realize that was like the tail end of the remit, but it makes sense. And it also probably anchors you in a greater purpose than just like, "Let me go find some shiny technology, right?"

Jessica:

Thousand percent, thousand percent. What you said just now of like, "Hey, anybody can look at a data table." I distinctly remember being deployed over in Iraq as part of the initial invasion back in 2003 and I was the intel officer for a battalion of Black Hawk helicopters. We had to give a big briefing and I remember like spitting out some stuff to our commander, and it wasn't provocative. It was a female and she just kind of turned me. She's like, "Well, tell me something I don't know." And I think that has just really carried with me that if all you're doing is being a news reporter and reporting data that quite frankly anybody could look at and interpret or read, that's not insightful, right?

Ryan:

Right.

Jessica:

It's something that goes beyond what the data itself tells you. It's sort of that hidden insight and it makes people want to act. The right information when we were deployed, someone sure as hell better want to act. And I feel like I've carried that with me into my 14 years in insights.

Ryan:

If the data point doesn't drive action or provocation or make somebody uncomfortable. I want to say first of all, thank you for your service. I've told you this in person, but that was a tough time for the world so thank you for your sacrifice. On business, I feel what you said. So I'm a business leader, and I get data thrown at me all the time. Operational data, sales data, customer data, usage data, all sorts of data. And I can count on probably eight fingers how many times I've seen something and been like, "Holy shit. We're missing something." And that's the reaction that you're looking for, aren't you?

And the good news is all eight of those moments I remember being massive inflection points for Zappi as a company. But the amount of time I get data and I'm like, "Okay, that validates what I see or that's a trend line. Okay, fine." It's actually rare. And it's becoming more of a numbness the more data we're surrounded by. It really challenges what somebody who works in consumer insights or CMI or market research or whatever we want to call is actually accountable for.

So what's that shift that you see? Because we've talked about this a lot, like people are actually coming into new roles with different expectations as evidenced by the really high bar you've set. So I guess what does the anatomy of a really successful insights person today look like and what are some of the struggles you see people having to get there?

Jessica:

Oh, I think first and foremost is being relentlessly curious, especially in someone like my role where it's sort of a center of excellence. It's a corporate role. It's rooted in being the expert and I feel like what has made me even more successful is, hey, I'm not the expert, but I'm going to ask crazy “what if” questions and be fascinated by things that no one else would be fascinated by. I think for all too long, marketing went to CMI or insights and they asked a question and we answered. And to me-

Ryan:

100%.

Jessica:

The shift that has to happen is they come to me with a question and I respond with a better question.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely.

Jessica:

Or they don't even come to me with a question. I see an opportunity whether it's a growth opportunity, an expansion, extension and I ask that question, create an entire case study around it and then push that to the business, right? So I think that's one is the curiosity versus trying to be the expert is probably one shift. Influencing. To me, it's ironic that as market researchers we've said, "Hey, we're the voice of the consumer. We represent the consumer," which to me is you have to know people. You have to fundamentally know human beings, what makes us tick, what motivates us. Why we do what we do.

Now, we have to apply that same thinking to our stakeholders and to our business partners, right? You have to know them as people and understand and anticipate what does my senior stakeholder need for me? What's going to motivate him to act on what it is I'm sharing with him, telling him? So it's ironic that we should be the experts of people, we just thought about people as consumers not in our company and now it's thinking about people we work with and being able to influence. Influence without authority.

Ryan:

Part of me worries that there's either imposter syndrome or self-confidence that needs to be ingrained in people because… We used to be a department that got a question and stamped an answer. I would say your second thing is the ideal state if I was to choose my utopia. “Hey, P&L owner, you're screwed if you don't. Hey, P&L owner, this segment of the population is ignored.” But that assertion to me is huge. That requires a complete reframe of self-identity.

It used to be a master-servant relationship in many ways between the business and the insights supply chain, all the way down to the panel companies. So that reframe is big. So you do a lot of work I think in coaching people and helping people. How do you find people evolving and establishing that confidence? Curiosity and consumer understanding are sort of table stakes if you've ever worked in market research. So your answer makes me think... This is actually in more people than I may have given them credit for, but how do you help them get it out, right? How do you help them navigate these environments? Do you have any perspective on that?

Jessica:

I have lots of perspective. I think you mentioned imposter syndrome. I don't know if you remember one of our very first times we met or interacted, I shared my first 30 days, my first 90 days.

Ryan:

I do remember.

Jessica:

The things I did when I moved into this corporate role is I talked to every single person... I mean, I talk to people all day long, outside the company, inside the company. I was a woman on a mission. My first 30 days, my goal was to talk to as many people as possible. And then I captured on a very simple one pager what are the top five things I learned about my role and what are the top five things I learned about myself. It was very humble. It was very vulnerable. The five things I learned about myself were very personal and they spoke to, I have an imposter syndrome. I lack confidence. I am not good at putting myself first from a career standpoint because I've been a mom of three little kids for four straight years and I feel uncomfortable about that.

But I shared that document with every single person I had connected with. So one, I think it said, "Hey, thanks for chatting with me. Here is the summary of everybody I chatted with my first 30 days." But I think too, it also role modeled it's okay to not know everything and it's okay to not be 100% confident all the time. I think sometimes as professionals and experts, we don't give ourselves that: it's okay to not be perfect, right?

So I think how have I helped Mars as an organization and the CMI function overcome imposter syndrome, it started with sharing that my first 30 days, but also sharing when I failed, how I failed. I've led multiple webinars, multiple demo days, presented to smaller local teams. I think it's being able to bring everyone along on the journey and say, "We're in this together, right? It's not about you being great, you being great." To me, it's about all of us learning and going on this journey and transforming as one function, right?

I'm a big believer that as a parent, as a leader, you've got to be humble and willing to share your failures. I tell my kids all the time, it takes rainy days to grow and mama's not perfect. I wasn't ever a mom before.

It's okay to make mistakes. I think that's where reinforcing that it's okay to make mistakes. You're never going to be the expert. I mean, the world around us is moving so quickly, it's the people that say, "I'm going to be willing to try this even if I'm not great at it the first time, the second time, the third time." I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome in us.

Ryan:

I agree.

Jessica:

I worry every day that people are going to come to me and be like, "Hey, you're the COE of foresight and you're not as smart as you think you are.” I'm probably going to respond with, "Yeah, you're right. But I'm crazy enough to ask some crazy questions."

Ryan:

Right. And who better because of that? Okay. So you said a lot there. I'm now thinking what do I want to unpack the most, because I could unpack all of this with you. First, I will say I love the vulnerability. And vulnerability is something that... I mean, I could talk about this a lot because I think as a leader of people, if you're not vulnerable, how do you expect other people to be vulnerable?

And to your point if you're not vulnerable and if you're afraid to fail, you actually will fail because the markets move too fast now. So I love that you said that. 

I think the other thing that you said is a hidden gem of change management. I bet your boss at some point was like, "You're really going to meet with all them people?" But you listened to everybody. It shaped your worldview, but when you shared your worldview everybody that read it felt connected to you. And as a result connected to your success and bought into it.

It's an old lesson in human psychology that we forget. Talk to people, listen to them, give them what they want. 

Jessica:

To piggyback off that one, it stems from as a little girl, I moved every single year for seven straight years and was forced to make new friends. My dad gave me two pieces of feedback when I was probably six or seven. He said number one, compliment someone every day.

Ryan:

I love that.

Jessica:

And two, the best way to talk to someone is to listen. I think for me, those again have shaped who I am, but also even in a role like this have been hugely instrumental in driving that change management and that shift in behavior. To give you some examples, I mean I moved into my explorer role December 2018. Met with, god, 60 some people in my first 30 days if not more, captured for my first 30 days, sent it to everyone, moved on to my 90 days, but that first year that I was in that role, we were able to execute 16 pilots. So we piloted 16 capabilities or tools that Mars had never used in six markets.

Ryan:

Wow.

Jessica:

I have no direct reports. So you talk about the power of listening to someone, being vulnerable and closing that feedback loop making people feel heard. It was like within the first 90 days, I had seven pilots up and running and I wasn't pushing people. They felt connected to me and were coming to me saying, "Hey, I heard about this tool. Can we try and do this in France and Russia?” My job almost became not easy in 2019, because it wasn't easy, but there's no way I would have been able to execute 16 pilots in 12 months across six markets if I hadn't done the groundwork in terms of building those relationships and making people feel heard.

Ryan:

So Mars like a lot of other big companies is matrixed. Talk to us a little bit about how you're navigating that matrix.

Jessica:

Well, first off, Mars is incredibly matrixed. We joke that Mars is like a cheetah whose arms and legs are running in multiple different directions. I think it comes with being a family-owned company, right? It's not super hierarchical. We've got three parts of the business that operate as three different companies, different languages, different processes, everything, different cultures. To me what made me successful aside from building that relationships and building that network is understanding the culture at Mars.

And there's two things at Mars. One is we have an incredible fear of missing out. I just think it's this innate entrepreneurial spirit where we could always do things better and we could always do it differently, it's just we're obsessed with what everybody else is doing, right? So it's crazy fear of missing out culture. And two, it's very bottoms up. It's very grassroots. It's very relationship and word of mouth. So to me, I leverage that to help mobilize a few of these capabilities because if we did a pilot in one place, I mean, I did multiple demo days, webinars. 

We had comms that went out every other week. And it was like people would see stuff that someone else was doing and all of a sudden it became really cool, and popular, and exciting. And Zappi is a great case study. I mean, I think we went from like six markets to 17 in the course of 12 months. I tried the top down, "Hey, I'm the center of excellence. This is the new tool. You must do this." I tried that and it failed. It failed miserably. But when you show people and make it really cool and interesting, and then they hear about it from someone else, it's like all of a sudden it just feeds itself.

We've been very, very successful in scaling three of the pilots that we had done in 2019. I mean, they were pilots. One market, one business unit. Here we are a year later. Three of those capabilities are fully scaled. We've got corporate MSAs and contracts in place and we're just firing on all cylinders.

Ryan:

What's your thought on spotting innovation and how to spot it? How to identify it, not only you, but within the business itself?

Jessica:

Innovation first and foremost has to solve a relevant problem. I see too many people that want to go pilot a new tool because it's kind of this new cool, silver bullet, shiny object, but they can't even tell you the business problem they're trying to solve. So I think one was being really clear on the problem or job to be done. I think another big criteria for me was is it going to change our behaviors?

Ryan:

Interesting.

Jessica:

What's the behavior change we're trying to drive? And if I think about whether it's some of the DIY platforms, some of the more agile tools, they solved both a very relevant problem, we've got to go faster. We can't be the bottleneck in processes. But then two, they are forcing a behavior change, right?

Ryan:

A big one for some people.

Jessica:

Within innovation teams as a whole. One criteria for me too when I was in the explorer role, I probably talked to almost 230 some startups, market research companies, spanning nine months old startups to 10, 15-year startups. And to me a big criteria when I talked with them was not just what's your pitch to me, what's your off-the-shelf solution you're trying to sell me on because I get that.

Ryan:

Yeah, for sure.

Jessica:

It was what haven't you done that you would love someone to partner with you on, that makes you feel uncomfortable. So a lot of the pilots that we've done and even some of the work we've done with you guys as part of the IA, to me that's true innovation in the sense that it hasn't been done before on both the supplier end and our end. We both feel a little bit uncomfortable. And there's got to be a chance of failure. If there's not a chance of failure, you're not innovating.

Ryan:

It's a really good way to look at it. Are you leaving your comfort zone? Are you building something together that's historically been an unsolved problem? I mean, we've seen this firsthand together, the intersection of what happens within a brand and what's happening in a software company if you partner in the right way. You can actually achieve magic together. 

But also to your point of failure, 230 conversations. Three things you've scaled. And you're okay with it. 

Jessica:

Yep.

Ryan:

So you have about 200 insights people. They're all getting phone calls all day every day. I have a two-part question for you. What advice do you have for somebody who's not in a corporate role, but is actually functionally tied to insights, but dotted line to brand X and their P&L. And they see, you know what, what we're doing now ain't working. I feel quite literally like a survey monkey. How do I spot innovation and make changes? The people on the ground delivering insights or foresights to get to your bigger goal, their job isn't insights operations, but so often it's the way they operate that prevents them from getting to that goal. It's almost like the bad flywheel effect. Where it's like: busy, bad behavior, more requests, more bad behavior, more decent answers and it just perpetuates. 

So somebody who's not in a corporate role, how... Because you weren't in a corporate role always. How do you navigate that environment and get the attention of your corporate teams to help you innovate or to spot innovate. I know it's a loaded question, but I just love your perspective.

Jessica:

I think there's a few things there. I think one, just very personally. I have now garnered the reputation of, if people want to do something differently, they just reach out. I mean, I had two conversations with people this morning. They're like, Hey, I have this research question. How could I think about this a little differently? If I wanted to use a newer tool, what would you suggest? Even a lot of the CMI leaders have now mandated to their teams before you execute a research project, go talk to Jessica and get a recommendation on one thing that you could do differently, right? It's both top down and bottoms up.

Ryan:

Fun.

Jessica:

The other thing too though is I have counseled or at least coached people. Don't turn down an opportunity to have a conversation. And I'm bad. I mean, I probably get 50 emails a week still from people on LinkedIn from people emailing me, cold calling me. I can't talk to all of them, but I truly do commit to talking to three of them a week.

Ryan:

For you, you've carved out that time to explore?

Jessica:

Yeah, just explore.

Ryan:

Interesting.

Jessica:

And I feel like it's part of my professional development. I enjoy people, right? I mean, research and insights is a pretty small world and you don't know what's out there if you don't carve out a tiny little bit of time. I would love every insights professional to… maybe you turn down 20 of the random emails you get, but say yes to one. 30 minutes doesn't hurt.

Ryan:

I think it's good advice, Jess, because so often I chat to people particularly those like embedded in a brand or category team and they're like, "You know what, I just mass delete them all because they all say Agile and AI. So I just don't have time for any of it." It's really an interesting dynamic where I do believe and you know this more than anybody. We don't have a technological innovation problem in this sector. We have opportunities to improve, but you sit on the technology side of the industry like, "Okay, how do I bring these capabilities to life? How do I actually engage?"

One of the rules we have is no buzzwords, because if you're the only one not sending buzzwords, well, then maybe you have a chance of standing out. But it is an interesting piece of advice. You can just learn by talking to people. I think the takeaway from your advice is don't be so close to your busyness that you don't take a step back and learn and hear what's out there, even if it is a sales pitch at the end of the day.

Jessica:

It's funny. I would hop on conversations with some of the vendors and they immediately wanted to pull up their PowerPoint pitch and jump into things, and I was like, "Hey, let’s have a conversation. I'm really intrigued. What was the problem you guys set out to solve?" Because every startup sees the problem to be solved, right? Maybe a problem I didn't know I have.

Jessica:

And I'm getting their take on, "Hey, where do you see the insights industry? Where do you see yourself in five years? Where do you see the industry in five years?" And some of them can respond, some of them just want to get sold, or get bought, right? But I think it's those conversations that help me stay in touch with the industry where its strengths are, where its weaknesses are, where it's headed that I can then use to shape where we need to be innovating more and doubling down more as Mars. 

More and more I'm hearing of like, "How do you go beyond traditional panel and how do you tap into some of the DTC innovation that's happening?" And leverage some of those third-party networks to sample real products, get feedback on prototypes, early prototypes. But I think that's a network that especially after last year, it's just exploded. So how does the research industry piggyback onto that as a way to do market research. 

Ryan:

This is not something I would normally say on a podcast, but don't forget, you signed up to be on this committee with me and you've got an invite coming your way because I want to talk about this specific problem because it's a big one. It's a really big one. 

All right. I have two more questions for you. You've been amazingly generous with your time. And speaking of failure, by the time this podcast comes out, no one is going to know this, but my microphone broke in the middle of this conversation. Both of us had our internet connection freeze once or twice. And guess what, we're still vibing everybody. It's okay to fail. It's all good.

We're still here and this podcast has been amazing so far. All right. Question number one for me is I couldn't agree more with your bottom-up point of view. If the people on the ground can't get value, it's going to fail. How do you go from it works bottom up to its institutional, because that's actually what you've done.

So you've made it bottom up and everybody thinks it's their idea, but Mars does it a certain way now because of that. I love it, but I want to get inside your brain a little. And obviously, at some point it will be less relevant so there'll be some new thing you need to do. But how do you go to that? Because that's what you've done and I find it to be extremely impressive.

Jessica:

I call it reverse mentorship or manipulation. So I think when you created that traction at the bottom level and especially if the marketing or cross-functional teams see the value, right? “Oh my god. We got those results in 24 hours.” Or like, “we could test so much more.” Then those marketers tell their bosses and their bosses tell their bosses and then it goes back down the other way.

I've been talking about it as who are your receivers? Who's within your cross-functional team? Who's going to be the receiver of the change you're trying to drive and can help advocate that, because then it's gonna go back down the other way, right? It kind of does become top down at that point. It's just being top down after being bottoms up to some extent.

Ryan:

It makes sense. I came up as a salesperson in market research and I remember all this bullshit advice like you got to start at the top. To your point if the users, and what we're saying at the bottom, but what we really mean is insights managers who work on brands.

These are smart people. Many of them have MBAs. They're not idiots. Their job is to build a specific brand or category not work on insights ops. But by accident it always happens that way. If a bunch of people are excited, their bosses start to get like, "Oh, I like this.” What you did is you were intentional about it, whereas a lot of times it sort of happens by accident. So I was only going to ask you one more question, but I have to ask you a follow-up to this.

Jessica:

Yeah.

Ryan:

To the extent you're comfortable, Sparks Network, another genius of yours. Talk to us about the Sparks Network to the extent you're comfortable. How you set it up, how you mobilized it, because you've essentially without direct reports mobilized an army. Talk to us a little bit about this.

Jessica:

First off, Christina McCall gets credit for the Sparks idea.

Ryan:

Oh, Christina. Much love.

Jessica:

Oh, yeah. Where I give credit where credit is due. So it's funny. The vision of the Sparks Network was: how do you create a network of change agents within the company that can role model the behavior change we're trying to drive? And one of the things we know as human beings, I mean as parents, we learn through social, right? Social learning is one of the most powerful ways in which you learn, right? The oldest walk is at a year, but then the next one walks at nine months, right?

Ryan:

Right.

Jessica:

If they have an older sibling, they're just mimicking all day long. So it was like how do we create those change agents and role models within the organization that can help accelerate the transformation we're trying to drive? So we created a Sparks Network not quite a year, about eight, nine months ago. And there was a champion assigned to each of the three segments, right? In full transparency, the vision was to amplify that and have 200 sparks, right? There's no reason every CMI associate can't be a change agent, right?

Ryan:

Right.

Jessica:

The network really just has stayed the four of us, but that in and of itself didn't exist previously. So the four of us, the Sparks champions, connect pretty regularly, but we share case studies, we share feedback. I mean, we have very, very open transparent conversations. We've really leveraged incentives. We'll be having a conversation and one of the Sparks will mention someone on their team that did something really cool. I'll reach out and email that person. They have no clue who I am, but the fact that their Spark said something to me, like I'm a big believer in praise and positively reinforcing the behavior you want to see.

So whether it's I use my own money and send someone a $75 gift card for Amazon, it's unexpected, but it makes them feel wow like someone up there is talking about something I'm doing and it makes me want to do more of it and encourage others to do it. So praise recognition, formal, informal incentives. It's not that hard to send a quick email. And especially if it shows up unexpected, it's going to be worth its weight in gold.

Ryan:

That's awesome. So we have to get some love to Christina. I didn't realize Christina was the creator of this. There's a couple of really profound things for me there. What I like about the Sparks, within Mars specifically, you've got a food business, a pet care business, a confectionary business. Very different in terms of market position, market cap, budget size.

So I remember when we had that coffee hour or happy hour, but it was like 7:00 in the morning. I wasn't sure what you wanted to drink at it, but I may have had a little Irish whiskey, who knows. You'll never know, because I'm remote. But what I loved about that was like the differences in the different business units. Without saying, one was leaner. One was bigger with less risk tolerance. One was more ahead and that sharing was quite interesting to me. But what I really love about the Sparks Network is you go where there's momentum in full and then everybody else comes.

So thanks to you, I've been giving this advice to any corporate insights function who will listen to me. If LatAm doesn't want to play, don't go to LatAm. Go get a win in China. Make China famous and then the Germans will come and make them famous. 

The second thing, have you ever read the HBR article about feedback and its flaws?

Jessica:

Maybe…

Ryan:

So you either read it or you're a genius. 

Zappi has a feedback culture. We have a degree of FOMO of like, we got to do it better. Somebody's coming to take it all away. And sometimes at the detriment of enjoying the ride. And like Mars, we both have some pretty innovative stuff happening in our businesses, which I texted somebody at Mars earlier, I ate brownie M&Ms last night. They were fire. But the message in the HBR article is: negative or constructive feedback is only someone else's interpretation of you, and the best time to give someone feedback is when they do something brilliant.

I've been practicing this, and this is completely unscripted. We were not going to talk about this today. I've been practicing this for the last eight months and I give feedback more now when I see greatness than anything else because to your point, it's like, "Oh, when I do this, this and this, it achieves a result.” 

All right. Jess, you've been really gracious with your time. One final question this one was not in the list I sent you last night. You have foresight in your job title, my friend. Five big things, the insights industry needs to figure out in the next 36 months. Or trends. Big things, themes that you want to see solved.

Jessica:

Five big things. I mean, to me I go back to research was always intended to be people in the real world, and I think with the internet and mobile phones and things, I feel like we've kind of lost our way a little bit. So I would love to… how do we leverage technology to get closer to real people, real emotions in the real world? So I mean we've talked like get people out of that test taking mentality, make it more conversational, make it more dynamic. And that kind of exists today, but I think we need to go even further and even faster.

I personally feel there's a massive blind spot in terms of the emerging and developing markets? And maybe that's just Mars, but I feel like the industry... If I were to plot where all the innovation is happening, it's probably a ton of startups in the US, a lot in the UK, Europe, China, and I would love to see a more diverse… Right?

Ryan:

Mm-hmm.

Jessica:

Because people are people and I shouldn't just talk to a US consumer because they're next to me, right? I should go talk to people around the world. I do think the space of AI is really intriguing of we just do too much research on stuff that quite frankly we know.

Ryan:

You already know the answer.

Jessica:

Well, we already know the answer. I mean, I think I guess like 15, if not more... 15 to 25% of the research and data we generate is stuff that we already know the answers to. We're just breaking a tie. We're just getting a data point so we can move forward in the X process or X leader feels good. That's organizational. It's not just the research function or the industry, but how do we build AI, use AI to say, "Hey, we have that answer, right?" 

So that's probably the three big ones like how do we reach real people in the real world in a way that doesn't feel like research doesn't look like research. How do we go to some of the markets that quite frankly, we don't do research in because we don't have those capabilities today. They're not affordable. They're not scalable. A lot of those still require CLTs or door-to-door. And I have to believe we can get past that.

Ryan:

It shouldn't be as hard, yeah. You're right.

Jessica:

Those are probably the three big ones.

Ryan:

I love it. Jess, you're the best. Everybody, if you want to get at Jess, she's on LinkedIn. She's amazing. I highly recommend you get curious and chat about where the insights industry is going. I want to thank you very much for carving out the time. I know you're super busy. I've been wanting to have this conversation with you for a while. Even though we've had these conversations before. I want everybody to learn from you. So Jess, thank you. And good luck with your kids in the ice storm.

Jessica:

Thank you.

Ryan:

We're all rooting for you.

Jessica:

Thank you. Honestly, I mean I love my job. I think that would be another closing advice. Never stop learning and love what you do. I always find things that fascinate me. I find people that intrigue me. I love what I do. I work for a great company and feel blessed. But thank you, Ryan. This was good.

Ryan:

It was a pleasure.

Ryan:

That was a really fun interview. Patricia, I think that one day you and I should get lost in Boston and just talk and see where we go. We'll see if we can have the same route that Jess and I took on that frigid night in Boston.

Patricia:

Oh my God, I cannot believe you did that to that poor woman.

Ryan:

I know.

Patricia:

She was on fire though. She was so amazing during that chat with you. She was on fire. She's always a livewire though. I mean, in the best of ways. I had no idea, to be honest, that she was a vet. I can totally see her in command of an intel team. I would pay attention, I would do what she said immediately.

Ryan:

Such a boss. And in the history... And what I love about our interview is, we were talking a lot about failure and experimenting and quite literally my internet just wasn't cooperating today.

Patricia:

Damn, yeah.

Ryan:

Everybody in the world is doing podcasts, is doing them on Zoom and recording them. You know what? Shit happens. We made it work.

Patricia:

It does.

Ryan:

I do think it was a lot of fun, and we've learned a lot. So as ever, you always do such a wonderful job of synthesizing the insights of our interviews. What were some of your key takeaways from the conversation with Jess, Patricia?

Patricia:

So I'm so glad we chatted with her today. I mean, she was all about empowering teams and empowering yourself, actually. And I've had the pleasure of watching her in action these past couple of years, but there was still so much I learned about her and about her secrets today. There are six main takeaways, and I usually kind of start the summary with her mantras, but I'm going to save her specific mantras for the end, because I don't want to steal any thunder from the six top that I have. 

The first one: maintain a relentless, her word, curiosity. I love that. Relentless. She talks about no matter what role you're in, in insights, in marketing, in innovation, in senior management, whatever it is, focus on asking the best and most outlandish questions you can. Answer other people's questions with more questions, deeper questions, left field questions so that you find something new. And you might even surprise yourself by finding new opportunities that way. But she talks about something that I thought was amazing. Carve time out to explore. 

Ryan:

Love it.

Patricia:

In order to find innovation, you have to carve the time out, because if you don't carve the time out, everyday business will just consume your calendar and you won't see what's out there, and you might be missing something that could be solving a problem that you don't even know you have. So maintain a relentless curiosity. That was number one. 

Number two, understand that the role of insights is to be the voice of the consumer. But did you remember that consumers are people? She talks about making sure that you know your consumers real needs, desires, and motivations. Yours, your competition's, the category's, everybody's. But how do they live their lives? That's important.

And then she goes on. If that wasn't huge enough, then she goes and says, "Remember that your stakeholders, your partners, your coworkers, your internal clients, all those are people too." Not consumers, not partners, not customers, people. And she says, when they come to you for help to solve a research question, find out what they really need. What's their business issue? What pressures are they facing? Are they in trouble? Are they stressed? That's going to go a long way to find the real answer that you need. But it's also going to build relationships which are essential for everything. That one's amazing. 

Ryan:

I think particularly the insights folks, sometimes we glorify our stakeholders. They put their socks on just like we do, and they genuinely want us to help them make better decisions. And I think Jess' approach is one of the reasons why she's able to cut through.

Patricia:

Yes, and she actually stops and asks them people questions, not consumer questions, people questions. And I love that because I've heard others say, "Consumers are people too." And that's cool, I got that. But then she just threw that curveball at us and said, "Your stakeholders are people too." And I thought to myself, "Well damn, lady, you are so right." I mean, many times we have to stop and say, "This person has two sick kids at home, and her husband has COVID, and she still has to get this report in on time. How can I help her?" Changes everything, doesn't it, when you think about that?

Ryan:

Yes.

Patricia:

All right, number three. I like this one, I think this is a personal favorite. Build confidence in yourself. It sounds so simple, but then she went on to talk about imposter syndrome and FOMO. We all know imposter syndrome. Many of us feel or admit to feeling imposter syndrome. I think you and I have always said that about ourselves. We also say, you said in the interview and I've always said it, FOMO is real. But then she went on and say that both imposter syndrome and FOMO, fear of missing out, are good things. These two things make us go stronger, go harder, educate ourselves more, improve ourselves, and keep learning.

And she said, remember that the bottom line is not about any single person being a hero or being great. It's about learning and evolving together, innovating our brands, products, processes, but also ourselves. So in order to have this happen, leverage the FOMO, leverage the imposter syndrome to be vulnerable, share your weaknesses, strengths, successes, and failures. And this is what makes us understand that we're all works in progress. And that's what kills the numbness and eliminates the boredom. Talk about big words.

Ryan:

Boom. I could tell why this is your favorite.

Patricia:

You know me. Drop the mic right there. Number four, work with your company's culture. And that sounds like a no brainer if you think about it. But she speaks from experience. When she got to this new role, she told us that she started thinking, "I'm center of excellence, I am at the top, I'm global. Do what I say." And she said to us, "That don't cut it at Mars. That's not how it works." So she understood that she failed that way, and she changed it and she leveraged the FOMO in her company, and she started going bottom-up, sharing what others were doing, making these things relevant, interesting, and cool and that's what caught on, right?

They created this, her and Christine, lots of love for Christine. They created something called Sparks, which is a social learning endeavor inside Mars, and each business unit has a Spark and they meet and share successes, and every person that tries, whether they fail or succeed, gets credit. Credit where credit is due. She truly believes in that one. And she also said something that was really cool. “Know that bottom-up becomes top-down when it succeeds.” Think about that. Isn't that cool?

Ryan:

Yep.

Patricia:

It was great. Number five, you asked her, "How do you recognize innovation?" That was a tough question, I couldn't believe you were actually asking her that. But she was really cool about it, she was like, be clear on the job that new thing is supposed to be doing. What is it going to do? Is it going to do something better or worse than what already exists? Is it going to change behavior? And if it's changing behavior, should it be changing that behavior? Why is it doing what it does? And look for things that could possibly fail, right? In order to see how it could be fixed. Partner with somebody who is willing to take that risk for you. Because if it's not something that could possibly fail, it's not really an innovation. It's just a little bit of a tweak on something that already exists. And the more you do that, go back to the one I said at the beginning, number one, carve time out for exploring. This comes to be true here again in number five. Make sure that you take time because the more you explore, the more you recognize the winners right off. 

Ryan:

That time to think, right? If we don't give ourselves that time to think, we won't.

Patricia:

No, we won't because BAU, business as usual, will take over.

Ryan:

Exactly.

Patricia:

So the sixth major nugget that she shared with us, make change possible by connecting with others. Now you've heard the whole interview and you've heard in my summary here, how important people are for her and how important making the connection is. But she says that change is only possible when you connect with others. So understand what they need and give it to them. And she talked about things that are really succinct that we can all copy. Number one, her dad taught her something and she taught us: compliment others. That is so cool. Give credit where credit is due, is basically what that means. And then what this spoke to me is, you can learn something from everyone. Everybody has a thing of beauty, make it shine for them. Then another one, communicate by listening. You talk about this a lot, Ryan. You're always telling us, "Listen, listen, listen. Make others feel heard." Right?

Connecting is also important by making a name for yourself, which sounds weird. Making a name for me makes me connect with others? Yes. Make yourself be a beacon of innovation. Be the innovator, capital letters, bold, underlined, italics, everything you want to do, so that people know that if they need somebody to chat with about innovation, they can come to you. Leave your comfort zone. And anticipate together with them what barriers you could possibly together overcome and make it easier. So those are the six nuggets that I found, things that we can start working on on Monday morning at our jobs, things that we can actually copy.

Ryan:

That's so true.

Patricia:

Don't you think? Yes.

Ryan:

I wanted to tell you something personal. I was feeling personally a little overwhelmed yesterday, a lot going on. I cleared my whole calendar, right? You know what I spent the entire day doing? Exploring, and it was Jess' advice.

Patricia:

Oh my God.

Ryan:

And I ended up with my higher Q2, Q3 focus written on one piece of paper, and I was like, "Oh my God."

Patricia:

I love it. I love it when that happens.

Ryan:

We need to be disciplined with our time. I don't care how senior, not senior, whatever. I don't care what you're doing. You need to give yourself that time to calibrate.

Patricia:

Yeah. She had four main mantras that I want us all to remember before we say goodbye. 

Number one, eliminate the numbness. 

Number two, consumers and partners are also people. 

Number three, we are all a work in progress, believe in yourself. 

And the last and biggest one, never stop learning. Thank you, Jess.

Ryan:

Thank you, Jess. We love you, Jess. I can't wait to get lost in... You know what? I think what we should do is not get lost, but you and Jess and I, and Kelsey too. We're all going to go out for steak at Grill 23, as soon as we possibly can.

Patricia:

Oh, please.

Ryan:

That was the steakhouse we went to that night. If you're ever in Boston and you want a steakhouse recommendation, look no further than Grill 23.

Patricia:

Oh yeah.

Ryan:

They have… there's a lot of chains. They're one of the OGs, I would say. So Patricia, it's been real. I wish I was in Colombia with you today. Someday I will be able to travel again, and I look forward to that. So this will wrap up this week's episode, but next episode, we've got a really cool conversation. It's one I've been looking forward to for a while. I talk a lot, and you talk a lot, and I should say, you work a lot in this space. This global/local tension. This is the first time I've ever done this. We're going to have two guests on our show next time.

Patricia:

Ooo.

Ryan:

We're going to have Alex Peters and Lucy Lindsley. Alex Peters works on the Vanish brand on the hygiene side at Reckitt. They just rebranded to Reckitt, you might know them as RB, you might know them as Reckitt Benckiser. They're Reckitt, people, that's the new brand. And Lucy Lindsley. Lucy Lindsley has a similar job to Jess, and the reason I wanted them on the show is I've just gone through a process with these folks of streamlining how they use Zappi and a bunch of other technologies across the business. Those two, scientific in their partnership. And I don't even know if they know it. So we're going to talk to them about it, and I think it's definitely one to tune into it.

Patricia:

Looking forward to it.

Ryan:

If you think of anybody that Patricia and I should be learning from, hit us up. LinkedIn, email, or at insideinsights@zappistore.com. We also would be very gracious, if you are getting value from our podcast, if you could subscribe, give us a rating, and even like our Inside Insights page on LinkedIn. We are, as ever, trying to break algorithms so we can spread the word to more people. We'd like to thank you for your time and for your listening as always. And Patricia, I'll talk to you soon, my friend.

Patricia:

Talk to you soon, amigo.