Lessons from a legend: Transforming insights before it was cool

Ryan Barry:

Hi everybody and welcome to this episode of Inside Insights. A podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan and I'm joined as always by Patricia Montesdeoca and Kelsey Sullivan. Ladies, hello, happy Friday.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Happy Friday. I have new glasses, aren't they pretty?

Ryan:

Those are really cool. My son, he's like me, he can't lie. I get home last night from being in London all week and he was like, do you want to know what mom got you for Father's Day? I'm like, well, no. He's like, well, do you want to know? I was like, no. He goes, well, they're sunglasses.

Actually, since we're gushing, it's Father's Day which is kind of funny. Father's Day is this weekend. For those of you who watch this on YouTube you can see this. Kelsey, you follow me on Instagram so you've probably already seen this. My three year old son Cal wrote this and I thought I would share it because it's really funny. “My dad is 12 years old. He has black eyes and brown hair. His job is to do work and stuff. He loves to eat lots of stuff. His favorite drink is oat milk, actually beers and hot sauce. He is really good at making pizza.” Anyways, there's more, but I thought the “actually, beer” was a really great reflection by the young man to tell the truth and so I really appreciated that.

I got a few grays dude. Kid thinks I'm 12, I'm in. That's no problem man.

Patricia:

Columbia moved Father's Day by one week officially because we have elections this weekend. We all have to stay at home and be really safe.

Ryan:

Really? Oh, because it's going to get intense.

Patricia:

It might.

Ryan:

Well, stay safe and I hope that the person you want to win wins.

Patricia:

Me too.

Ryan:

I hope that that works out. Ladies, we've completed season four of Inside Insights. Listeners, appreciate you. We see the numbers. People are listening more and more. We hit all of our goals of listenership and viewership this season. I said this a few times, we think it's fun. We'd probably do it anyway but those of you who take the time to send us text, LinkedIn messages, to say, “Hey, this was helpful. Hey, I needed to hear this.” Seriously, thank you. Every one of you, every single time I've gotten one of those emails, you genuinely make my day so thank you. We're having a ton of fun.

This episode was amazing. It was with a woman who I have a shit ton of respect for who I've done business with a few times. Who I have known for a really long time, who I have a lot of time for. Natalia Lumpkin, Global VP of Insights for Central Pet and Garden. You might know her from her time at Procter & Gamble or her time at Mars Pet Care. As I'll say when we kick off the interview, she's been doing insights transformation before it was cool. I wish that we recorded more because we kept talking for another hour after this. Natalia's got such a cool perspective. I'm going to shut up now because I want you to hear it. Shall we?

Patricia:

Go for it.

Ryan:

Ladies and gentlemen, very excited to introduce you to today's guest, my friend in the season finale of Inside Insights season four, Natalia Lumpkin, the Head of Insights at Central Pet & Garden. Natalia, we finally are pulling this episode off. 

We should give everybody a little backdrop. I like to keep it real as you know. Our schedules are a disaster. We've been trying to have this conversation for two months. I showed up to this meeting 30 minutes late because my MacBook decided that it didn't want to do the interview. Then when we got on the call, my internet decided, probably not. And then Zoom told me I wasn't the host of my own meeting, but we are here. And I'm going to do an Inside Insights first because of all the stress, I'm going to open a cold beer while we have this interview.

Natalia Lumpkin:

Oh, nice. Nice. I have a hot tea.

Ryan:

Cheers, Natalia.

Natalia:

Na zdrowie.

Ryan:

Ooh, I like that. Say it again.

Natalia:

Na zdrowie. That's in Polish, “to your health.” You only drink to your health, remember that.

Ryan:

My family's Irish and we say sláinte, which means “to health and wealth.” And I always love it.

Natalia:

I like that. Yeah.

Ryan:

We're doing this interview on the Eve of the first game of the NBA Finals, which I don't imagine you care about, but I'm very excited. I imagine this won't be my last cold beer this evening.

I've had the pleasure of knowing Natalia for a while. And I was saying this to somebody earlier today, that you were doing insights transformation before it was cool. I really appreciate you for that. I remember your last company was trying to make moves and really do a lot.

It was the first time I ever met you. I got on the phone with you and you're like, "Yeah, so I just want to do stuff. Let's go." And I left the call and I vividly remember calling Will Cooper. I said, you're really going to have fun working with her. It's really cool to have built this relationship with you, and also now working with you in a new light. I'm also excited for you to share your insights with everybody. Before we get started… Central Pet and Garden, great business, growing fast, new leadership to take it to the next level. Talk to us about the business, the brands and the portfolio, and some of the things that you all are trying to drive?

Natalia:

Yes indeed, Ryan. I progressively find myself in more and more challenging contexts as I move in my career, and I guess the places that I end up in. Central Garden & Pet is a midsize company that has been over the last two years trying to push a new strategy. And it's because of that strategy, that I ended up taking a role of Vice President of Insights & Analytics across pet and garden segments. And this new strategy is essentially putting Central on the journey to become a CPG-like company. And that means consumer centric, growth obsessed, brand building, capability building and organic growth driving company. This means that it has to change how it's been operating. Central has been growing primarily through acquisitions in pet and garden segments.

This company started in fact as a distribution company. One of their strategies and actually really well working strategies, has been just acquiring smaller players, profitable businesses, and then putting them together in a portfolio. What has also transpired from that is that they just let those little brands and companies manage themselves, right. However, you operate it, you just stick to that realm. You just have to be responsible for P&L and delivering the targets. And so low and behold, we have a new leadership team that starts changing things around. And obviously they're coming with CPG background. And so they are used to driving organic growth, not only relying on M&As. That's broadly the ambition.

And what's really cool about it is that this leadership team has very, very huge support and huge intentionality around consumer insights and analytics, right. They already are bought in the agenda of we need data, we need Insight, we need to be more consumer centric. My challenge is to really build that capability within the organization, manage multiple small business units, teach really, how to do this. And it's less now for me about transforming the function and building a function and the capability around these mandates. But actually teaching the business how to operate with insights and analytics grounded at the core of all that they do. And that is a new challenge for sure, as I reflect on my career.

Ryan:

Yeah absolutely. I definitely want to go a little bit on this journey with you. I might miss some things, but from Procter & Gamble to Mars now to Central, you couldn't find more different businesses. And I'm going to ask you to reflect on that in a sec, but it strikes me that it's one thing to transform old muscle memory and change ways of working. It's another thing to build muscles that don't exist, right. I know you're a consummate learner and so it's probably quite fun.

But I ask a lot of my guests this question, so you have to learn things and then you have to unlearn behaviors as you take on new problems. Procter & Gamble, the masters of brand building and category management, there's nobody better on the planet. You're there for a long time. You then go to Mars, the biggest family owned business on the planet, which comes with its own unique set of circumstances. And as you just described the journey, Tim and the rest of your leadership team are at Central. Couple bullets of key things you learned at each stop? But what are things as you went from P&G to Mars and Mars to Central that made you  say, “oh shit, I have to actually unlearn this muscle that I've built to be successful in this new environment?”

Natalia:

Yeah. I love that question actually. It's good to sometimes to actually take a stop and actually think, what did I unlearn? Not only what I learned. But you're right, P&G for me it was a training ground. First of all, you didn't have to sell yourself as “I'm insights please invite me.” You got the invitation, you had the credibility, you had the equity, right. It was a functional, respected for what it can bring to the table. And no one would do anything-

Ryan:

It's really always been like that, hasn't it at P&G?

Natalia:

Yeah. Because P&G really pioneered that, right. They started with consumer, they sold that concept I think. Coming from a place like that, where obviously, you have full credibility and confidence built into you, and now you just have to show something for it. That is a very different behavior than when I ended up at Mars and now I have to actually sell the function, like why does it exist? And I remember during my time at Mars, I started having that identity crisis. Are insights relevant? Is this organization actually the organization for the future? Or are we going to just do away with it because now marketers are so smart and they can do everything, and so who needs it?

What I had to unlearn actually coming from P&G to Mars was not taking things for granted. And I realized that actually across companies and different brands and organizations, the maturity, the inclusion if you will, the development of insights functions is very different, right. And there's a different level of strategic intentionality number one, very different level of expectations and understanding among your business partners of what you can deliver. And I remember very quickly realizing as I joined Mars that it's not enough to be the person with competitive advantage, right. Which wears out six, eight months right, to be honest.

Ryan:

Especially as technology comes in, anything can be copied, right.

Natalia:

Exactly. And so what I realized is that wow, it is really about the function in the organization, that's where we need to build, right. Because every time I started working with a new partner, I had to resell. And it was getting so cumbersome, so tiring that I have to actually tell you again, why you need me in your meeting or on this project or what I can deliver? That was one major thing that I learned and had to unlearn. How to really start building that equity for the function. And the second thing was the strategic intentionality. When it's not there, for insights functions it's really hard to break through. Number one, they end up being more transactional, right. They are seen as partners, but more extended partners for marketing, not necessarily business partners. And I challenge that as a principle.

And then two, when there's no strategic intentionality coming from the top, the impact that you can drive as an organization because all of a sudden there is no big choice for support or for resources, right. Your budget will be the first one to be cut because what do you do really? And can we survive without you? Probably yes, right. There's a trickle effect of that. And I remember in my early days at Mars, having those epiphanies, appreciating what I had at P&G and now appreciating the challenge at Mars. And then devoting myself to really always from then on focusing on how we build that insights organization with strategic objective and connection to the business, right. That was probably the biggest learning for me.

And then, moving from Mars to Central, eating another humble pie, right. Smaller businesses, mid-size companies, it's interesting how sometimes little in resources they have and how underdeveloped if you will, is the understanding of what insights really do and what the value can deliver. There's no established ways of working with insights. And so therefore they're quicker “to let's do it.” They're quicker to experiment. They're quicker to actually put a little bit of money behind it right, and try it. And that probably is a unique feature that any insights leader can embrace quickly, especially if they have curiosity and imagination and let's say low, low risk aversion if you will, right. Because then you can experiment.

And that's something that I wholeheartedly embrace because again, it helps you not make the same mistakes and it helps you leverage learning from your past to then quickly overcome any challenges. And then again, I'm learning how much you need sometimes to make decisions. How little it takes sometimes to actually move the ship forward, especially when you don't have access to resources, right. And I think Zappi is a good example for us because it's a seemingly pretty significant investment all at once to put something against a platform. But then just the speed of adoption among this company has been amazing. And then establishing a process “hey, because we don't know, we will meet with you every week and learn from and you teach us.” And so that has been a very, very unique I would say, dynamic that I have not seen in my previous experiences.

Ryan:

I love the willingness to experiment and learn. I say this often, let's step in new potholes, not the ones we've already stepped in, right. And so leveraging the previous learning. I want to talk a lot about Central, because I think so many of the listeners are going to businesses that are driving fast growth and need to build this muscle from scratch. But I want to go back to something you said about Mars first. Full disclosure, I love Mars. I have a big relationship with Mars. We'll be open here. Establishing credibility. I had a conversation with somebody and I've said this now twice, but I'm going to say it for the third time. Doesn't work at Mars by the way, works somewhere else. He said to me, "I can't transform insights, if the business doesn't believe in insights, and marketing doesn't embrace it any further."

I know on good authority in the businesses you worked on in Mars, that wasn't the case when I met you. You had obviously been successful at the things you said you needed to do. What advice would you give to somebody who's an insights leader who finds themself in a similar position? Where it's like I'm being asked to validate, I'm not being asked to provide strategic guidance to help consumer centric growth and learning. What is that from/to? I would argue if the top of the company isn't saying “customer at the center,” you're probably in some big trouble. In your case at Central when we talk about it, Tim's saying that in earnings meetings, and so it's going to trickle everywhere, right. What's some advice you'd have for somebody who's listening to say, "Dude, I just wish the marketers would listen to me."

Natalia:

I'm glad you're asking this, because funnily enough I have Tim, my C-suite completely dedicated to insights right, to building consumer centricity and they are all aligned. You take it a step one level down, and all of a sudden everybody has a different interpretation. They all say, "Yes, yes, yes." But no one is doing it, right. No one is understanding it. Because again, capability is low, never used it. It's just research, right. I'll just add a little bit more to your research budget. And so actually I'm finding myself doing exactly that, right. It's almost like no one wants it or no one understands what it really does. Here's at least my approach. I'm not prescriptive. You have to use your intuition a little bit and adjust the compass as you go on the journey.

But the things that I probably am pulling from is this, we are in a way change agents, right? It's managing change and it's also managing stakeholders. If you redefine the role for yourself as I need to manage stakeholders now, that's my job. Not just to do Insight and deliver Insight to them. Then all of a sudden that opens up a spectrum of tactics and strategies that you can import, so that's one. And that's been the reframing of that has helped me. I even went as far as I'm selling this function, right. What do I need to do to sell?

And then I decided that my insight is going to be like a brand. I'm going to manage it like a brand. And what do you do when you manage a brand? Well, obviously you want to make sure that the consumer knows about you, that the consumer will value, that you're going to be relevant, that you're going to have the benefit that everybody will want, and you're going to deliver it in a way that is distinctive enough that it's going to stick, right? And so if you start reframing that, all of a sudden again, you have access to different strategies and really borrowing from what we do on a daily basis on the business when we guide the business to achieve or deliver. And it's not always successful, you have to keep at it.

But it's finding actually first of all, people who want to try, right. You don't have to deliver the entire business and change everything all at once. Find players who are actually going to play the game, who will give you a little bit of air, right? And these are the places where you can prove your points and put some, as my boss calls it, "points on the board." Right. Because that's really what it is. It's just like shoot a few darts there and it doesn't have to be all bullseye, you still get points. And the point is that it's a little bit of you use that to tell them a story. This is the challenge. This is how we work together. This is how we engage together. It's really about the ways of working, not just what was delivered. And then obviously the best case is when you have some results to show. And then you have the business partner to really sell that for you.

Because at the end of the day, we're not really alone. And often for this function what you need is champions, supporters. My go-to at Mars… And I love Mars. I'm going to do that as well as your disclaimer. I'm always Mars. However, there was a lack of intentionality for insights, right? You’re dependent on the region, category, who to work with, wants to invest with, what not. And so I remember tackling the transformation in a way that I talked to procurement leaders, I talked to finance leaders. I met with sales, category…. Whoever wanted to actually listen to the story because I wanted them to understand what I'm doing, but also to champion me in the room when I'm not there, right.

And start making connections oh, maybe insights could do this, because I saw this tool or I saw that they do this. And it's a little bit of that. The stakeholder management, it's not just hey, can you agree or approve? It's also a little bit of the storytelling and sharing of broader meaning behind what we do and making sure that it always connects obviously back to the business. And we talk about what's the value that you're driving? What's the business outcome that you deliver? And obviously that always helps elevate the story into something that is relevant to your stakeholders. But nevertheless, don't underestimate how little sometimes people know and therefore, this is the reason why they shut down and decide not to do. And just spending more time nurturing as I call it, stakeholders, even when they are seemingly not relevant or directly involved can go really long ways. Although again, depending on where your brand is, you need to employ different strategies, right? Is it conversion? Is it trial? Is it loyalty or is it that we want to accelerate and have more spending.

And Ryan, my best probably evidence for how successful some of these tactics have been for me is when for the first time in my 17 years of managing and working in insights, I had a chief finance officer coming to me and asking me: how much money do you need next year? Never happened to me. Usually it was how much money can you give me back? And just reframing that was to me the biggest win, right. It's starting to work. And so I'm hoping to replicate that at Central. And again, I have many business partners who not only don't feel like they need it, but also don't understand what this could do for them. And that is why that stakeholder management communication strategy if you will, is so important. And again, find players that want to play.

Ryan:

I love that last piece of advice both for local people and global people, obviously when I met you, we were working in Mars and your business was the player that the rest of the business was able to leverage. But in your business you were doing the same thing. There's something you said though, I have to double click on this. Don't you find it funny that the businesses that are supposed to help other businesses market and grow are historically dreadful at doing that? Friend of mine is a head of insights at a bank. And he called me today, insert X market research company. "Do you know anybody there?" And I'm like well, no. Why don't you just hit their website? He's like, "Well, I can't."

I tell the story because your advice is flipping the thing you're trying to advise on its head and say, "Who is my customer? What do they care about? How do I create my own brand?" I just think it's such sage advice that you gave because how many of us through the whole supply chain of growth, forget the things that we do to drive growth, when we're trying to do things in our own stop? That's a really cool insight that you gave and I really appreciate you sharing it. And it's such a good way to think about it. This is my business. You are my customer. How do I integrate with you? It's… boom I love this. Okay, central Pet & Garden. For those of you watching on YouTube, my dog Hank is a six month old puppy. I didn't stage that he joined this meeting during this conversation. And you all are lucky he didn't howl because he's a coonhound. We usually go “owooooo.” And he spared us all from that.

You said something that I want to drill into and it will start this journey. There's a lot of listeners and interestingly, either in businesses like yours that are transforming into CPG. But also the amount of people I know who have joined fintech businesses, telehealth businesses, who are growing absolute crazy, are capitalized like a maniac and they say, "Oh shit, we need to be customer centric." They're bringing in an insights leader that starts as a department one and they're trying... You said something that resonates with me. I could read a hundred earnings reports and I would see 95 sentences that say, the customers at the heart of growth in some variant. And there's a bunch of engagements with the McKinseys and the banks and the whomever of the world that are implementing digital transformation or customer-centric growth strategies. These are big fucking words, right. These are big, big words. And so something you said, and you were vulnerable and I appreciate it. You get a couple steps below and people have then their own interpretations. I'll be vulnerable too.

One of the problems I have in my business is we introduced an acronym called product led growth. And oh my gosh, if I could delete the sentence and go back six months in time and never write it down, I would because it takes on its own meaning. Starting with that, I'd love to hear how you attack that? Right? I've got to now educate people on the delta between what they've heard and reality and what this actually is. And how are you going about building the muscle? Obviously, we're doing business together. I've seen the pace at which you operate in two companies. You move quick. You get shit done fast. It's incredible. But this is different. How are you educating people? And a third point for you to touch on, you are a lean team. I think there's what? Four of you total, maybe three. How are you enabling the company to use the systems that you're building? How do you bridge that gap? Let's start there.

Natalia:

Yes. I think this was my early observation and that is everybody seemed to be very rallied behind consumer centricity if you will. Let's say that was our buzzword and it is our buzzword. But I quickly realized that no one really understands it the same way, number one. And number two, really doesn't know what that means. And for a while honestly, it seemed that we have not done enough of selling if you will, behind the strategy, right. The top down cascade of the strategy probably should have been much clearer on not only what we want to do and the journey that we want to get to and consumer centricity, but really what does that mean for you? Right.

And so that was early on what we started to do as a team, right. Packaging that a little bit more and breaking this down into digestible pieces. And I remember that one of the ideas that we had is to do this program that we called the empathy hour, which brings the consumer centricity in a more tangible format.

We're not just going to be consumer centric because by the way it's not just your insights team that needs to own it. The whole business has to be consumer centric. What does that mean? Well, let's develop the first muscle, how do we connect to the consumer? Right. That's how that empathy hour session was coined. And literally it's all about bringing Insight, but in a way that people can experience it, right. It's still the same format as we can present some latest learning on Gen Z.

But also we're bringing in consumer on a Zoom call, “hey, let's talk to them, ask your question directly, right?” Slowly moving that and giving people the experience and developing the emotion that then connects to the broader meaning and deeper meaning of this is what consumer centricity means for me. Now, the next step is obviously let's translate that into what are you going to do on your brand? But for this, it's a more convoluted process because we still have to build the capability and be the sherpas on the business. That's part of the bridging, if you will. And again, I won't be bullshitting you. It's not all done, but that's the progress.

Ryan:

What are you, eight months in? This is early days for you.

Natalia:

That's how important... And in fact today, before I got on the call with you know, I did something very unorthodox. I spoke to this GM of our garden business and he's got a big challenge. He's re launching an entire brand under one new design system, huge risk for him. He's always leveraged conjoints because that's what his insights research team did for him. But he comes to me and says, "I just want to put confidence and I want to bid for investment against this launch." An unorthodox thing I did was why don't I bring this agency to you? And we’ll actually talk about your questions directly. Typically, and I know that this process is probably favored by insights teams, we would talk to the business partner, and then we would go and talk to the agency separately. I would gather the requirements, I would put it in a brief. 

This time, I thought you know what? I think I need to show him how this actually will feel. And so I brought the agency. I asked them to do a demo of their capability. Just to help him embrace it. What we're going to do. It's not just your business question that we're going to go answer. This is how this is going to play out. And this is where we're going to talk to your consumer and when and what questions we're going to ask. The reason why I felt like it was unorthodox is because first of all, my insights team was looking at me like, "What are we doing? We don't even know if this is the agency we're going to work with. We don't know if their proposal will be good."

But the conversation we had on the brief, the depth that we got to, we challenged on the questions. It was completely different. And now it's a very different relationship with consumer research, right. It's not just like hey, can you go do this and answer this question? It's like we're shaping that. As a business owner, you're shaping that and you're being accountable. That's part of bridging that. What does consumer centricity mean? You're owning this, not just me. You're part of this, right. Now, obviously you're going to have to put the money. There's a little bit more for you. However, I am promising something, because I know based on my experience, it's going to work. I need to take you on the journey and help you build that confidence in me and in what we're doing. That's your first question.

Ryan:

I love that. It's important. And in the software industry, customer success is an industry that's boomed, right? It's a huge career field, the whole thing. And it's the same mantra. It's a company-wide job, not a department's job. I give you a ton of credit for what you did because there's a lot of even great insights people who are still scared to give their Legos away, instead of enabling people as you say, take ownership and accountability for the customer centricity to be part of the journey, but also to access the data. Why not? And I think it's particularly germane in a world like yours where you don't have 600 people running around. You have to enable right, to be successful. Let's go there. That's my second question.

This is how you're building muscle. Shocker, everybody she's doing it with empathy, understanding her customer and their needs and bringing them along the journey. It's easy to say, It's hard to do. I give you a ton of credit. Now, you're starting to do this. You're trying to get some wins, points on the board as your boss says. How are you doing it with such few people? We know that you're now getting people, you're creating some pull, you're creating demand. Are you leaning into buzzwords democratization or how are you actually going about changing the way the company works on a Tuesday? You gave a great example there. You bought Zappi, you bought some other systems. How is that actually all working?

Natalia:

Yeah. First of all, if you start with this belief that everybody in the company that claims to be consumer centric has to be consumer centric, right. That means not that I know my consumer, I understand my consumer, also I can tap into the information. And I'm responsible for informing my decisions with that information. More often than not, insights organizations are stretched for resources. I have in total 10 people right now. We have ambition to grow the team, but right now that's what we are working with. And it's a $3.5 billion company and 7,000 associates, right. It's not a tiny startup. We're talking about a big portfolio among just a few of us.

There are a few challenges. One, is your team really ready to let go of some of it? And is the team really in the mindset also operating as a leader on the business? Right. We are leaders to be honest with you. No one has to give you a title. When you lead with insights, you lead. One of the operating principles for me is number one, zero distance to consumer, but also how are you closing that distance for the business partners. And are you feeling ownership and accountability over the business results? I'm okay, not to make a decision on the business based on the insights that we've generated. But I'm not okay to completely be excluded from the conversation, right. To not be heard and not to have an opinion.

I also think that insights organizations, it never should be about just like: we’re the objectivity in the business. It starts with that mindset first, right. And then the second piece is how are we involving and engaging business partners? The ways of working are changing for us, what we expect from business partners. No longer, especially with small teams, can you first of all, expect to do everything and to be the gatekeeper for everything.

I still hear people say, "I just don't trust if my marketer will make the right decision or if they will interpret the data." I say, well if that's happening, then how do you teach them? Right. How do you overcome that? A lot of this needs to be through yes, democratization, have access, teach again that builds on the consumer centricity, but also this accountability and responsibility for the data. And one thing that definitely, we are implementing at least to enable us to accelerate the small and mighty into the business is involving our business partners and the change that we're driving. We are committing to deliver faster, better results to be their partners. But we're also asking in exchange to adopt different ways of working with us. How you engage, when you include me.

But also when we now report, I'll take one or two hours to familiarize myself with the data, with the results. But I'm going to call you back into the dashboard and we're going to work through the results together. We're going to ask questions, we're going to dissect. We're going to do it live, so that you maximize the speed to data in insight and answer to the fullest, right. And that way I also can carve out capacity to now go and do more strategic work. And we're already experimenting to be honest, we're giving our business partners direct access to Zappi, not only to pull the report, but actually to see the results of the test as it comes live. I know there are risks and there could be some potential watch outs that we need to manage.

But ultimately, I'm noticing a lot more ownership and I actually am seeing more engagement because people are asking questions. And the funny thing is that when they don't know, they come to you. And when they see something funky, they come to you. It's like superpowers right, that we have. And can we halo that onto our business users. Because again, I think it enables us to do a better job of what we do. It helps us to be better leaders on the business to actually focus on the things that the business cannot do.

I'd rather have that and do that than not have capacity to ask questions, to think three years out, to think about the things that the business needs to be focusing on sooner. But no one will ask because it's not immediately and directly tied to a target that we need to deliver this year, right. And no one else can do it as well as insights and analytics functions. We have that undying curiosity. We are the ones who can chart the uncharted. But if you are busy and bogged down with keeping compliance and keeping the gates closed and making sure everybody's interpreting the data in the right way, then you'll never get to that next stage.

Ryan:

I'm not going to lie to you. You have me extremely fired up at the moment. I'm all excited. And there's two things I'm all excited about what you just said. The first, it addresses my friend's comment. I've transformed Insights as much as I can without marketing changes. This is the mistake everybody makes that you just said, and I'm not going to let this comment go unnoticed. Everybody, Natalia is telling marketing, I'm going to do, do, do, do. And you are going to change do, do, do or this won't work. The amount of times people buy toys just to get at the same crappy outcome faster and cheaper is unfucking believable to me. Why wouldn't you bring your stakeholders on the journey? You said it so casually, but it's such a profound insight. You can have 600 people in your insights department and so many people are still getting this part wrong.

It requires changing the mindset from the business and you have to bring them on the journey. What has Natalia pulled off in nine months? Ownership of the business being customer centric. I know it ain't perfect, don't worry. But wow, that's so profound. The second reason I'm fired up is the governance of the ecosystem point you make. Data speaks now, technology's easy, these tools aren't Google surveys from 2007. They're not dumb tools. They're easy to templatize, to simplify. The fact that you're seeing the benefit of… I give them the tool, they ask me hard questions. We have strategic dialogue. If you're listening and you're not convinced that you need to start to change and let go of your Legos, I don't know what else we'll convince you because that's exactly what insights people should be doing. But if we don't get out of the way of the concept test on the Tuesday, we won't have the time to do it. 

All right. I've taken a lot of your time. I have a final question for you. To do these things, insights people, what do we need to do differently? And I want you to answer it with two lenses, Natalia, corporate Insights people and the supplier partners that you all rely on. What are the types of skills we need to develop, the skills we need to get rid of? You can answer it even simply. What are the attributes you're looking for when you hire somebody? Because I can tell you from a lot of people I see, we need to get some fresh energy in the industry or really upskill the people that we've got, because this is a big behavior change that you're talking about.

Natalia:

Yeah. I've actually developed a profile for an almost near ideal insights partner. And so I always want to leave the room for optimization and finding out what else could be added, but I call it the whole enchilada.

Ryan:

And it's dinner time, we're recording this everybody. We get to both go eat after this.

Natalia:

Yeah. I'm thinking about it through the requirements of insights leaders of the future and also the skills, right. The top skills. To be honest with you, a lot of it is not really like... Especially when I'm looking for people that I want to assemble into a team, it's not necessarily always about the functional skills, it's actually the soft skills if you will. And so from the requirements, obviously I do want people who are comfortable and knowledgeable about technology, about data, what it means, how you make it work, how you can work with it. You don't have to know everything. But the fact that you're not afraid to use it or to go and figure things out, that to me is the top requirement. And then we do have to be effective communicators and influencers, right. It is really about selling.

And that business orientation both through the ownership, like I own this. This is also my business, not being put in a corner and feeling like that's all you belong, right. Almost like a victim mindset. I also want to make sure when I look at the requirements or through the requirements is that there's a know-how brand on strategy, on experimentation, innovation, optimization, right. It doesn't have to be a specific thing that you've optimized, but knowing how you've done it. That's one side of that story. The skills and I often think about them as soft skills, is the agile self starter. It's being motivated by impact, thinking outside of the box. Again, back to storytelling in a very effective way. And embracing risks and experimentation. There is discomfort with dealing with ambiguity. But as long as you can overcome the fear and try something, to me there's never a failure. It's this just didn't work, we're going to try something else. It's just like even reframing how to think about it. And so therefore for me, these are really important.

And I've noticed that every time I was building, I used to call it like we're building a new village and we need to bring the villagers to live here, right. Who's with me? I often found that those who are just willing to try like I want to press these buttons. I don't know what's going to happen, but let me go. You need that on any insights team. And I really hope that for our industry, we start thinking of ourselves as just researchers. To me, research it's not a bad word, it's just a limiting word. To me research is a tool. And while I love research and every time we're doing research, especially with consumers live, you just get so energized. And you're like, this is why I love this job. 

This is our repertoire of tools of things that we do, or we can use to do what we do best. I guess you asked for the supplier side, right? Those who we work with. I look for partners who are really willing to take on the challenge. And I really make it a case to share as much as I can on the vision, on the end state, on what I'm trying to accomplish. I want to really leave the canvas unpainted for my suppliers, because I want to see the level of thinking they can bring. And I always have faith if given the opportunity and space we'll actually paint the canvas, they will bring things in. And one of the things that I really look for in suppliers is one, be transparent.

And then the second thing is feeling that ownership over my business. Not letting me say, or come to you and say, “hey let's go do this or do this research for me”. I want a partner who says, "I was thinking about this and I think we should do X, Y, and Z. What do you think?" Build together, co-create together. Often I came to you and said, what if we did this? Or we need to have X, Y, and Z. And I never heard, no. I always heard from you, “let me think about it. This is actually good provocation. We've already been thinking about it. I'm glad you mentioned it, right.” There's a not only a dialogue, but it seems like we're like on a joint business planning. And that's always the most impactful partnership you could have because we're co-creating together. And honestly, I don't believe that we on the client side know everything.

And I have been managing people who really manage suppliers like that. They go in and say, "Listen, I already thought of this. This is the methodology. I just need you to go and do it." You are not even asking what's out there. You don't know what else you could tap into. You could even pay less, if you only let them decide, or at least have an input, right. It changes the whole dynamic. But you need to have that partnership and that mindset on the supplier side as well, right. It's a dialogue that just enables very different outcomes and results.

Ryan:

I love it. And it's refreshing to hear your articulation of the future insights person will create partnership. What you are is a great business partner, and that's why you get the best out of your suppliers. I remember one time we were a startup and a big, big business called and said, the same thing “we've already figured it out." And I was still very involved in the front lines at that time and asked some questions, got at the problem. I said, there's like 10 better ways to do this. And I remember the person saying, "We know what we want and we know what we need and we just need you to execute." And I said, then you should call somebody else. I don't know what to tell you.

There's a lot of people who talk about partnership, but it takes what you said, being transparent, sharing the vision, giving the space to draw on the canvas, to challenge you and to bring fresh thinking. It's really refreshing. Natalia, as you know, I would talk to you all night, but I've taken a lot of your time. This episode is the perfect way to end this season. I've had so much fun in this conversation. It was worth our scheduling delays. It was worth my computer completely crashing for 45 minutes. And it was really nice to have a beer with you. Thank you so much for your time and your energy. And everybody, what Natalia said is where this industry's going. Get on the bus or you're going to be looking for something else to do. 

Thank you so much, my friend.

Natalia:

Yeah. Thank you, Ryan. Really thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you. I really enjoyed it.

Ryan:

Absolutely. Good luck with your journey.

Ryan:

See what I mean? That was pretty good, right? I was tingly after that and I have to tell you guys this. This interview was a disaster to schedule. Turns out my schedule is a disaster and Natalia’s is just as bad. We finally found a time that one of us wasn't sick, traveling, whatever and we did it. Then my computer crashed. This thing was recorded at like 7:00 PM. Anyways, Patricia, final takeaways of season four, talk to us.

Patricia:

Oh man, this was so good. You know I've been around the block for a long time, a few times around. There's a saying in there somewhere but you know what I mean. Been here for a while. She so brilliantly organizes thoughts. The things that we've all been doing for a long time, but she just organizes it and she does it better so here we go.

We've got five buckets of learning, because you guys talked about five big subjects and then I've got a teeny weeny little big gift, parting gift for our listeners at the end of this season. Ready?

Number one, her career learning. Her career learning was cool. She's like at P&G, it was all training ground. They're the masters of brand building, category management. You get the invitation, you sit at the table, you have credibility, you have the equity, just work. Then she went to Mars. It's the biggest family owned business on the planet and it was more training ground because it was totally different. She had to unlearn to take things for granted because there were so many different levels of expectations and she had to learn to focus on building the insights organization because it didn't have it. She had to sell the function from the beginning.

Then she moved to Central and she actually said humble pie, but I'm going to be kinder. I'm going to say it's a distribution company for CPGs and she got more training, hard training. She had to unlearn risk aversion and she had to unlearn to work with lots of resources because they didn't have it. Resources, people, resources, time, resources, money. Why? She had to learn something that she coined dynamic learning which I'm going to use it. Not even going to tell her, that I'm going to pay her patent money, Natalia, dynamic learnings, my favorite now.

Work at a fast pace. Be quick to experiment, low risk aversion. Just go, go, go. Overcome challenges, just learn. I think in a previous podcast you talked about what, drawing the saddle as you were riding or something like that? You said this in a previous podcast and that's what she reminded me of. Just learn as you go, but keep walking, keep going.

Ryan:

Yeah, keep going.

Patricia:

That was really cool. I like the order of learning that she had. She was very privileged to start at Procter. 

Now, bucket number two, you asked her, what advice do you have to an insights leader who's asked to just validate. We've all been there. I've been there, you've been there. I don't want your opinion. If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it or I'll give it to you, but I just want you to test this for me the way I want it. When you're in that situation, what do you do? She's like, oh, yeah use what you already know. Manage insights like a brand. She said it so easy. I thought, well, yeah, duh.

First, determine your growth objective. Do you want to do penetration? Have more people know about you? Conversion? People change their minds about you, per capita? Increase sales price, increase spend?

Number two, generate awareness. When you figure out what you want, then generate awareness of your function, of a team, and of you as a person, as a professional.

Number three, generate trial by building the equity and relevance and uniqueness. Highlight the benefits of your consumers, of your value to your consumers. Give them what they need. Deliver it distinctively so they want more. Then you're going to build loyalty with excellent distribution of yourself, of your value. Be consistent and persistent in your presence and your delivery and in the quality of the work that you do. Then do a proof of concept. All of us suppliers are asked for a proof of concept. Most of our customers ask for proof of concept. Find an early adapter, do a proof of concept. Find somebody who wants to try and win them over. You don't have to change everything, just change one.

Then the next one: communication strategy. Advertise that proof of concept with high TRPs. Advertise it all the time. She called it points on board which I thought was kind of cool, but tell the story.

The last one, make the early adopter your celebrity spokesperson and champion. The same way you would on any ad. Choose them as that so that was fantastic. Then she goes, you want an example? Let me give you an example. Mars, little company. Mars, the challenge, lack of intentionality for insights. The awareness, she chose awareness. She talked to procurement, she talked to finance, she talked to sales, she talked to the category, she talked to everybody.

Three, she generated trial. How? She made connections and offered unique innovations. She offered new ideas at the right moments at the right table. Then she got repeat. She managed her stakeholders. She educated through storytelling. She made insights relevant by connecting it back to the business and then that way showed the value of the outcome that she was delivering.

Little note: don't ever, ever underestimate how little people know. It adds, we can't think that our consumers know everything, we have to tell them. In terms that they'll understand. That's why they say no, because they don't understand. You have to nurture your stakeholders, direct and indirect because some of them are going to be users and others are going to be influencers.

Another note, stakeholders need different strategies. Some of them are going to need conversion. Others are going to need trial. Others are going to need loyalty. Some want more spending. You figure out what you want to do, but make sure you're clear on your objective. What was the result? She said that she knew she'd made it when she was standing there and the CFO, the frigging CFO came and said how much money do you need next year? If somebody had ever asked me that I'd just fall over flat and know that I'd made it to big time. Like, oh my God. I think it worked. What do you guys think?

Ryan:

It totally worked.

Patricia:

Bucket number three, bridging the gap. Leadership says we have to be consumer-centric, that's the message. You have to bridge the gap between the leader and the rest of the company.

Number one, she realized that everybody had a different understanding of consumer centricity and number two, nobody was right. Number three, the strategy wasn't sold in right. The value wasn't talked about, the journey wasn't talked about, the results or even the relevance of the benefits weren’t talked about. What did she do? She repackaged the strategy. She broke it down into digestible, easy to understand, relevant pieces. She made it tangible. How do we actually feel what consumers feel? How are we empathetic to the consumer? Make them understand what that actually means. She built consumer connection muscles so that they had to build it from scratch.

Then she moved slowly. She wasn't rushing. She wanted to make sure that this was done right so that her stakeholder internally understood or able to connect the deeper meaning of consumer centricity. She translated all of this into relevant action. What can we do with this for your brand to grow? Then she found an early adopter and was vulnerable and open with him. You want to do this? Let's do it together. Let me make you part of the experience Mr. Marketing guy, early adopter.

I want you to… let me introduce you to my supplier. Let me show you how this works. She democratized insights before there was a word for democratization. She made him her early adopter and then next, what she has to do it all worked wonderfully, she's going to share the story. She's going to build the capability with the rest of the company.

Now just important to caveat, her team was going, what are you doing? You're sharing the secret sauce recipe. You can't be doing that. Coke doesn't ever share the secret sauce. She's like, sorry, dudes, if we want to do this, we have to do it right. Then that's when she started talking about bucket number four, which I have to tell you is my favorite one. You're not supposed to have favorites, they're all good, but this one-

Ryan:

You can have favorites. It's not like they're kids. We won't ask you that question.

Patricia:

My favorites are my dogs, end of sentence. That way nobody gets angry. Operating principles, she had a different order and pardon me Natalia if I took a little liberty with all the information you shared, but after I listened and read and reread, these are the ones that I think that you were saying.

Five operating principles of a successful strategy execution. Number one, have an assumption. Her assumption, if everybody in the company is consumer centric, they should understand the consumer and be able to tap into the information to inform decisions. That was her assumption. Just like we were in the lab. You have to have a hypothesis.

Number two, ask the hard question. Don't shy away from it. Her hard question, is my insights team ready to democratize? Do they want to be leaders in the business? Then she made a decision. Sometimes it's democracy, sometimes it's not. She said the decision when you lead with insights, you lead. End of sentence, drop the mic.

Number four, craft the objective. Deliver faster, better results. See? Simple. 

Number five, she moved to action. Those are the five operating principles, but let me tell you how she moved to action which is brilliant. She made zero distance from the insights to the consumer. She had a business owner mindset. She wanted to feel the ownership and the accountability. You can't be separate. You got to actually feel you got skin in the game. She maintained objectivity because all the brands were involved. Not just one brand, every brand. It's not like there you can't have favorites. She had to close the distance, not only her distance, but the distance from the consumers to the business partners. She had to involve and engage them, adjust their expectations, trust them. In order to trust them, you have to educate them and share. You can't be gatekeepers and then expect them to grow, you have to teach them. You have to involve yourself. Make them accountable for the data in the same way that you're accountable for the business results. Recipro... Say that word for me.

Ryan:

Reciprocity.

Patricia:

Thank you. That one that Ryan said.

Ryan:

Reciprocity.

Patricia:

Reciprocity. I'm going to just not use that one in takeaways next season.

Ryan:

That's okay. I think you got through it.

Patricia:

In exchange of all that, you're going to ask your business partners to adopt different ways of engaging with the insights team. I teach you, you start acting differently. We'll still be the experts, we'll be here, but you have to pull your weight and then use the time that you have left over to do more strategic work. Stuff that the rest of the business can't and give marketing access to the insights superpowers, take risks, manage the outcome, but you are going to be free to lead it with insights. That was your decision from the beginning and focus on what the business can't do. Create longer term strategy. Brilliant, just brilliant. What do you guys think? Isn't that amazing?

Ryan:

It's fire. Fire emoji. In fact, we do have a YouTube channel now so I could properly fire emoji.

Patricia:

Go for it. That's even more fire than my new glasses.

Number five, you love asking people this question, but she one-upped as appropriate as possible on the last episode of the season. She's like, okay, you said, what can we do better? How do you hire people? She's like, all right. Profile for an almost ideal insights partner. Almost, because she's like nobody's perfect. You can't be perfect.

Ryan:

That's right.

Patricia:

Problem solver. Able to figure things out with a high risk tolerance and love for experimentation and new things. Comfortable with and knowledge about tech and data. What it means, how you can make it work, how you can work with it. Agile, self starter, and out of the box thinker. Business orientation, brands, strategy, experimentation, innovation, optimization, and process know-how. Effective communicator and influencer, basically a storyteller. In general, a researcher and a curious explorer that learns from their mistakes. Not just a researcher, damn. Woohoo. Then the one up, what's the one up? Profile for an almost ideal supplier.

Ryan:

Yeah. I like this one, a little one up.

Patricia:

Willing to take on the challenges with me. Feels ownership over my business. Builds solutions with me. Co-create plans with me, transparent with me, comfortable with a blank solution canvas. Let's invent this together. Able to bring a high level of thinking, not just be yes men. Reinvest in their own business to drive innovation and build better solutions and in a word, evolve. Definitely one upping, yeah.

Ryan:

Natalia is always bringing the heat. I had a few guests this season that are people in my life that challenged my thinking and it was cool to have them on the show. Michelle, Natalia, Tony, Christian, just to name a few. We've had, it's been a hell of a season, hasn't it?

Patricia:

I mean, I was looking back over the four seasons. I mean, we started with Frank didn't we?

Ryan:

Yeah, that's right. No, our first episode wasn't Frank. It was-

Kelsey:

Litthya.

Ryan:

Litthya, thank you. It was Litthya who I'm a huge fan of.

Patricia:

Well, I mean, we've had, I mean, I've gone back and wow. I mean, when you interviewed me I felt proud. It was such good company.

Ryan:

We've had some incredible guests.

Patricia:

You want the ittsy teeny weeny bonus content?

Ryan:

I want the extra. I want a little bit of extra flavor to send people on their way for the summer.

Patricia:

The flavor for the summer is cheers. Cheers to your health. Now in Polish, I practiced this so I hope I don't, Natalia, please tell me if I butcher this. Na zdrowie.

Ryan:

You did good.

Patricia:

That means “to your health in Polish.” Then you said sláinte in Irish.

Ryan:

You didn't get the Irish one right, but you got the Polish one right.

Patricia:

Say it.

Ryan:

Sláinte

Patricia:

Sláinte. I looked at so many places. Sláinte.

Ryan:

Now you got it.

Patricia M:

I actually had it in my notes in phonetics spelling and I practiced.

Ryan:

Oh really? How funny.

Patricia:

Yep, I did. I shared with you, it's right there. What I want to say to the listeners is to your health. To your health and wealth.

Ryan:

Seriously.

Patricia:

All of these learnings. To your best advantage, please ask us any questions. We can either answer them or bring you back to the original speaker. It's been an absolute pleasure. This has been amazing and so to your health.

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely and Patricia and Kelsey, to your health as well. It's a fun part of my job to get to do this with you all. As we record this, it's the 17th of June. The reason I know that is tomorrow is my son Declan's birthday. Believe it or not, seven years old, which is crazy. I hope that you all really take some time to enjoy your summer. Hopefully you have some holidays booked up. My family is going to Cape Cod in a few weeks. I'm very excited about. I know it's gnarly out there. The economy's crazy. If you have cryptocurrency, it's worth a third of what it was a week ago. Stocks aren't good. Business is uncertain.

There's a quote that I'm going to pause and find because Steve Phillips, our CEO, said this to our staff the other day and I wanted to say it to everybody here, but let me just find it so I don't butcher it.

We are in a tough time. This is a quote from Charles Darwin. It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change. What I do believe this when things are tense, ingenuity, creativity, teamwork, comradery, these primal human things that we have in us can really help us shine if we embrace them. Don't live in fear folks, embrace the change. It's going to be a bumpy year ahead of us but those of you who do adapt quickly will be laughing on the other side of it. Those of you who live through 2008, I wasn't around for 2001 from a business perspective. COVID, we've all been through. We've built muscles for this stuff. Stay kind to each other, stay kind to yourself, have plenty of libations in sunshine this summer. Kelsey, when are we going to be back, late Q3? Is that the plan for season five?

Kelsey:

We're planning on a September arrival for season five.

Ryan:

Wow. That means for the six people who I already have decided I want on the show, we better not delay come August and getting them things scheduled because Kelsey will be up my ass and I do not want to be late for her, you feel me? Team December 12th, team Rhode Island, going to be back with Patricia, team Columbia, for season five. Thank you for listening. We are two minutes late for our season five kickoff, so we got to fly. Bye everybody.