Leveraging software (& trust) to save time and maximize impact

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan and I'm joined, as always, by my friend, colleague, and cohost Patricia Montesdeoca. Hi, Patricia.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hey Ryan, how you doing?

Ryan:

I'm doing good. Patricia must be missing Boston because she's dropping her Rs.

Patricia:

I'm missing you guys a lot. I wish you were all here though. I don't know if I want to be there as much as I want you all here.

Ryan:

I would like to be in Columbia because it's not yet warm here. I'm about to have to go out to lunch right now. I want to eat outside, not inside.

Patricia:

Oh, just come. We've got the room. We've got the space. We're in a little bit of a lockdown, but it's okay. The weather's great. Come over

Ryan:

All right. I'm on my way. Although the truth is I'm going to see you and your husband soon because we're all going to a Red Sox game, which is another signal of normalcy returning.

Patricia:

I'm so excited about that. Especially since it's the day before... You know what? Actually, the Red Sox game is on my birthday. That's right. Woohoo!

Ryan:

So we'll tell you folks about the Red Sox game when that episode happens, but today we've got a really exciting conversation. Patricia and I spend a lot of time working with our customers balancing global versus local tension. You've got global capabilities teams that are trying to take the best thinking in the company, the learning in the company and scale it. But then you've got regional teams who are closest to the customer in a given market, for a given category, for a given brand who really need to help drive the P&L of those brands. And it is a tension. And some companies nail it and other companies don't. Our last episode was with Jessica Southard from Mars, and we saw a really advanced global point of view.

But in today's episode, we're going to talk to two people that work extremely well together in the global/local framework. And they're going to give you folks some really tangible advice and perspective on how to work together to make stuff happen, to continuously experiment, and really how to scale learning, without getting so lost in software that nobody's doing any thinking or any curating. So we're going to talk to Alex Peters and Lucy Lindsley from RB. Actually, it's not just Reckitt. They've rebranded.

Patricia:

Yes, Reckitt.

Ryan:

Shout out to the rebrand. Zappi team has known Reckitt from the Reckitt Benckiser days, the RBs, and now the Reckitt days. And they're doing some really incredible work to continuously drive their really strong roots in innovation and brand building around the world. Patricia, I want to get into this one. We're going to bring the heat. We've got a lot to talk about. What do you think?

Patricia:

They're amazing. I can't wait to hear them. Go for it.

Ryan:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. My name is Ryan Barry, I'm your host. And I'm joined today by two great people from RB. Lucy Lindsley and Alex Peters. Lucy is the global insights lead for the COE, specifically focused on innovation. And Alex is the insights lead for the Vanish brand. But Alex, you're going through a bit of transition aren't you at the moment?

Alex Peters:

That's right, yes. I'm moving into a new role, which will be focusing on brand purpose and the insights around that.

Ryan:

Brilliant, brilliant.

Alex:

Which is obviously a super cool territory to be working in.

Ryan:

Absolutely. And I want to thank you for being here. Obviously today, we'll be talking about your context within your current role, and we'll have to talk more when you get in the new one. So I want to ask you two a question to start. I always like to understand how people get into consumer insights. So Lucy, I'm going to put you on the spot. What's your story? How'd you get into consumer insights?

Lucy Lindsley:

Well, I was a scientist, so I actually started in the labs at P&G formulating dish washing tablets, and it was just by chance the project I was working on, I didn't have anybody to go and test my product so I actually made it in the lab and then took it out to test it. And I quite quickly realized that I loved interacting and watching people's behavior and how they interacted with products much more than I did with being in the lab, so I just made the move pretty much straight away into doing more consumer research and it just grew from there.

Ryan:

I love it. That's actually a pretty good story. Sometimes people will have like this, "It was a complete accident." Yours feels fairly intentional. How about you, Alex?

Alex:

So scientists represent here because my undergraduate and master's degree is in neuroscience and neuroscience is at least in part about how people are thinking and what they're thinking, what are the reasoning behind that thinking and the neurochemical basis for that, which led to an interest in how people make the decisions they do around the products they buy. I worked agency side for some time in that field and then moved over to working at RB. So yes, starting from a science background as well, but very much interested in how people make decisions and what their thought processes are, et cetera.

Ryan:

All right. I've actually never shared my insight story on this podcast, so I will do it now. And none of us are really here by accident, which might be the first group of three people I've ever met in insights that no one's by accident. I thought I was going to be an account planner, and then I got out of school and realized if I was going to move to New York City and be an account planner I would have to bartend on the weekends. And the part that I always liked about account planning was the strategy and the people side, so I went to a market research conference really by accident. I designed their program and I met all these wonderful people that worked in market research and I was like, "Oh, I want to work in this space." And yeah, the rest is history and I don't know that I would ever work anywhere else.

I always think about it as you get to study people and work with interesting people. For me as an extrovert, I love the people that I work with, but also the study of people is brilliant. 

Well, I'm excited about this discussion for a bunch of reasons. We're experimenting live. I've never had two guests on my podcast before. But this is an important conversation I think because as insights is trying to get businesses closer to the consumer, trying to synthesize learnings, trying to help companies build brands that last, build innovations that drive growth, we are having to transform how we work, but also continue the work. And so what I love about, and I've had the privilege of working with both of you closely, but what I love about you two is you've struck up this amazing relationship and partnership between global capability and the local delivery of insights for a brand.

And that tension isn't always in harmony. I know hundreds of companies across the world, and I think there's oftentimes a disconnect between what's happening from the center and what's happening on the ground. And so I really want to dive into this with you both today because I think what you're doing at RB is finding a really nice balance between these things, and your progress towards digital transformation is showing.

So Lucy, I'm going to start with you. Tell us a little bit about what RB's trying to do centrally about the hive, about some of the capabilities that you're thinking about just to kind of ground us in the mission and the goal that you're working from.

Lucy:

Yeah, so I think we have a newly formed insight center of excellence. So we're a new team, it just started last year and we're growing rapidly, and it's really about how do we work from a central place to really enhance RB's insight capabilities. So that can be from tools, approaches, competencies, but it's all to do with really finding the best of the best, and then being able to scale it across the organization.

Because what we find is there's like little gems in pockets of the business where teams have been working in a particular way, they'd been using certain tools and it's great, but when you're in your project, you're in your little bubble in your team. You don't get to see what's happening in the rest of the company. I've been in this a few months now and I just feel in such a fortunate position and a vantage point because I get to see all the cool stuff that's happening in all of the little pockets of the business, and then take it back to the other teams and say, "Do you know what's happening here? You could reapply this. We could make it bigger."

For me, that's the big opportunity that we've got with an insight center of excellence. Because when you're in a technical function like research, you learn so much from your peers. You get better individually by learning from what your peers are doing because you’re researchers by heart, so you're researching how you do research as well. You're always experimenting, and you can share that across the organization if you've got a well-connected center of excellence that's building those partnerships across, and like you say, not kind of sitting away from the organization, but very much embedded in the organization and partnering with people throughout.

Ryan:

You make it sound simple, but it is so rare that you're that connected. So I guess, how do you approach that integration with the local teams? How did you go about getting there? How do you create those networks and integrate with people across... I mean, let's call RB what it is, a global multifaceted, multi-brand company across three different pillars. I mean, it's a complex company, but how have you integrated across all of that?

Lucy:

I talked to a lot of people, which for me, I enjoy that. So yeah, it's all about making connections. I think my greatest learning of being in this role for, as I say, just a few months is I think a center of excellence role. You live by the connections that you make throughout the organization. The quicker you can build your network throughout the organization, the more you're grounded in the real day-to-day challenges of the team.

So at the start of every project that I've gone into, I've conducted interviews with people throughout the organization which has two benefits. One, it builds your network if there are people that you haven't talked to before, you're having those initial conversations. And two, you get to hear, just as we would if we were actually looking into what consumers are doing, I'm doing that basically with the people in our organization, so sitting with them, doing interviews, really understanding what the needs are and the challenges that they've got in their individual roles and making sure that we've got a broad spread across the different business units, and whether people are in global innovation roles versus local marketing excellence and activation roles so you get that range of people's sort of business challenges and the insights that they need to create.

Ryan:

I imagine on some level just human psychology at play, that process also makes when you're trying to mobilize change easy because you've heard everybody, so you're not trying to roll something out that people haven't told you is a problem or a need. 

So a big part of how you're spotting trends is from within, right? And we'll come onto it, because Alex obviously spots a lot of trends in his work. So internally you're basically going across different teams, and it sounds like through that listening process you're also understanding where they're doing something that's unique. So internally it reads to me like maybe is a big source of inspiration, but where else are you going, Lucy, to find inspiration of the next thing? How do you stay apprised and kind of in the know of trends that should be on RB's radar as you look to continuously evolve the organization?

Lucy:

I think there's different ways. So like you say, there's identifying internally where we see actually trends that are happening from overall a business context, so what's happening to our business then lends itself to, okay, what do our insight toolkit need to do to be fit for the future, to be fit for purpose? So that's one way where we go, okay, where's our business trying to move to and what do our insight toolkits need to do to enable us to research effectively, whether it's in that new space or that new way of working. And then there's so many external opportunities, so conferences of which there's been so many virtually recently, right? 

That's a great way to spot new tools. Talking to our agency partners because of course you guys are developing new stuff all of the time and we might use a particular partner for certain tools. We don't always know all the cool stuff that they're also creating, so it's about regular connections and conversations with our partners to see what trends they're seeing with their competitors and where they're trying to move to. And we try and co-develop things. 

For me, actually joining the Zappi Insights Alliance and talking to two other people in different companies that are also in the insights field is a great way to share learnings. And actually, we were talking at the beginning a little bit about how LinkedIn has afforded this opportunity for so many direct reach-outs now from agencies for us sitting client side.

And actually one of the things that we've just brought into the center of excellence is a digitized approach to handle all those emails. Let's be honest, we really don't have time to read them all and connect with all the people reaching out to us on a day-to-day basis. There's not enough hours in the day, so we're capturing all of those emails and then we can reach out and we allow companies to kind of complete what their specialty is, what their point of differences with databasing it.

And then when from the center of excellence we can kick off a work stream that has real strategic intent to go after a new area, so it might be econ tools, or consumer empathy, or a new area, then we have our database where we can also go in and say, "Okay, we've got all of these companies that have reached out to us that say that they're doing this kind of stuff," and then we can start to go through so we're not missing, like you say, some of those gems that you get through from the direct reach out. So lots of different ways actually to stay ahead of the trends within market research.

Ryan:

That's really insightful for people. I mean, I love the simplicity of also just laddering it to the company goals so nobody can sort of debate change or evolution if it's like, "Hey, we're going in this direction. We're doubling down on this line of business, whatever that is, and we need to do different things."

So Alex, I want to get you involved here. So one of the things that I'm always fascinated with in a modern day insights manager's world is this constant tension between deliberate insights to Vanish brand and optimize the way I do that. You're somebody I've always been impressed with because you seem to have this really great way of balancing those two contradicting points. So how do you go about that in your day to day?

Alex:

Yeah, it's a really good question. Fundamentally, I'm going to start from one of the things Lucy said, which is there are not enough hours in the day. So there are so many things that I would like to do that I can't find time to do. When I'm thinking about what my day involves, I've got to have lots of meetings. I've got to think about what I want to do and what I use as the output from these meetings. I've got to do actual work and I've got to make sure I'm learning all the time, constant improvement of myself, both in what I know for me, but also what I can then apply to the brand. And finding the time to do each of those to the level you want to is close to impossible, but if you can focus on what the things that are going to have the biggest impact are, then you can make space in your calendar.

And the things that are going to have the biggest impact are the things are either going to make your life simpler or the things that are going to make the brand as successful as possible, or the things that are going to change the way of working the most. And finding ways to make time for those things is one of the things that things like the center of excellence make easier, because if you've got someone else doing part of that thinking for you instead of having lots of different people operating in silos and doing the same thought process each for themselves, you've got a place where someone who you trust to do a better job than you most of the time is actually having that thought process going on and you can reach out to them and have that conversation.

Having said that, prior to having the center of excellence, you still had to make space to do it. It still had to happen, and in those cases it was a battle. You always had to make space and something had to suffer as a result of it. But the realism is that if you are making space and finding the right opportunities and finding the right ways to do that process improvement to do the better tools, to have the better conversations, then actually it simplifies everything else because the right type of approach is actually giving you more time, or making that decision making process easier, or making the conversation half an hour shorter because it was so easy to get the alignment.

And once you realize that that's a cycle that brings continuous improvement, then you find yourself making time for the areas where you're frustrated today, rather than just the areas where you have passion today because you want to do better and you want to make your life easier. So it's a bit selfish in a way, but it's a selfishness that works for everyone because by getting the time available for you to do the thinking where you want to, it benefits the organization around you.

Ryan:

So time is... I mean, it's one of the only true finite resources on this planet. It sounds to me like you're fairly intentional about it, so what do you do? Do you just block off time? Like, this is my thinking time or is there a strategy? I'm somebody who's obnoxiously type A about time, so I have like “Ryan think time” and stuff. Is your approach similar or how do you actually manage that?

Alex:

Yes. It's a great question, and it's one that I'm a bit like you in that sense, because yes, I block off time in my calendar for me to think, for me to do the thing that I want to do. And I make it so that people realize that that doesn't get blocked over time. People might even be frustrated the first time I tell them I'm not putting a meeting then because I've got something else on. But over time they come to learn, okay, well, there are still slots in the calendar. There are still opportunities to have the conversation and the quality of what you're receiving from me has improved because I have that time to think to myself and to deliver it.

And in this world of coronavirus, it's become easier and easier to have those lines blurred because people are getting more and more familiar with being able to drop things into the digital calendar, to grab you very quickly via a meeting over Zoom or whatever it may be, and it becomes more important therefore to find that time for yourself and to put it in when you're at your most effective as well. So I have certain ways of working. My thinking time is at the start of the day and my meeting time, just like this moment for me, is at the end of the day because I'm perfectly capable of having the right kind of conversation, but when I need to really think and plan for myself, that's when I'm freshest right at the start of the day, as much as possible.

Ryan:

I love it. I think one of the, I'm hoping this, one of the benefits COVID is going to afford us is the opportunity to tap into more asynchronous working because everybody's peak performance time is different. So I'm like you, first thing in the morning. Lucy, when are you at your best? 

Lucy:

I am totally a morning person. It's good with young children because they are also morning people.

Ryan:

I'm the same way, and it's actually troublesome for me because I have an ocean between many of my colleagues so I end up having to figure out ways to make the afternoon creative, but I'm really high on asynchronous working and things like Teams and Google Docs and everything, it allows you to really collaborate on a document, a line of thought or whatever without having to always go to meetings.

I think the calling out and saving time is fascinating, but also the way you've gone about it with your stakeholders because I think one of the challenges I always see insights people having is that they know they need to do things differently, but the stakeholders are like, "Yeah, but I need this tomorrow, and here's a research brief and here's all this other stuff." And so it sounds like you just sort of held the line, right? Like, "I'm not free now." Is there any other sort of advice you have on, "Hey stakeholders, I'm doing things differently"? And was there a set of intentional conversations that you had or something like that?

Alex:

Yes, there's intentional conversations, and I'm always trying to be respectful of the way that they want to work as well. It's all very well me saying, "I'm not working with you at this hour," when that's the only time they can do. So there is a degree of negotiation around these things. There is a degree of finding a way that works for the different people you have to work with. And just like you, I'm working with people all around the world in different time zones, so if I have to be rigid about these things in every single instance, some people would never get a chance to speak to me because their only window is when I want to be focusing for myself. But then there are opportunities. I encourage and I actively encourage people to make sure they're booking meetings far enough in advance that I can then shuffle around what I'm trying to do.

It's that last minute meeting that's during your thinking time that really disrupts you and stops you from getting there so I put myself on “do not disturb” when I'm doing these things. There are tools available within the suites of software we're using at least that allow you to block yourself off so people can't reach you, and yet to allow a couple of very important people to even break through that so I'm sure that when it's necessary, my boss can get hold of me if there is a crisis that requires a 32 second response that's now. But I'm also confident that people who are working alongside me day in day out are reaching me at the times when I'm best able to respond. I'm not getting distracted by the messages when I'm trying to focus for myself. And that's my way of working. It's the way my brain works as well. If I'm interrupted all the time, nothing gets done.

Ryan:

Different people's brains working so differently, yet we all have to converge to get things done. I was having dinner with a friend last night and he owns a martech software company, and he's somebody who needs like four days to think about something. And he's like, "My co-founder can go to 20 meetings in a row and process it all on the fly." And they figured out a Rubik's cube of how they can vibe. So I think that the thing that you say, which is so insightful, is that contract between your working partners. Like to zoom out a bit and say, "Hey, how do you like to work? How do I like to work? Let's get on the same page about this.” Because that way when the pace picks up, you're not figuring that out on the fly. I hope people listen to that part of your advice, Alex. 

All right. So I have another question for you, Alex, and then I want to ask you both a couple of questions. Ever since I've known you, you've been at the forefront of using software and tools to do your job. This industry 10 years ago wasn't like that. I mean, I think ESOMAR said in their latest report, 50% of jobs last year were in-house, which is a big change from 2019 which is an even bigger change from '18 and '17. So how have you gone about continuously making the impact to the brand while actually using software? Because I feel like people have this perception that if they're in systems, they can't be strategic. They can't storytell, they can't think. You've just obviously challenged that assumption, but how have you figured out how to use these new tools and capabilities which obviously are all around you?

Alex:

Great point. The reality is that using these software as you call them, has another word for it in my mind, which is “do it yourself.” So when you're going into a lot of this software the expectation is that you're creating efficiencies by cutting someone out perhaps, or by reducing the number of touch points you need to have, and that is putting extra work on your plate. But it swings the other way as well. If you've got ownership and control over what's happening and you've got full visibility on what's happening because you're the one running the project, you're the one who's involved with the software directly interacting, directly getting in touch with the consumer and getting the understanding from them then you're actually putting power into your own hands to, again, manage your workflow, do things the way you want to when you want to do them and have the ability to make that work.

And then software is hugely varied. Some software is intuitive and some software therefore simplifies everything that you do, and what required a 30 minute phone conversation to brief someone before, you could have done yourself in 10 minutes and you've saved all of that time by doing it. Some software isn't that simple. There are reasons for that. Some questions are so complex that the software that goes behind them has to be likewise very complex to get that done. And here's where I start then prioritizing. What are the things that I need to do most often that have the biggest impact? Or what are the things that I enjoy the most and I want to be involved in and spending my time on?

And by matching those two together and thinking about them in the context of course of how I make therefore the impact on our business work as well, I'm able to ensure that where I'm spending my time is either things that actually save me time or things that I feel are helping me develop. Helping me develop for myself, but also helping me develop for the company that I work at and do a better job in the future.

Ryan:

I love it. So Lucy, let me put this question to you. Let's pretend you both don't work at RB so we don't make anybody upset with us for a minute. Let's just presume for a minute not everybody has the same point of view as Alex, which is quite progressive and modern. How do you from the center help folks who are maybe uncomfortable, perhaps intimidated, not sure where to start, how do you help them ease into the hive into some of these new ways of working that obviously are delivering value so now you're in a place of trying to scale them across the enterprise?

Lucy:

Yeah, I think it's a great question. And to be really honest, I think we're on a journey here of learning the best way to do it, but there's a few things that I'm picking up along the way. One comes back to, again, listening to what people need, and it plays into a point Alex just made as well, which is understanding when I talk to people, what are the things they're passionate about and what are the pain points that they have where things can be optimized for them? And then you frame the new solutions or approaches that you're bringing around those tension points or those passion areas so it's all about linking things into what people really need. If we're just coming with new things and people are like, "Yeah, that's not saving me time. It's not getting me better insights," then the reality is they just won't buy into it. So everything… just the same as if you were trying to sell somebody a new product. Everything has to be built on a need, a barrier that they have, how you overcome those barriers, and really, we understand that by getting insights from the organization.

I think the other thing that we've learned, and this is particularly as we've been looking at engaging more people with self-serve tools like Zappi, is people need to be able to go into the software little and often. There's no point training people on something that they're not going to be using for a month or two. We need to find people that have the projects that mean they're going to use it little and often so they become quickly proficient with the platform and it's like second nature. And then we also are giving awareness training early on so people can see the value, it peaks their interest, but then actually when they continue the platform training at the first point of use, so we're not training them on how to do stuff months ahead and then they go in and they're like,"Well, this looked easy when somebody's demoed it a few months ago, but now it's really confusing."

It's like they know the tool's there. We've shown the value. They're interested. Then when they want to continue use it, we have somebody sit with them and take them through it. We do that one, two, three times if that's what they need to become more proficient with it. So I think they are just some things that we're picking up, but as I say, it's a journey and it will depend on the type of tools and approaches we will have to adapt the way we roll things out.

Ryan:

You guys are bringing the heat today. I really hope the whole market research industry listens to this. This has been incredible. 

I'm going away this weekend and I rented an Airbnb. I got all of the emails stuff like five weeks ago. I'm only going to care about it when I'm four minutes away from that house this weekend. And so I think acknowledging that is really clever because I think in often cases, sometimes from the center, people throw it out and they're like, "I don't understand why the teams don't use it." And it's like, well, you didn't really make it easy. You didn't anchor it to a problem.

So I'll ask you guys one more question, because you've been extremely gracious with your time. Do you have any advice for people that are at the beginning of a journey trying to transform how they're doing insights? I mean, you've given everybody about a hundred pages of MasterClass today, but any lasting pieces of advice, things maybe that you've made mistakes on that you could help other people avoid, or just ideas that you have based on where the market's going? 

Alex:

I think that it's really important to build the relationships with the colleagues around you, whether they're those you're directly working with or those that you're working alongside perhaps in a less direct way. Because as you build those relationships, you start building a subconscious trust that these people know what they're doing the same way you know intuitively whether you do or you don't. I think we're working in an organization where we do know that the people around us are good at their jobs and they're going to be hard working and stuff like that, but there's still on a subconscious level a trust that gets built by interacting over time.

And when you know that the people around you are as good as you at their jobs, or in my case, often better than you at their jobs then you feel comfortable to have those opportunities to learn from them, to potentially delegate things that are super high important to you, but you don't have the time to do, to delegate those to the people around you and trust that they are going to do the job as well as you need it to get done, or they're going to provide you advice that is the right advice that you're going to take on board. And when you have that working, it comes back to this sort of center of excellence point of view, that if you believe what they're telling you, then it's exciting and it's what you want to do, whereas if you come in with a skepticism because you haven't built the network, haven't understood the perceptions of those around you, then you're going to fall back on trusting yourself, internalize too many of the challenges and suddenly realize you've got too much on your plate and no way of getting it done.

So to me, it's around trusting the colleagues around you, but you build that trust over time by making sure you make the time to have conversations. Conversations in meetings and conversations outside of meetings, which are especially difficult during COVID when people are working from home and not having breaks over coffee and stuff like that. So making time to have those more casual chats, even though they're taking time out of your calendar, will actually free you up in the long term because you'll be working as part of a network of people with a similar goal in mind.

Ryan:

I love what you say. I mean, there's all this rise of software stuff. I'm somebody who is a key player in a software company, but it comes back to people. It always does. The people process technology equation. People are the give or take. So great wisdom, Alex. Lucy, how about you?

Lucy:

Yeah. Do you know, there's a few and I'll summarize them. So the first one I think we talked a lot about it, but it's like staying grounded in what people need. Really understanding the levers and the barriers if you're wanting people in the organization to change their behavior because behavior change is complex. It comes with the microculture within the company, comes with ingrained behaviors and ways of doing things and you need to understand what are the levers and the motivations that you can play with to help overcome the barriers that can help shift the change of behavior.

The next one is once you've got something like an approach that you want to scale, you've got an idea of what it could look like, it's iterating and learning with people because we might hear from people, "Okay, these are our needs." And then we go away and create something, and then at that point we could roll it out to everybody. 

But actually what I found is if you do that next check-in step, you get people's feedback again, perhaps they hear it a bit differently when you play it back to them, the needs that you first heard, and then you get to that extra level of understanding about what it is they really need or what they've been doing. You want to be agile in getting these stuff out so the organization's moving, but at the same time you want to iterate and learn a little bit small scale. Give yourself time to do that so that you really optimize the proposition before you take out the rest of the organization.

And then the final one is around measures of success because of course, whenever we're doing anything from a central point of view, we want to understand where's the ROI and what the impact is that it's driven. And one of the things that I try and stay true to when we're talking about KPIs and measures of success is it has to be directly relatable to things that can be influenced through this approach. It can't be several steps away because it's not meaningless. Amounts sound better, but it's not really measurable, and actually I think what ends up happening is then the teams get too focused on the measure of success because it's a bit too far away from what they can influence and you're grappling with this problem.

If you bring it right back to, "Okay, what are the things that are really tangible that we can impact by implementing this approach?" Then the measures of success, they're much more simple, they're much more actionable, and they're things that you can really modify and change from the center and the teams that are working with the new tool and approach. I would say they're my top three that I've learned so far.

Ryan:

I'm hoping when we ship this episode and people listening, I can find some way to get the data for how many times people pause this episode to stop and take notes. 

Alex and Lucy, you brought the heat today. You've brought a lot of knowledge and perspective. I'm genuinely privileged to call you both partners. We could do a whole episode on how to do partnership right. And we could just model your behavior, your integrity, your honesty, your commitment to experimentation and innovation is genuinely unique. So on behalf of the consumer insights industry, thank you both. And I'd like to personally thank you for making the time today. This was amazing. I had so much fun.

Alex:

Thank you for having us. Much appreciated from my side as well.

Lucy:

Thanks. It's been great as always, Ryan.

Ryan:

Cool. That was really fun. I really enjoyed that one, Patricia. How did you think it went?

Patricia:

It's interesting, because as you said at the beginning, we work with them on a day-to-day basis and then we sit down to do these interviews. And it's different because we're not talking about a specific project, we're talking about what makes them tick. And it's so enlightening to hear that from them. And I've been global and I've been local, both are hard. And doing it together and at this level of success is just mind blowing. I'm so impressed with them.

Ryan:

Yeah. They're so humble, but pragmatic in the way they do it. Clearly both very smart people, very intelligent, but they break down something so complex in really simple terms. The hardest things are better off solved simply. So I really am impressed by their approach.

Patricia:

Like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers type thing. That's the type of vibe I got from them because they just kind of just went. It was great. And they give us a really cool, five-point success plan. It was really amazing to hear them. You want to hear what my takes on it were?

Ryan:

I always like to hear these because I'm busy having chats and you're doing such a wonderful job of curating the theme. So thank you.

Patricia:

Takes a village, my friend. Takes a village. So they started off where I think everybody should start always, no matter what they're doing: relationships. They trust each other. So we have the Lucy, the Global Center of Excellence, and Alex is on the ground, but they trust each other implicitly, absolutely, totally, and without reservation. As human beings, as professionals, and as friends, as partners. They trust each other fulfilling their own roles. They value each other's unique contributions. They talk about the positive side of selfishness because if you're selfish for good reasons, then it works for everybody, which I like.

And you know what's amazing? They both walk the talk, as in really walk the talk, on continuous improvement. And they don't want busyness, or excess data, or the fact that a day only has 24 hours get in their way. They leverage all of these things. Actually, they leverage many of the things that we all use as valid excuses for not doing more. And they leverage those to do more better. They don't leave anything behind either. They always are improving themselves, their brands, their business, and they help the consumers too. So that first point is amazing because they fundamentally believe in each other and they do it together. It's kind of like the way you and I work. I love it.

Ryan:

Trust is so important. I love that you start with that. Without trust, what do you really have? And I think, particularly in some of the bigger climates, maybe trust wasn't always there. But I can't stress enough the importance of working in teams that have high trust. I'm personally somebody who assumes trust. Some people you have to build it with, but those are conversations worth having with people. Because if you trust each other, you can be in different places and cover a lot more ground.

Patricia:

Exactly. And you could tell from them when they talk that they weren't always in the same place, but they talk to each other to get to the same place, which gives them even more merit. Now, the second part was what you do after that. You've established trust, then what do you do? Because at the end of the day, we're here to help people who are listening to us get these things done in their world.

So the second point, after you've established trust with your team, what do you do next? You figure out how to work best. You have that conversation. And they talk about three areas of working best. Individually... I can't say this. Collaboratively.

Ryan:

Nice job.

Patricia:

God, that's one of those words that it just does not work for me. And the third one is leveraging software, leveraging tools. So first, individually. Respect your own time, respect yourself, know your rhythms, and have a do not disturb time for yourself. Of course, I like the way Alex talked about having an emergency group of people that were able to contact him. So just in case his boss needed something in 32-seconds, which I really liked, I've never heard that 32-second rule, but it's there. So he's got the individual respect.

The second one was working best collaboratively. He talked about negotiation and contracting because he works best in the morning, but he has many people that are in the UK so the only time they can see him or talk to him is when he wants to be alone. So he's negotiated and collaborated with them to get the right one, so that when it's possible to do it together. And when it's not, they do it asynchronously, which is something you do a lot. You use the asynchronous tools to work together.

Ryan:

Really important.

Patricia:

Exactly. And that leads perfectly to the third one, which is leveraging the software. He said, "Software is just a really elevated DIY, do it yourself." He's putting your own power in your own hands so that you're the one who knows best what to do. And he said, but this is not all about a shiny new tool. It's all about building things on a need. You're using the tool to solve a need. So that's important, you can't just use it. And train others in awareness, in general, but don't train them on usage until the time comes. Similar to what you were saying about Airbnb. You'll need it when you need it, when you go. Not six months earlier. So give me the instructions when it's time. So only anchor it to a problem, the training for usage when you're talking about how to work best with software. 

Ryan:

I love it.

Patricia:

So the third point... Which I have to tell you, the first one was beautiful, the second one was smart. The third one, I just have to say, my heart went out to Lucy. She researches her internal stakeholders from the Center of Excellence position as if she was researching consumers.

Ryan:

I love that.

Patricia:

The way you and I talk to our customers about seeing how people brush their teeth, or wash their house, or take a shower. She talks to her internal stakeholders in exactly the same way. She stays grounded in what they really need and asks them the true questions. She asks them what she can do to help them get to where they're going and you know what you have versus what you need. She asks them what they've done recently that's worked or not work, so that she can share with others. But then she says at the end, "Play back what you heard before you start working," because sometimes when they hear their own words played back to them, it's not right. Sometimes the result is surprising because they're like, "Wait. I said that, but I didn't mean that. Let's work together again." So again, the communication, the talking to people so that together they can determine the return on the investment that they desire and then what the result is. So it was amazing. That was so cool.

Ryan:

That is such a good one. I have probably an advantage because I know Lucy really well. What's great about Lucy too is she actually cares. So she's not doing this as like a box-checking exercise. She actually cares about the other person. And I think the replaying back what she heard point is one of the best active listening techniques you can provide. So we're going to have Nick Graham, head of Insights at Mondelez, on the show in a couple of weeks. It's actually something I've learned from him. He's one of the best active listeners I've ever met because you can explain something extremely complex to them and say, "Okay, what I took away from that was..." It shows the person you're listening to them, but to your point that you made, it also forces the other person to say, "Well, shit. Is that what I meant?" It's a really powerful tool.

Patricia:

Exactly. Then the fourth point is all about how to not drown when you're drinking from the fire hose. We all drink from the fire hose.

Ryan:

Yes, we do.

Patricia:

We all have a fire hose. We all know that. But they're smart about it, both of them. They don't just throw away good material, they look for... Remember number how to work best? They work with the tools to help them do that. So they digitize and they database, and Lucy talks about the fact that she only has certain number of hours in the day. So she's going to take all of the inputs, all the new suppliers, all the new vendors, all the new tools, everything and she puts them in a database. She has them all sorted and organized so that she can be focused on what's going to give her, number one, simplification.

Number two, as Alex said, increased success. And number three, which both of them said, changing the way they work for more efficient ways. So they take and they acknowledge and they accept the fact that there’s a fire hose and they have to drink from it. And they look for ways to not throw away materials, but to leave them ready, which leads them straight until the wrap-up. Which is number five, which is a huge, huge bow on the top of the brand new car that you got for Christmas. How to bring it all together, which is where we started.

Global with local. So all of this work, getting it all together, setting it all up, Lucy talks about it all comes together when you kick off strategic work streams. So that you go after something that's new, but base it on Reckitt's goals. Make sure they're based on Reckitt's goals, but you make it new. And you come back and you go back to all of the people that you interviewed, who has done something similar and what can we learn from them?

Those are her connections she made. Number two, who's shown interest? They haven't done it yet, but they want to do it. So she brings them in. Then she goes to her partners, because we talked about the fire hose, she uses partners to help her with a fire hose. So she's like, "Who of my partners have done something similar?" She brings them in and then she goes to that database, that beautiful thing she collected in step four, and she pulls out from the tags that she's placed in what tools are going to help her and what new service is going to help her. So she takes everything that she did with Alex and she brings in not only Alex, but other Alexes to do exactly what she needs to do. Which is to kick off something new, make sure it works, drive it on success, drive it on the goals. And she has Center of Excellence success. It's beautiful.

Ryan:

She's nailed it. I've worked at all of the Center of Excellence types in my career. I've seen very few people make moves at the pace that she has. So all this leads to results. They've digitized their entire innovation processes and that's just the part we're a part of, there's so many other things that they've mobilized. Obviously it has great support from Elaine at the top, from their EVP of category and then their CEO. But the work that these two have done to actually make the change happen is unbelievable. And Alex has actually been working in a modern way for six or seven years. So it also shows the importance of having people closest to the problem being able to experiment and try stuff, because he's essentially created their path forward. 

Everybody that listened to this, quite a few lessons you can take away. Patricia, as always, has wrapped a bow around them for you. And so this was one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. The next episode of our podcast, I think everybody's in for a treat. We're going to talk about advertising development and how PepsiCo has moved from testing to learning. We're going to have the global brand director of the Walkers brand, Fernando Kahane, who is a brilliant creative mind, one of the best marketers I've ever met. And Tim McEntaggart, who runs a Center of Excellence for European Insights. And we're going to talk about moving from testing to learning in some detail. Patricia, I'm pumped for this conversation.

Patricia:

Can't wait.

Ryan:

I got a chance to get to know these two guys. I could talk to Fernando about marketing all day. You'll see what I mean when we get into the chat next time. We are starting to wrap up season two. We hope that you've enjoyed it.

Patricia:

Oh, no!

Ryan:

Don't worry. We're coming for more, people.

Patricia:

No, I don't want it to end ever.

Ryan:

We're going to be bringing the heat. If you have ideas of people we should talk to, of things you'd like to hear us talk about, or people you want us to speak to, hit us up on LinkedIn. Also, you can just email us at insideinsights@zappistore.com. If you are getting value out of our podcast, we would really, really be gracious if you could give us a five-star rating. It helps the algorithm show us more people, but for now that's all we've got. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next time.

Patricia:

It was fun as usual. Let's go get shit done.