It’s a strange old time in research and insights at the moment, eh? Transformations, restructures and efficiency drives are all rearing their ugly heads.
The good folk over at the MRS, AURA and IMA have been chatting to insight leaders on their experiences and what the next generation of insight professionals can do to remain indispensable. As Nicky Roch writes up:
“Underpinning many of these cuts, the respondents were largely agreed, was a leadership belief that data, dashboards, AI outputs and automated analytics would fill the gap left by human intelligence. Almost universally, they believe that bet will not pay off. One put it with admirable directness: We're in this very interesting shift in leadership. It’s the leadership of sound bites. It’s the leadership of not going deep. It’s the leadership of just needing something quickly. And right now, people feel they can hack it, and they don't need us.”
Apophenia is the human tendency to see a pattern where none exists. Smiley faces in clouds. Lucky jerseys. The theory that rocks are actually soft and squishy, they just tense up when we touch them. (Prove me wrong 😉)
All of which matters rather a lot when the day job involves sifting through consumer behaviour. Usefully, Moresapien have a good explainer on the bias and how to manage it:
“When you perceive a pattern, the instinct is to look for more evidence that supports it. The more useful approach is to look for evidence that would disprove it. If the pattern survives an honest attempt to falsify it, it is more likely to be real. If you can only support it by cherry-picking examples, it is probably apophenia.”
When Reece Rogers requested a copy of his data from McDonald’s loyalty programme he received a 515-page file on himself.
“The company predicted how often I would visit in the next six weeks (2.16 times), what I would spend on average ($13.49), and what I would spend in total ($29.15) [...] Beyond the numbers, McDonald’s also tracked a large Diet Coke as my favorite item to repeatedly purchase. It labeled my core purchasing habits as getting a “Food-Led Afternoon Snack” or an “On the Go Lunch in a Rush.” [...] Notably, the report also listed my “attrition” score as zero.”
The qual lover in me would love to know how much ‘why’ gets served with that.
Before you spend an afternoon automating a five minute job, have a ganders at xkcd’s ‘Is It Worth the Time?’ chart. It’s a rule of thumb for judging whether you’re spending more time optimising the task than the total time saved.
“if you do some task every week once, and you are able to save 1 minute of time by doing some preparatory work (e.g. build or buy a tool), you can spend 4 hours doing this preparatory work, and you will, across five-years time, come even. Any less time spent doing the preparatory work, and you will profit from it.”
The True Size lets you drag and drop countries to compare their true relative size. Despite looking the same size on a map, Brazil is nearly five times larger than Alaska. Ol’ Mercator has a lot to answer for.
Bored with your regular exercise routine? How about training for an International Medieval Jousting Tournament instead?
A guide to spotting the British upper class, 1986 edition. Uuuuoh-kaaay.
Bon weekend,
Fran