WongonWork: Insight on insights

#insights #datascience #innovation #complexity #systemsthinking #strategy #futureofwork #AI #HRM #humancapital #futures #technology #politics #inequality #changemanagement #decision-making #peoplemanagement #ethics #sustainability  #economics #horizonscanning #management #leadership #society #business #research #storytelling #risk #opportunity #governance #wickedproblems #scenarioplanning #climateemergency #security #resilience

I was a guest futurist at the Codex World’s Top 50 Innovators 2024 Conference hosted at Booth School of Business London. It occurred to me that many of these amazing technopreneurs have founded a business based on a single insight matched with a technical solution. Skyline Robotics replacing people with robots to clean and maintain the glass cladding of the world’s skyscrapers once shared seems so obvious. Or the use of Generative AI in the form of a Large Physics Model (LPM) by PhysicsX to provide optimal solutions in complex engineering like turbine blade design.

While working with a tech startup on their validation protocols, I’ve been introduced to an entire Accelerator and Incubator ecosystem to identify, nurture and, even, to weed out start ups. The technopreneur/founder insight(s) requires those with deep knowledge of innovation systems, finance, research analysis, markets & branding, behaviour, and human capital, working in concert to bring the technopreneur/founder’s insight to market as a successful innovation.

But insight is not just about innovation. It is a sophisticated process of drawing together data and signals to evaluate potential implications for business, policy, socio-economic issues, and other dynamic interconnected systems, for now and well into the future. Data projections can establish some baseline trajectories. Signals help to locate where those trajectories might need adjusting, or if severely compromised/ disrupted, even cessation. A Director of Insight (DoI) will be negotiating data and analysing (soft) signals from both the external and the internal environments to support the strategic thinking and decision making for the business.

If there ever was a need for an effective DoI, it’s the UK Post Office. Paula Vennells (CEO 2012-2019) was exercised by many priorities, but as the statutory inquiry has shown, the data and signals around the prosecution of PO submasters and mistresses over the flawed Horizon software was not of significance; the one critical oversight. How could she (Paula Vennells) not have known?

And then there was the British Museum scandal of losing 1,500-2,500 artefacts. Antiques dealer Ittai Gradel revealed he went to museum bosses after becoming suspicious about an object he found for sale online but was rebuffed by museum directors with derision, reflecting a culture of complacency and institutional arrogance. Gradel was told "all objects were accounted for" in 2021 by Hartwig Fischer, British Museum director. Mr Fischer responded to Mr Gradel's public account in August 2023 by criticising him.

Another company that could well do with a DoI is Boeing. The continued laser focus on shareholder value and return, as many CEOs came and went, is threatening Boeing’s future. As Fortune’s @shawntully reports, management by spreadsheet, the separation of strategy from operations, key accountabilities spread across continental America, has damaged Boeing’s proud history of engineering innovation and safety first in aviation. The counterfactual here is: what if there was a powerful voice in the executive team that could have drawn together data and signals and ask, What If...?

It’s worth considering a selection of job descriptions for “Director of Insight(s)”. It’s clear that the post is perceived as heading up an operational function like HR or marketing. Some of the key characteristics that have been mentioned include:

a.           A deep appreciation and discernment of data. Intellectual curiosity has shaped my career, and research methods a constant, be it in law, academia, industry research, investment analysis, policy development or management development. After years working in a variety of fields, I realised that to analyse decisions and choices, I needed to understand behaviour. A domain knowledge of law, management, and finance needed more: a literacy and the ability to view business activity through lenses of psychology and sociology. That’s when I made the decision mid-career to upskill in economic psychology (otherwise described as behavioural economics). That’s more types of data to process using newer methodologies and ideologies. When appropriately used, these different data inputs can provide amazing insights, some of which are actionable. When triangulated, these different data sources can occasionally provide the foundation for strategic thinking and high-quality foresight work. But data provides only the baseline. It provides possible trajectories and must definitely not be conflated with ‘prediction’.

b.           Contextual perspicacity. A competent change consultant would always start with a diagnostic process, to delve beneath a brief to understand the assumptions, mythologies, fears and hopes of the organisation, seeking their advice and building on its existing expertise. And a conclusion from years of research consulting – testing various hypotheses about the whys, wheres and hows, and securing a consensus on the scope of the investigation – delivers far more insight for the client than the promise of ‘modelled solutioneering’.  A part of this discipline is exploring , through critical research and horizon scanning, those drivers which influence(d) the issue under discussion in the past, now, and in the future. It’s not about delving into detail (although that is part of methodology) but recognising possible interactions, and modelling these so as to identify particular red flags, pivot events and strategic choices as you hone those leadership muscles.

c.           A keen Understanding of Audience. In addition to the senior team (and sometimes members of the Board), every person you meet is a (potential) stakeholder. For example, Greta Thunberg is often a stakeholder amongst many, many others. Locating the key actors in the flow of information and meaning in the organisation is facilitated by the use of several techniques. Furthermore, it’s important to recognise the range of individual and social needs, together with motivations and meanings attributed by these Audiences to your presence and role as an entity brought in from the (often unexplored) outside.

d.           Listening and Engaging. Successful diagnostics and/or the delivery of the recommended interventions will depend on the quality of dialogues.  Both active listening and engagement is paramount, especially with those actors who function as information nodes and cultural carriers within the organisation. In far too many instances, the dialogue between the stakeholders and the those charged with diagnosis and intervention is truncated or shutdown. In the case of Boeing, the many engineers who were trying to get heard on safety deviations were drowned out. The consequences of this lack of quality dialogue are deadly, and costly.

e.           Co-creating a Narrative. According to Booker (2004), there are seven story arcs: rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; overcoming the monster; rebirth and so on. These can be adapted to the organisation’s narrative. As an example, ‘overcoming the monster’. The organisation may be facing intense competition, a changed marketplace or technologies eroding their business model. Co-creating the storyline can be powerful: who/ what is the monster, why is the monster after us/ our business, and what can we do (or not do) to overcome the ‘monster’? What insights can you bring to strategic choices faced by your client and how will these choices play out with the other Audience? Here diagnostics meets mythology meets common ground –  and a discernment of the way forward. Priorities, purpose and need intersect.

f.            Ownership of Vision and Hope. As I identified in The Future awaits, foresight research only works if the Audience’s head and heart buy into the vision of a better tomorrow. The insights underpinning decisions on the ‘way forward’ (the agreed narrative, actions, and reactions) inspire both hope and action, be it collaborating across operations, partnerships, strategy, or new ways of working.

The functional links to strategy, risk management, crisis management and organisational transformation is obvious. The Insight team drawing together data, signals, and other stakeholder intelligence for strategic thinking/planning, along with lookouts for timely course correction. Coupled with the appropriate success metrics within a thriving knowledge exchange/ management network, the competitive advantage can be powerful.

The transformational Director of Insight(s)

One of the weaknesses of the linear paradigm of cause-and-effect underpinning management education is the assumption that issues of risks and costs can be quantified and controlled/managed or mitigated. Over-extended tools like root-cause analysis (RCA) underpin this way of thinking. RCA works well where the issue is well-scoped and the aim is to deal with issues one at a time. The danger is that it breeds a false sense of security about what can or cannot be controlled.

The DoI, to be truly transformational, has to straddle a different paradigm; one that is, yes, driven by data, so one knows what ought to be known to develop strategy and operational plans. But also, to bring to life the unknowns and the system complexities that can derail the best of intentions. It’s a truism to say that we live in ‘interesting times’ and to navigate these times, you need the operational insights team to live the six key characteristics reviewed above. However, the DoI has to critically pose the counterfactuals, flag up soft signals and build the strategic thinking muscles of the leadership. Accuracy of data where needed, yes; but never with the illusion of certainty and precision.

Wicked problems

My days spent with the Top 50 innovators at Booth highlighted the gap between the founders’ insights, the development of the innovation technologies and their application as solutions. These technopreneurs are brilliant and each of their innovations bring a little piece of hope to a better future but on a single issue/ problem.

Wicked problems are layered with different views of the problem and contradictory solutions. Most problems are connected to other problems and trying to get clarity, we find that the veracity and quality of data is unknown and/ or missing. There’s little common ground on values, cultures, and ideologies and each is faced with a matrix of socio-political constraints, economic ‘impossibilities’, and numerous possible intervention points controlled by a myriad actors. The consequences are difficult to imagine given the considerable uncertainty and ambiguity and unwillingness to challenge the status quo. At an organisational level, we need only look to Boeing, the British Museum, and the UK Post Office to see the consequences of fortifying the status quo.

But Wicked problems also showcase the potential of a critical, creative DoI. Wicked problems cannot be tackled by the traditional approach in which problems are defined, analysed, and solved in sequential steps. The DoI, while still drawing on best available relevant data, is also a navigator of the internal and the external, the present and the future, a dialogic expert knitting together the fragments through the lenses of various wicked problems in order to transform the debate, a specific issue, the organisation, and ultimately even the world.

As an economic psychologist, I recognise that mindsets and behaviour are especially resistant (and I include myself). Just think of the data and signals around the climate emergency while 100,000 flights occur daily. In our lifetimes we will have to face up to global climate change, ever-demanding healthcare, new epidemics from zoonotic pathogens, weapons, homelessness, and social injustice and change our behaviours and systems.

The starting point is to think – to imagine – an awaiting future and to make it so.

Data is the new oil. Insight(s), the outcome of refining data with foresight techniques. It’s time to rewire the intelligence pathways for all modern organisations. Engaging a Director of Insight(s) may just set in train a new way of thinking and decision-making for you and your organisation.

It’s June, a time of sunshine (fingers crossed) and #Pride2024. A time to celebrate the rights and privileges gained on the shoulders of those who fought and envisioned this future. To all #LGBTQ+ friends and allies – Happy Pride!

In my monthly blogs, I’ll explore some of the drivers shaping (the future of) work and the implications for organisations. 

*Hyperlinked orgs and sites aren’t endorsed by me but are sources I scan and include in some of my analyses.