What is your research ethos?

I was interviewing a fellow researcher, and he said something very memorable about his philosophy.

‘Actually, I don’t care about the finding so much; I just care that there is a finding.’

Long after the interview, the conversation stayed with me. I was thinking about how I would sum up mine.

To give you some background, I am a customer researcher and product strategist. I also build research programs to inculcate a culture of customer empathy.

Here’s my ethos that has evolved over the 5 years. I used to be keen about the method(s), tools and domain expertise. I realize that I am more focused on enabling and communicating impact, building partnerships and scaling evidence based product decisions.

Learnings over rigor:

I am partial to lean and creative research methods that prioritize what we learn and how fast we can learn to make progress. Procedures can easily become proxy to making decisions and moving forward.

What does this look like?

• When there was absolutely no time to conduct research, my team leveraged Nielsen Norman’s research on e-commerce product comparison.
• When we had to concept test at scale, my team employed the 5 second test that is easier to teach anyone in 5–10 min.
• When we had only 4 hours to research for a chat bot, I employed slack channels to understand the conversation styles between millennial and non-millennials segments.
• Recently I have also been employing projective techniques (withdrawal) and games (buy a feature) from the realm of market research. These methods create a better rapport with customers to make progress.

Having championed lean methods, I recognize that it is important to be clear about when it is time to take a pause and go back to the drawing board. Foundational ethnography can be product life-altering. Usually, these are in service of re-defining value propositions, exploring new business models or revenue streams and not continuous/incremental improvements.

Actionable over Academic:

Most of us depend on research to advance a product, service or society. It is never an academic exercise. Ensure the research is in service of some decision making.

What does this look like?

• Spell out the So What and Now What of research findings. You are not a reporting squirrel but a change agent.
• When reports are not making the necessary impact, attempt a quadrant chart (2X2) that communicates quickly and feels familiar for the leadership
• Before conducting research, ask if the findings will change behaviors; it could be the product’s direction or the feature’s capability. I am aware that it does not always elicit an honest response. But this is more about communicating that research should not be done in vain or check some box.
• Sometimes, people value research but are upfront that the insights may not influence the immediate sprint. This is also good, and it has helped me prioritize research efforts accordingly. Importantly, it helps me understand the active and passive champions in the organization and manage my expectations.

Inclusion vs. Isolation

Research in isolation is never good for the researcher or the team. Before research can influence the customer’s experience, it needs to persuade the minds of our peers and stakeholders. After all, they are the means to the desirable end. It just comes down to taking ownership to make research a team sport.

What does this look like?

• I share the research calendar ahead of time, for people to participate at their convenience. This is an easier way for them to appreciate active listening and not brush off research interviews as banter. Slowly but surely, people warm up to it. You might even get lucky influencing team members to include ‘research participation’ during story point estimation!
• Most of us make research accessible in a centralized location. We can go a step further and consult the team when naming these files. After all, if the names are not intuitive, no one can use it. And I can promise you that this investment draws better engagement.

Usually, it is a combination of the product-name, feature version, and type of research in a desired sequence. E.g Phoenix-Buy-homepage10.2-cardsort-v2

• Opening up analysis and synthesis sessions can be magical. When it works, the teams move beyond understanding and internalize the customer context. And that leads to enormous gumption when solving problems. What can be better than that?
• I am also a strong advocate of hallway evangelism. Pin the customer insights/journey maps in meeting rooms, cafeteria walls and other common spaces. This becomes a conversation piece and gains unpredictable momentum.
• I have learnt that integrating quantitative and competitive insights along with qualitative insights touch more stakeholders. If you are lucky, you end up shifting the one dimensional data-driven mindset into a nuanced data- informed organization.

Collaboration vs Dogmatism:

This is actually about being adaptable for the greater good.

What does this look like?

• Scheduling ‘ask me anything’ sessions to engage skeptics has been a big hit. This helps create a climate to listen to opposing views. Also personally, this is a great exercise to increase our empathy quotient.
• Organizing lunch ‘n learns with product marketing, customer success and support teams to listen to their customer stories creates bonding; over time it breaks the silo boundaries and eases communication.

’ We know our customers and can map the journey ourselves; skip research’

• Sound familiar? I used to debate this with fervent explanations about how customer’s voice should be from customers (duh!). Well, most of my meetings were futile. After a few battle scars, I got wiser. I learnt how to organize a show and tell.
• I take my stakeholders at their word and invite them into a room to create provisional personas and journey maps. Invariably, they have a simplistic notion and/or may not be able to speak for some of the contextual needs across various touch-points. I quantify the risks of incorrect assumptions and gaps and that usually softens their resistance. Sometimes they come around and a few other times, they just accept the risks. Notwithstanding the outcome, I consider it a progress when everyone is aligned on risks and the next steps.
• There’s another surprising benefit to this approach. If I succeed in actually talking to the customers, I can compare the stakeholder version and the customer’s and let the gap sink in.

No persuasion; just immersion. It works wonders.

This session has also surfaced less known business context that never came up before.

Imagine the surprise of cloud architects when they learnt that their leadership was expanding the portfolio to address emerging business challenges. This led to rethinking the architecture and the funding models. And, it goes without saying that the architects were my biggest research champions thereafter!

Finally, I realized that my convictions stem from the kind of leadership I admire and value.

Leadership

So, that’s me. I’d love to hear yours.