Market research is a challenging and rewarding field that requires a lot of creativity, curiosity, and collaboration. But how do you foster a positive team culture that supports your market research goals and motivates your team members? The first step is to define your team vision and values.
Your team vision is the overarching purpose and direction of your market research projects. It answers the question: why are you doing market research and what do you hope to achieve? A clear and compelling team vision helps you align your team's efforts, communicate your value to stakeholders, and inspire your team to pursue excellence. To create your team vision, you can use a simple template like this: "We help (who) to (what) by (how)." For example, "We help small businesses to grow their customer base by providing actionable insights from data."
Building a strong market research team is essential for gathering valuable insights and making informed business decisions. Here are some steps to help you build an effective market research team: Define team roles and responsibilities: Start by clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of each team member based on their expertise, skills, and experience. Consider roles such as market research analysts, data analysts, project managers, and research coordinators. Set clear goals and objectives: Establish clear goals and objectives for your market research team to align their efforts with the overall business strategy. Define (KPIs) to measure the team's success and track progress towards achieving strategic goals
Your team values are the core principles and beliefs that guide your team's behavior and decisions. They answer the question: how do you want to work together and with others? A strong and consistent set of team values helps you create a positive team culture that reflects your team's identity, promotes trust and respect, and encourages feedback and learning. To define your team values, you can use a brainstorming session, a survey, or a workshop to identify the key words or phrases that describe your team's desired attributes. For example, some common team values are: integrity, innovation, collaboration, customer focus, and quality.
3 core values: Effective Communication: We prioritize open, transparent, and timely communication. Whether interacting with clients or colleagues, we actively listen, express ourselves clearly, and foster a collaborative environment. Feedback loops are essential for continuous improvement. Structured Problem-Solving: Our approach to challenges is systematic and data-driven. We utilize established frameworks, analyze issues thoroughly, and base decisions on evidence. Cross-functional collaboration ensures diverse perspectives. Change Management: We embrace change as an opportunity for growth. By involving stakeholders early, addressing resistance, and monitoring implementation, we navigate transitions smoothly and drive positive outcomes
Once you have defined your team vision and values, the next step is to make sure that they are aligned with each other and with the organizational vision and values. This means that your team vision and values should support and complement the overall goals and culture of your organization, and not contradict or conflict with them. To check your alignment, you can use a simple matrix like this:
| | Organizational Vision | Organizational Values |
|-------|----------------------|-----------------------|
| Team Vision | How does your team vision contribute to the organizational vision? | How does your team vision reflect the organizational values? |
| Team Values | How do your team values enable your team vision? | How do your team values match the organizational values? |
By filling in this matrix, you can identify any gaps or discrepancies between your team vision and values and the organizational vision and values, and address them accordingly.
The final step is to communicate your team vision and values to your team members and other relevant stakeholders. To do this, you should share your team vision and values in a clear and engaging manner, and reinforce them through your actions and feedback. This could be done by creating a team charter or manifesto that summarizes your vision and values, displaying it in a visible place, incorporating it into meetings, presentations, reports and newsletters, recognizing and rewarding those who demonstrate the vision and values in their work, providing constructive feedback to those who need to improve their alignment, and seeking feedback from team members and stakeholders on how well you are living up to the vision. By following these steps, you can build a positive team culture in market research that boosts performance, satisfaction and reputation.
It's important to have activities that support the vision and values For example, if you're saying 'innovation' is a core value of the insight team, make it tangible e.g. x% research budget allocated to new approaches, 'nursery' for new approaches/ agencies where you can experiment and learn together as a team. Also cannot overlook the impact of team dynamics more generally... One of the most effective exercises I've run with insight teams has been asking people to write a post it for each person of what they truly value about what they bring to the team. This stuff takes time which needs to be carved out for it (always much more straightforward client-side than agency side, sadly)