If you are passionate about data, analytics, and storytelling, you might be interested in becoming a head of insights. This is a senior role that involves leading a team of analysts, researchers, and strategists to generate actionable insights for various stakeholders. But how do you get there? What skills, experience, and qualifications do you need? Here are some tips to help you on your journey.
Before you pursue any career path, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and why. What are your strengths, interests, and values? What kind of impact do you want to make with your insights? What kind of challenges and opportunities excite you? How do you measure your success? These questions will help you identify your goals and align them with your potential employers' expectations and needs.
One thing I had to face in many similar situations, is how to deal with various obstacles, impediments, and resistance when you start implementing your insights. Any new idea or plan will have to take into consideration, ahead of time, how to manage change and mitigate obstacles and risks, to avoid delays, derailing, or even failure of your vision or plans, regardless of how nice and attractive it looks, theoretically.
Au commencement il convient d'avoir une vision claire de ce que l'on veut faire puis se lancer. mais pour de multiples raison le projet initial peut et doit être modifier pour affiner le ciblage tout en gardant sa vision de départ. Le pire est de ne pas laisser du temps au temps pour tester le projet. c'est très rarement qu'une vision est accepter et partager immédiatement . avoir de la constance dans ses idées est vitale pour réussir.
Know WHY you want to achieve your goals. Why is it really important and of priority to you? Assigning significance to what you do will help you reach your goal with a whole different energy, especially when things will start to get tough.
As you climb up your career ladder to a senior profile, it's your work experience and achievements that truly stand out, not just your interview performance. Engage deeply in fields like market research, trends analysis, and data analytics to demonstrate your skills and competencies, both to your current and potential employers. Additionally, prioritize upskilling and obtaining relevant certifications to enhance your professional profile. Make a point to participate in professional meetups as well; they're invaluable for connecting with high-caliber professionals who can enrich your network and bring more opportunities to you!
Education: Obtain a relevant bachelor's degree in a field such as business, marketing, economics, statistics, or a related discipline. Some positions may require or prefer a master's degree (e.g., MBA, MSc in Business Analytics, or similar). Gain Relevant Experience: Start with entry-level positions in market research, data analysis, or business intelligence to gain practical experience. Progress to roles with increasing responsibilities, focusing on developing your analytical and strategic skills. Develop Analytical Skills: Hone your skills in data analysis, statistics, and data visualization tools. Familiarize yourself with business intelligence tools, statistical software, and other technologies relevant to your field.
To become a head of insights, you need to master a range of skills that span technical, analytical, business, and communication domains. You need to be proficient in data collection, analysis, and visualization tools, such as SQL, Python, R, Tableau, and Power BI. You need to be able to apply statistical, machine learning, and experimental methods to answer complex questions and test hypotheses. You need to understand the business context, objectives, and challenges of your stakeholders, and how your insights can inform their decisions and actions. You need to be able to communicate your findings effectively, using storytelling, visualization, and persuasion techniques.
You need to develop your leadership skills especially! Most likely you will have a team... the higher up you go the more interpersonal you need to become.
To develop your skills, you have to go outside your comfort zone. That is where the learning happens! Find an area or skill that you makes you a bit uncomfortable to play in, and take steps to become more confident in that area or skill. Give yourself the time and space to make mistakes, learn and unlearn.
We discussed at university something called a super leader. A leader is someone who is able to help other through motivation, creating vision, driving direction, creating engagement. Super leaders practices these techniques on themselves as well. Not just setting engaging goals for their team but themselves. Engaging and motivation yourself. The principles of super leaders isn't just to lead yourself effectively, but engaging other in leading themselves. Helping others develop the skills to set their own goals and motivate themselves effectively allowing for self-leadership. In a world that is ever changing, the need for people with the ability to motivate themselves is ever growing. Non the least building that skill in others
The path to leadership in insights is rarely linear and often enriched by interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration. Networking with professionals in related fields like data science, analytics, and strategy can open up new perspectives on using data to drive decision-making. Collaborations can also lead to innovative approaches to collecting and analyzing data, offering a broader understanding of what drives business and consumer behavior. These interactions can be learning opportunities, helping you develop a more holistic view of the industry and how different pieces of information can be woven together to form actionable insights.
Skills development becomes important in a sense that you first know your own skills (Socrates said Know Yourself). Knowing your own skills will point in the direction of what you need to develop.
To advance to a leadership position, you need to demonstrate your experience and expertise in delivering insights that drive value and impact. You need to build a portfolio of projects that showcase your skills, achievements, and learnings. You need to seek feedback, mentorship, and guidance from senior leaders and peers in your field. You need to network and collaborate with other professionals and experts in data, analytics, research, and strategy. You need to stay updated on the latest trends, tools, and best practices in your industry and domain.
Becoming a Head of Insights? The most important part is to gain experience: Be Curious: Always dig deeper into data and trends. Gain Relevant Experience: Work in research, analytics, or marketing roles. Each one adds a piece to your puzzle. Learn from Every Project: Treat projects as learning opportunities. Network: Connect with industry professionals for guidance. Upgrade Your Skills: Pursue courses in data analysis or consumer behavior. Demonstrate Impact: Use insights to drive decisions and showcase your ability. Seek Leadership Roles: Take the lead on projects to hone your leadership skills. It’s about crafting a journey of meaningful experiences that showcase your ability to transform data into strategic decisions.
An important part of gaining experience is leveraging other experts to help you establish your point of view, when appropriate. Bouncing ideas off of others helps you to consider other options, gain additional insights, and consider new ways of solving challenges.
In my experience, gaining experience is one of the most valuable things that you can do for yourself. While gaining experience, you will have failures, and you will have triumphs, the failures teach you to get back up and try again the triumphs teach you that you can overcome your obstacles personally, and professionally and doing so you grow into the leader that yourself and others need you to be.
I agree, every experience, every project every assignment is unique even if it’s repetitive in its own way. The uniqueness comes from working with the same share of people or different side of people where the circumstances could be different than earlier, which includes varying constraints, evolving problems and different set of clients. With every experience you move forward and develop a set of unique skills. Establish the self by learning from your mistakes. Your environment, networking and collaborating with subject experts from within and outside the organisation and doing your own research which is very natural.
On thing I have always pay attention to as a leader looking for people to mentor as leaders is a person who demonstrates an eagerness to credit fellow team members for their contribution to high performance of the team. For me, this shows a level of insight into the big picture of how the work gets done, an ability to give performance enhancing feedback, and a strong understanding of the complexity of the work. A person showing this behavior is doing a live demonstration of leadership expertise and team engagement.
To land a head of insights role, you need to showcase your potential as a leader and a strategist. You need to highlight your vision, mission, and values as an insights professional. You need to articulate your approach, methodology, and framework for generating and delivering insights. You need to demonstrate your ability to lead, manage, and inspire a team of diverse and talented analysts, researchers, and strategists. You need to show your capacity to influence, persuade, and partner with senior executives, managers, and clients.
The best insights people (or marketers) I know spend A LOT of time in the world of the people they serve. Speaking to. Listening to. Engaging with. Reading about. Thinking about. They can tell stories come from the real world. Real, first-hand data, rather than data presented by their agencies. Those people are priceless. Unfortunately too many are forced to spend too much time in meetings chasing (and justifying) short-term business goals.
I have always been impressed by team members who are able to express their vision clearly and in the context of the vision of the organization. In my experience, these people are also always demonstrating the values of the organization through their actions, hence showing they have insight into how performance is optimized. This builds team camaraderie and shows the way for others to perform. I have found numerous up-and-coming leaders by looking for this trait.
When you showcase your potential to the world, you have to remember that the world is diverse and unique just like you are so bring your uniqueness to the world and show what you’re capable of. That’s what I think is the most important part of showcasing your potential is that you get one chance to show the world for the first time what you are capable of and who you are but remember that who we are is constantly changing and evolving you’re on a journey and it’s a long journey not a short walk.
Make sure you can show how your work has helped the business, like making things more efficient, increasing sales, or helping with big decisions.
To succeed as a head of insights, you need to keep learning and growing. You need to embrace change, uncertainty, and ambiguity as opportunities for innovation and improvement. You need to seek new challenges, problems, and questions that require your insights. You need to experiment with new tools, methods, and techniques that enhance your insights. You need to learn from your failures, mistakes, and feedback. You need to share your knowledge, insights, and best practices with your team, peers, and community.
Being a lifelong learner is the key to excelling in whatever we do, and our mistakes are truly our best teachers. So, step out of your comfort zone, attempt, fall, rise stronger, attempt again, and be proud of your failures. Share the learning experience with your colleagues. The more you try, the more insights you gather, strengthening your knowledge and expertise in your field. However, be aware that the day you stop learning is the day you begin to lose the legacy you've built.
The path to success in any leadership role, mainly as a head of insights, is paved with continuous learning and adaptability. Embracing the fluidity of change and the richness of uncertainty fuels innovation and personal growth. It's about cultivating a mindset that sees beyond the immediate challenges to the potential for breakthroughs. Engaging with new methodologies, learning from setbacks, and generously sharing knowledge are the hallmarks of a leader who advances their capabilities and elevates those around them, fostering a culture of curiosity and resilience.
Never stop learning! Especially in this super fast-paced function, learning, experimenting, failing, fine-tuning, and learning over and over again are essential. You better have passion for it and know why it is that you love it as it's not an easy road.
Start with a college degree in something like Business, Marketing, Economics, Statistics, or Data Science. It’s also helpful to have a master’s degree or an MBA for more knowledge and better job chances. Things change fast in data and insights. Keep up with new tools, ways of doing things, and trends in your industry.
Very true! In addition seek out formal learning programs like certifications, peer networking groups, conferences, etc. formal learning and staying as close to the head of the curve can help you accelerate your learning.
Diversity of thought is our greatest asset in this journey. By fostering an environment where different viewpoints are not just welcomed but actively sought out, we unlock a richer, more comprehensive understanding of the complex issues we face. This diversity fuels creativity and leads to more robust, innovative solutions. It’s through this collective wisdom that we can tackle problems from every angle, ensuring our insights reflect the multifaceted world we navigate.
My best insight for people who are trying to advance, is to find their replacement. I like to say, "if you're not replaceable, you are not promotable". If you are the only one who can do your job, then you may be doing that for a while. You can advance by sharing your knowledge, delegating to others, teaching and preparing your successor for the best. Then you have the freedom to take on more and move up.
Deep work and continuous improvement is the key. Until and unless you go deep with data points, facts, logics without relying too much on assumptions and subjective opinions, it is difficult to get a clarity and without clarity it is very tough to have "right" insights.
First recognize that not all insights will matter to everyone, therefore you'll need to generate insights on a regular basis. Insights that actually make a difference often stem from "processed" personal and professional experiences. This means you need to cultivate the ability to reflect on a regular basis. One of the methods I use for reflection is reduced input. Consider all your preceptive senses through which our mind takes in input and limit them. This will force your mind to go look for past events and begin "processing" them by reflecting on them. Different people have different processing speeds, but if you allow your mind sufficient time, you're guaranteed to find insight in your reflection.
Becoming a head of insights involves not just turning data into actionable stories, but also managing a team collaboratively to gather this data. Success hinges on understanding the business deeply and guiding your team to uncover insights that pinpoint growth opportunities and solve problems. It's about strategic storytelling, effective communication, and fostering a collaborative environment where data becomes a powerful tool for informed decision-making and impactful change