Whose meme is it, anyway?
As we navigate the health crisis and the looming economic recession, many ideas emerge with the promise to help us do so. Including the now popular meme: “Who do I want to be during Covid-19?”
While being fortunate to continue doing what I love, supporting insights professionals of world’s leading brands, I see this meme unravel everywhere.
Fear zone:
- We cancelled all research because we are married to traditional approaches which are not feasible at this time
- We rely exclusively on lagging indicators such as sales data because this is the only source of truth
- We trust our gut instinct and judgement more than any primary research during the crisis
Learning zone:
- We do not simply dismiss unexpected results; instead we critically reflect on the ‘what?’, ‘so what?’ and ‘now what?’
- We celebrate productive skepticism to help ensure that we don’t overlook something that could impact the generalizability of our learning
- We focus on A/B testing to ground our research in realities of today
Growth zone:
- We adopt new ways of addressing our business questions using behavioural and true implicit, non-conscious methodologies (yes, there are no-contact ways of doing this)
- We strategically cut our big, chunky programs into smaller pieces to enable true agility
- We lean into leading indicators of growth and double down on what needs to be true to deliver on them
I’m an avid lurker of LinkedIn content, but I rarely post. I attribute my new desire for virtual engagement to the current social constraints. So today, standing here in the growth zone in this virtual world, I’m grateful to you for your thoughtful punditry.
How are you leading your organization out of the fear zone? Do you have any learning and growth zone principles or perspectives that I missed?