How to power your insights career

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi, and the proud winners of the 2022 MR Podcast of the Year Award. I'm joined, as always, by Patricia and Kelsey. My name is Ryan. What's up, everybody? How you doing?

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Doing good. How about you?

Ryan:

I'm good. It's a beautiful day to be alive here. It was in the 90's yesterday and today's back down to reality for May. So it's like high 70's.

Patricia:

Nice.

Ryan:

Summer time. Air conditioning a little bit, barbecue tonight, swimming in the pool, look at the-

Patricia:

You know it's actually in the 70's here today too, which is unusual for me. It's cool. We were in the pool last night, my husband and I, it was great, yesterday afternoon. The whole weekend was beautiful. So it was nice.

Ryan:

I'll bet.

Patricia:

Yes, it was very nice.

Ryan:

Summertime is almost here, I can feel it. It's funny, now I have a son, who's in kindergarten, so I'm now starting to get the, "Dad, summer vacation's almost here," vibes. And I actually quite enjoy that, because it makes me feel like summer vacations here. Little does he know, dad's still got to work in the summer, but that's all right. Whatever.

Patricia:

4 day weekends in the summer is a good idea. I know the CEO and the president of the company you work at, it could be done.

Ryan:

Yeah.

Patricia:

It could be done.

Ryan:

Unlimited vacation is a thing. I just took a day off to go to Ireland a couple weeks ago, which I'm looking forward to. But I had the 4th of July week off. I don't work two weeks a year. I don't work 4th of July week and I don't work the week at Christmas. Even though I'm not a religious man, I just take that week off. And I'm very excited. We're going to Cape Cod with the kids.

Patricia:

Nice.

Ryan:

How about you ladies? Summer vacations. Go. Where are we going? Kelsey, you go first. Where are you going this summer?

Kelsey Sullivan:

So every summer my family rents a beach house in Narragansett, Rhode Island.

Ryan:

Nice.

Kelsey:

So we're just going home and just... It's a great just week to unplug, be with family. So I have a younger brother, so he goes too. So we all just hang out, go to Matunuck Oyster Bar. And it's just a great time.

Ryan:

If you're listening and you've never visited the Rhode Island shore in the summer, I'm not biased, because I have a 401 number, I'm biased because I've spent a lot of time there. And the Rhode Island coast is wonderful and Matunuck Oyster Bar, I would argue, has the best oysters on the planet. And the guy Perry, who owns it, walks around in his boots that he farms in and wishes you well, while he serves you a $13 cocktail. It's wonderful. It's really a wonderful place. Patricia, what about you? What's your summer looking like?

Patricia:

I got two summers. My son is here for the month of... from now to mid June, July. We're going to be together, the three of us only, my husband, my son and I. And we're planning a nice, long, in-country road trip, where maybe Peru, or in-region road trip, let's just call it. So he's planning with his dad and I'm along for the ride, and I'm looking forward to that. Then, the second half of the summer, the girls are coming.

Ryan:

Oh, cool.

Patricia:

So Alex and her boyfriend are coming and Issa and maybe her boyfriend are coming. So the second half of the summer is going to be all about full house, which is really exciting.

Ryan:

Oh, that's nice. Must be nice to get the whole band back together.

Patricia:

It is always nice. Always nice. Even when part of the band is together, it's fantastic.

Ryan:

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So we have three episodes left for season four. This episode and our next episode are actually episodes that we shot in Austin, Texas for the IIEX conference, so they happened a long time ago. And it was a bit of an experiment for us.

I have to tell you, it was a unique experience, because we're about to go into the interview and I was sitting in a chair facing my guest today, Michelle Gansle, and my next guest, Shazia Ali. But there was an audience to our left and so it made for quite interesting podcasting, because the truth is, I normally meet with smart people, and I meet with them on Zoom, and we vibe, and the doors are closed, and there's nobody else around. And so it brings a different type of psychological safety than having people with headphones look at you. I like to grow and learn. So I was out of my comfort zone. If I sound awkward or rambly, it's because I was awkward and rambly.

But Michelle Gansle is somebody who I've been waiting to have on the podcast, because she's obviously been out, she speaks a lot. But the truth about Michelle Gansle is, she's one of my closest friends. She's somebody who I've innovated with, collaborated with many times in my career. She's a person who I consider a mentor. I ask her... We do business together and I ask her things that you wouldn't normally ask a customer. I don't make big decisions without getting Michelle's opinion. She has such a wonderfully, adaptable yet objective way of looking at things. She sees the world from everybody's perspective.

And not to overly gush about her, but I'm just so happy for her. She's always wanted to be kind of the top chief in insights. And to get that opportunity at McDonald's, one of the most incredible businesses, best brands on the planet, I'm just so happy for her. And as I expected, she's kicking ass, and she's taking names, and she's bringing what is already a very customer-centric organization to the next level, and I'm just happy to be a small part of it.

So we talk about a lot of things. The premise of our conversation was to talk about where we find inspiration. Not going to lie to you, there's a few rants, there's a few raves, there's a few ideas, there's a few book reccos. I would like to invite you all to join Michelle and I for a glass of wine, because that's what this interview is. Shall we ladies?

Patricia:

Let's do it.

Ryan:

Hi everybody. Ryan Barry here. I'm joined by Michelle Gansle. One of my favorite people in market research, I would say top one or two people in this industry. Now, Michelle, you have to guess who the other top person is.

Michelle Gansle:

Or in the world?

Ryan:

In the world. Yeah.

Anyways, this is a live rendition of the Inside Insights podcast. It's powered by Zappi. We are on season four. You can get it everywhere where podcasts are. You should get it because it's great. Particularly if you're a corporate insights person, because we interview great people like Michelle and give you insights. Michelle and I are live in Austin, Texas. We're in between two barbecue meals in a row. I'm on a mission to eat the best brisket in Texas. And we're not going to talk about market research much because we happen to be at a market research conference and I'm sick of thinly veiled sales pitches. We're just going to keep it real today. Michelle, what do you think?

Michelle:

Yeah. That's, what's so fun about talking to you. We just talk about fun topics.

Ryan:

Fun topics. So where should start?

We're going to, I think, you know what I want to start with? I want you to tell a funny story of how you met me and I'm going to reciprocate and I want you to try to embarrass me in this chair.

Michelle:

Well, I might embarrass your predecessor. So how I…

Ryan:

Oh wow. I know where this is going.

Michelle:

I don't mean to, but how we first met you is when Zappi was just a baby baby company.

Ryan:

That's right.

Michelle:

Your predecessor pitched to me and I was really into the idea of what Zappi was about. I was like, let's try to find a pilot together and we worked on the worst possible use case of Zappi ever of all time. He was so determined to make it work that he just…

Ryan:

It didn't work.

Michelle:

Made something up for me.

Ryan:

So there's a lesson here for those of you who are starting businesses, don't sell a solution that's not yours.

That's the first experience. Yeah. So that's how I met you. And I remember my first phone call to you eight years ago being, "Hey, what you got sold? Isn't actually anything to do with Zappi, but let's make it work." We'll make it work. 

We've had the pleasure of innovating a lot together, building solutions, having a lot of fun. We've done chicken shit bingo together.

Michelle:

Yeah. And you won.

Ryan:

And I won. Can you tell the audience what chicken shit bingo is? Because it's really important that people know what this is.

Michelle:

It is unfortunate for people listening because it only happens on Sunday. So…

Ryan:

In Austin, Texas.

Michelle:

Through the weekend in Austin, Texas at the Little Longhorn Saloon from 4 to 8:00 PM, you go, you buy a ticket, it's got a number on it. If that chicken poops on that number, you win $110.

Ryan:

And I won, I got to go on stage with a beautiful country singer and she was very nice to me. So Austin, Texas, great place backdrop of our conversation. What we want to impart on everybody today, stuff that's got our attention where we get our energy from how we're learning. Those are some of the things you can expect in the next 25 minutes or so. So what are you passionate about right now? What's got your attention?

Michelle:

You know what gets me excited? A couple of things like one culture. I've always been interested in people, cultural experiences and so I've traveled to something like 61 countries in my life and I'm trying to get to 100 before I die. So that's something that I'm always excited about learning from people, learning from cultures and then learning new music. So if you have any new… I think you were just giving me a new band recommendation yesterday, but I'm always wanting to hear about new music recommendations.

Ryan:

So I get new music recommendations from friends and they always send me Spotify links but I'm on Apple music and so it never works, which is kind of annoying.

Michelle:

Oh you need to come on the Spotify train.

Ryan:

Anybody who's here in Austin who has music recommendations. Text us please. Yeah, we need them.

Michelle:

What about you? What are you excited about right now?

Ryan:

So what's got my attention right now. I'm also excited about culture. I'm at an interesting place of Zappi where we're at a place of a certain size where we have to balance sort of the essence of things, but also bring in different muscles that we didn't have. And for me kind of balancing those is quite intellectually stimulating and difficult. And then also on culture, I just came back from a week in Africa as you know and it was extremely insightful just how beautiful it is there, but also how unique and how different some of their problems are. 

So we talk in this industry a lot about DE&I, but couldn't be more different problems in the United States where I'm of the opinion we just don't have enough diversity in this industry, period. And in Africa where like in South Africa, they didn't actually educate black people until 18 years ago.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

We're talking about like completely different problems and yet we sort of bucket these things in the same basis. So that's something that's got my attention. We do a lot but are we actually doing enough? Is the thing that's kind of got me pissed off today.

Michelle:

But I love that. Like first of all, five years ago, we weren't even talking about DEI. It's great that we're talking about it now, but to your point, we can't talk about it as a one size fits all thing. We need to talk about it country by country, market by market. Industry by industry.

Ryan:

And also like our industry is like quite insular in a lot of ways, but how much diversity are you going to get when you need somebody with 20 years experience who knows consumer insights and it's like, I think we got to start to break some of these rules of like, I mean, I'll say something provocative. I don't give a shit if somebody has a college degree.

Michelle:

Yeah. I agree.

Ryan:

Does it matter? Really? Like, I don't know, to me it's like, do they have a capacity to learn and grow? Cool. Like we can teach you the market research language.

Michelle:

Yeah. I've started now forbidding “must have an MBA” as a criteria on any of our applicants.

Ryan:

Did you?

Michelle:

Yeah. We don't put that anymore on any of the insights roles..

Ryan:

And that must have been a big change for McDonald's. Because that was always like a big part of it. Right? Is it like Northwestern is a feeder school and the whole thing.

Michelle:

It's pretty standard in a lot of corporations is right. Like the first two things are must have an MBA, must have X amount of years of experience. But how do you ever break into insights? Like no wonder we have a diversity problem. Right?

Ryan:

Right. You look at any of the job specs, must have X, X, X, X, X. And it's like, and I think a lot of businesses are like, do, can we afford to do the training? But I also think, unless we bring in new talent, let alone it's the right thing to do. Like new thinking is important.

Michelle:

Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan:

So we have a new head of sales this week, Glen who's in the audience.

Michelle:

Hi Glen.

Ryan:

He knows nothing about market research, but he knows a ton about growing business. And that's a wonderfully insightful element for us to bring into the company.

Michelle:

Brings probably like fresh thinking.

Ryan:

Fresh ideas and yeah, for sure. And now the challenge is when you bring in fresh ideas.

Michelle:

No fresh pressure Glen.

Ryan:

Yeah. No pressure Glen. But when you bring in fresh thinking, you have to listen to it.

Michelle:

Yeah. True.

Ryan:

So that's quite difficult. So. All right. 

So what are some things that you go to get inspired? So for those of you who are listening, Michelle has a really intense job, global head of insights at McDonald's. You might recognize McDonald's… how many trillion burgers have been sold?

Michelle:

Well, we serve 60 million people a day, so probably more than 60 million burgers.

Ryan:

Is it 55% of the US population has eaten at McDonald's in the last week.

Michelle:

That's about right. Yeah. All right. And 86% in the last year.

Ryan:

Is your first time in the top chair in an insights role.

Michelle:

Yep.

Ryan:

As a friend of yours, so happy for you.

Michelle:

Thank you.

Ryan:

What are some of the things that you've had to figure out, right? Like, so you've been in similar roles, but like what have been some of the harder things for you to figure out?

Michelle:

Well, that's two different questions, but I'm going to try to answer them both and then ask you a question.

Ryan:

Thank you for that.

Michelle:

What do I get inspired by? I love getting inspired by lateral thinking. So like going to conferences that are exactly in the world I am, or reading books. I talked earlier about Upstream this book by Dan Heath.

Ryan:

Yeah. I haven't read it yet. It's good?

Michelle:

I'm incessantly talking about it because it's one of the last books in a long time that I'm always constantly thinking about, which is about like let's stop solving problems and let's start stopping problems before they become a problem. What a genius idea. 

Podcasts. I love listening to podcasts.

Ryan:

Favorite podcast.

Michelle:

Oh, Inside Insights.

Ryan:

You just said that because it's me that's sitting here.

Michelle:

Future Imagined by Jo Lepore.

Ryan:

Oh, there you go.

Michelle:

But also Pop Culture Happy Hour. As an insights person, NPR puts someone called pop culture hour and they just talk about pop culture.

Ryan:

Oh how cool.

Michelle:

We should all be listening to that because we don't understand pop culture. What are we doing? Check it out. It's really good.

Ryan:

I will check it out.

Michelle:

What are you listening to?

Ryan:

So I'm not much of a podcast person, even though I host one, it’s kind of weird, but I like to listen to, so I like kind of punchy content. I like to read books as you know I read a lot of books. And so I want to build on something you said about going to lateral places for inspiration because a lot of other industries have figured out some of the problems we've got. So we'll talk a little bit about insights and where it's going. If you look at the SaaS industry, they spend all this time figuring out customer success and sales and how to grow businesses. Technology took over that industry and they realized they needed people to enable the technology. Look familiar?

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Yet we still have this, we talk out of both sides of our mouth. Right? Like elevate your game, synthesize data, tell a story, figure out how to drive tech. And so that's an adjacent insight for me. It's like, oh wait, I have a rev ops team. I wonder why my customers don't have an insights ops team as an example. 

The other source of inspiration. I like to read a lot of older books. Like I'm learning a lot from some of Warren Buffet's thinking and he has this concept of like it's essentially a pre-mortem. You have this idea and if you invert every single thing that could go wrong before you start.

Michelle:

Yeah. I love that.

Ryan:

First of all, really cathartic, but it also can help you like, oh, there's going to be a pothole over here based on the collective wisdom of this diverse group and so we can kind of get around it. 

I also had a lot of inspiration just from talking to strangers, which is super weird. Like I love to travel and just ask people questions. Like when, when I was in South Africa, I was telling you this morning, we have this guy that works for Zappi, he's from Kenya. And just like his life story was like fascinating. And so those are some of the places I go. So yeah. It's good.

Michelle:

The power of a question.

Ryan:

It's a good question. So coaching and mentorship, something we both wanted to talk about, what's the difference to you and where do you go to get those? Do you have a coach? Do you have a mentor? And how does that work in your life?

Michelle:

I think coaching and mentorship is different. Normally coaches are sort of more generalist to help you with whatever problems are coming your way. And it's normally a lengthy relationship. Whereas for me in the past, the best mentors are ones that are mentoring me on a specific topic or skill set. And I think that's where we normally go wrong. Especially as a female, a lot of times younger females will come to me wanting mentorship, but they're not really clear what they want be mentored on. They just see like, I want to be where you are someday versus, well what are you working on? And they have a hard time answering that. So I'm a big fan of you should have a mentor when you're clear of what you want to work on and you're clear that they can help support you on that.

Ryan:

Yeah. It makes sense. I've had that happen a lot. Can you coach me? And my first question is what are you trying to do? I would say it's kind of sad to say this, but 60% of people go, I'm not really sure. And so it's like, go figure that out. Go figure it out and then write that down on a piece of paper and then we can talk.

Michelle:

And if I'm not the right person…

Ryan:

Yeah. You might not be.

Michelle:

I'll help you figure out who the right person is.

Ryan:

Exactly. Yeah. I would say they're different things. I've had a coach for three years. It's to me, a coach is more closely aligned to being to a therapist.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

And mentally.

Michelle:

Oh yeah. Business therapist for sure.

Ryan:

It's wonderfully cathartic. And so whether you can get your company to pay for one or you're going to do it.

Michelle:

Yeah, totally.

Ryan:

I couldn't recommend it more because it really helps you vocalize what you're thinking without judgment. And that's, you think about it, if you get into an argument with Morgan or somebody senior or somebody that's on your team, you have to negotiate a conclusion. Whereas with a coach, you can be like, I hear my coach's name is Nora, I hear you Nora, but I'm not going to do that. It's really quite useful. But I think where a lot of people go wrong with coaching is they don't put in the work.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

You have to say, these are my goals. These are the things I'm going to do.

Michelle:

Yeah. Well, but a good coach will keep you accountable and help you to get the work done. So I also have a coach and she's great. Also difference between a coach, you pay a coach, a mentor's only free, but because you're paying the coach and they're paid to help keep you accountable. I think that's a different level of help.

Ryan:

They're invested. Right. And... If they want references and...

Michelle:

And you're invested because you...

Ryan:

You paid right. And you're paying a good coach is going to cost you some decent change. And so mentorships are interesting because I got a lot of mentors that I don't actually know because of things like podcasts and LinkedIn posts and everything where like these people that you admire and you can learn from them from afar and sometimes work up the courage to like, to your point, have a specific ask in exchange for some value you think you can bring them.

So like virtual mentors, Mark Ritson would be on who's like one of my idols as it relates to marketing, had the chance to meet him with you recently and I tried not to fanboy too hard, but he's a legend. So the interesting thing about coaching, which I wanted to get your perspective on is, we talked in say the 90s, maybe the 2000s about managers. It increasingly to me, the job of a manager is to be more of a coach. Like you're not supposed to, we're not bossing around smart people. Right. And so how do you handle that in a big organization? Like do you, first of all, do you even agree? Like, do you think I'm full of shit?

Michelle:

Have you heard of situational leadership? It's like a framework on that people often think that depending on like they're a smart person, they just need to be coached. But actually every human being, depending on what the task is you're asking to do needs a different level of coaching.

Ryan:

Good point.

Michelle:

Like if they're brand new and they've never done what they're there for, you just need to tell them what to do. Like Glen's super smart guy really capable, but he doesn't know the industry. So you might just need to tell him what's up.

Ryan:

This is what incidence rate is.

Michelle:

Yeah, exactly. Right. And then as they get more comfortable, then you're coaching and when they're super independent, you just leave them alone. And when they need your help, they'll come ask you for it. And I don't think many managers apply that most managers have a style, you're either always directive or always leaving people alone or always coaching. And I think you have to be more nuanced than that.

Ryan:

I would add a layer of nuance because I agree with the situational, each person macro has a different way that motivates them intrinsically.

Michelle:

True. True.

Ryan:

And as much as we talk about extrinsic motivation, like in this job market, you can go get paid a lot of money to work pretty much anywhere if you have the skills and so I find that to be quite hard in a leadership role, because in one to one, you can understand somebody's nuances. But if you're addressing a whole group you can't be like six different speeds at the same time. And so...

Michelle:

It's true.

Ryan:

It's quite difficult. But I agree with this situational, we had some, I had a situation the other day where somebody made a mistake. I didn't need to rub their face in that they knew. Right. And so it was more of like, oh, what did we learn? This is, it's different. Even though that individual happens to be somebody who responds better to more I would say old school management, they like to be pushed. That's like a thing for them.

Michelle:

What's funny about that… We were talking about that on the walk that if you asked somebody in a blind survey, a hundred managers, 80% of them would say in all reality, if they could have the same salary and same job, they'd rather not manage people because it's hard. And it requires super hard self-awareness communication skills, having messy conversations, getting deep and most people don't have the ability, experience or the desire to do that. And I love managing, leading coaching, all of that because I think the whole human aspect of it is interesting and seeing people flourish and helping people.

Ryan:

Helping them do their best. Right.

Michelle:

Yeah. I think it's super fun, but it's hard.

Ryan:

It's super hard. And what, I have a huge problem with this topic because societally, we tell people they have to linearly become… like I'll use sales as an example. Yeah. You have to be a sales development rep and then an account executive and then account director and then VP of sales. What happens if you hate managing people? 

So one of the challenges I think for career development is more of a talent problem than probably our problem but I don't think we could have linear career development. Like I think it's incumbent upon the organization to allow people almost like a winding road of what's best for you because to your point, people management is not for everybody and there's some people in people management roles, everybody in the crowd who's here, raise your hand if you have a people manager that should have never been a people manager in your life. See what I mean?

Michelle:

Everyone.

Ryan:

So there's a lot of people who they got promoted. There's a quote, get promoted because they promoted due to incompetence. Yeah. You're good at the doing job. So now you must be able to lead people to do great things.

Michelle:

Yeah, totally.

Ryan:

I have a few examples of people that got into that place and I'm like, “Hey, do you ever realize you complain about your team a lot? Like maybe you should be an individual contributor.” There's nothing wrong with that.

Michelle:

Yeah. Mars copped onto that several years ago and they created two tracks, a technical track and a people leader track, so that people could clearly see that they can grow and develop and make more money and have more seniority without necessarily having a people lead. So it becomes an intentional choice versus a default you will lead people.

Ryan:

And did it destigmatize the “I'm not a manager?”

Michelle:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ryan:

Oh I love to hear that.

Michelle:

That was super smart.

Ryan:

Yeah. Because like, so there's like making and managing, right. So I came up as a player and I had to unlearn a lot of behavior to be a manager. Because your natural instinct when you're doing is to put the ball... I hate to use the sports metaphor, particularly with you because you don't like sports, but your natural instinct is to put the ball in the hoop, but that's not your job when you're leading people. Right.

Michelle:

And that's where a lot of people get their energy, putting the ball in the hoop.

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So you, we'll stay on this thread. We're both senior leaders. We're both learning, but sometimes we have to be assertive. How do you strike that balance in your day to day of when we're going right versus sort of when to sit back and let the teams make the call.

Michelle:

Yeah. Well I had a mentor once say to me that our job is to be really clear on what success looks like and an outcome and using like the analogy of a road trip. I'm agreeing with you that you're going to be in New York by Tuesday. I'm going to let you figure out how you want to get there. I might check in with you, like where are you? It's Monday, how close are you? And if it seems like you're going off path, I'm going to be assertive and tell you're going the wrong way you need to get back on track. But as long as you're making tracks and you're hitting your milestones and I just need to let you alone because my way might not be your way. So I try not to be assertive unless people are going off track and or if not feeling heard, but otherwise I'd much rather just agree on outcomes and let people find their own path there.

Ryan:

Same. Yeah. I would say the same. I mean it like agreeing to the outcomes or the “what” and then getting out of the way for the “how” is usually the move, unless somebody needs help. Sometimes the team needs an intervention or they're so close to the problem that they need some help. But you ever read the book Multipliers by Liz Wiseman? Great leadership book. And she talks about getting, she did a lot of research among managers where people left the manager and would like blindly go work for them again.

Michelle:

Interesting.

Ryan:

And it wasn't whether they liked them the most or they like to drink beer with them. It was, did they push me to do things I didn't know I didn't do?

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

And a lot of what she talks about is if and I, any of my colleagues at listening, they'll remember this phrase: who owns the pen. So if as a manager, if you take over, well then the team goes, oh, they've got it, like they're, I don't need to. And so that you sort of cripple their ownership of a problem, which isn't a good thing. And that's another thing. If you go from player to coach, your instinct will be, oh, I'm chill now, but we missed a number or that innovation failed. So now I got to scramble. Right. And so it's like, Ooh, you know...

Michelle:

But I mean, I don't know about you, but fighting that balance of when to assert or insert myself, I'd say it's still always a work in progress.

Ryan:

I think so too. I was talking to Nic about this earlier, Nic Umana, from Mars, shout out to Nic, about the future leaders being creative and curious. And I like really agree with that. But if I think of my own progression, it paid to be assertive and have all the answers. And so I'm trying to encourage like, I love nothing better than when somebody says, I actually don't know but I'm going to figure it out. But don't you feel like societally, that's a bit taboo to not have the answer, although you and I would be very comfortable saying, I don't know what you're talking about.

Michelle:

I don't know. I feel like when you're more junior you feel like an expectation to be confident, assertive, and have the answer when you're more senior it's okay to say, I don't know.

Ryan:

But why is that?

Michelle:

Well, I think the more senior you are, the more broader your remit is, and therefore you can't possibly know the answers to all the things, because you're not an expert on one thing, you are having broad perspective over lots of things. So I think it's more acceptable to be like, I don't know, but I got somebody in my team that would know.

Whereas when you're more junior, you are expected to know the thing that you're technically the expert on.

Ryan:

Your functional area.

Michelle:

Yeah. Whether it's a category, a functional area, topic.

Ryan:

But my only, I think that's the truth. My only problem with it is then how do they learn? Like how obviously you can Google anything today.

Michelle:

I agree.

Ryan:

If you feel like the only way to become a director or get to the next promotion.

Michelle:

Is to be perfect. No, I totally agree.

Ryan:

Then you're not curious. And so I had this realization recently. It was only when I got to the kind of job I'm in, where I'm like extremely comfortable being like “I don't have a clue,” but I probably wouldn't have been that comfortable nine, 10 years ago. Yeah. Which is strange.

Michelle:

And I do think it's a problem, especially in our industry, at least on the corporate side where insights, people feel like they can't talk up in a meeting unless they are for sure know the answer and, or it's grounded in data. Like they're not allowed to just have a point of view as a person. So I think it's also okay to be like, you know what? I don't know the answer, but here's just my personal thought on the topic and that's all right too.

Ryan:

Well. It's particularly interesting with an insights person because my hypothesis is that they're limited to the data in that market research project, but there's hundreds of insights people in this room, they all know the customers that they work for. I mean, I've had six meetings today. Everybody knows their customer and their problems intimately.

Michelle:

Right. True.

Ryan:

But I wonder if that's just like that's a confidence issue, like because you should, it's not just about one data point anymore, right? Like when you think about what we insights people do, it's what'd you learn in the market, what's the foresight people telling you what's the trends and your job is to take that and say, you know what? I think we can make moves here and win/win. Right?

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

But you're right. Maybe we're limited to the executive summary too much.

Michelle:

Exactly.

Ryan:

Oh boy, let's stay on insights. And then I want to come back to leadership. 

Michelle and I almost didn't want to ask this question because while everybody asked this question, crystal ball, what needs to happen in this industry in the next couple of years? What are the key things that have got your attention?

Michelle:

I know. And when we were laughing about it, we're like one, everybody always talks about this and two, how can we possibly know? However...

Ryan:

Because we don't know.

Michelle:

We don't know.

Ryan:

Actually to take a page from your last piece of advice. We don't know, but we can take an educated guess based on our perspective.

Michelle:

Exactly. I mean this idea that we're going to go from generalists to specialists that the world is fragmenting. Now there's like millions of data sources in tech and human insights and foresight that what I see happening is we're going from a group of people who are expected to do everything to specialists who are really good at one thing, but need to connect the dots across the teams and the learnings and the insights. That's one. 

And then the other thing is I always say, we got to go from feeling like we have to have the answer to being the orchestrator of it, because what we are uniquely great at is being curious. But we don't always have to have the answer and do the work. And one thing that I know you share with me is that concept of, Hey for non-value-add tactical stuff, let's just let the marketers do that. Why do we have to be so precious about running all the research? Is that the best use of my time, is running a naming research. Probably not.

Ryan:

Nope. So obviously I'm passionate about this. We need to stop pretending that we need to touch everything for it to be credible. There's 500 pieces of software in this room. 90% of them are legitimate at least. And they're credible and they have good data. And so like is tech scary? Shouldn't be what you're thinking about in 2022. I remember when we started Zappi everybody's terrified of software. It can't be real, all this sort of… get over it. But to your point, if you're mired in the project, you're never going to connect dots and think about where the world's going and explore new horizons. And then when you meet with the CMO, say, Hey yeah, Sally, we missed here, but we should have done this. How do you know? Well, based on this, this and this, I have this opinion, but we do need to get out of that mindset.

So the tension I was bringing up earlier, I think we need to bring in people who understand how to connect data. So I'm not somebody who's naturally a data person. You wouldn't want me writing sql, you wouldn't even really want me doing a pivot table. But if you put a bunch of information in front of me, I have an ability to look at it and say, oh that maybe right here. Yeah. And so I'm of the view that those are two different roles. And so if we want to be customer centric, I think we need to invest in both. And so this is a call out to the centers of excellence of the world. Your job is to build capabilities that catch the businesses in stride, not sit in an ivory tower and then roll out capabilities. I'm not speaking for all centers of excellence. There's some wonderful centers of excellence, but you know what I mean? 

Michelle:

I agree.

Ryan:

And so I think when you were at Mars, you all did this really well. Right? Like let's bring people on the journey and then roll it out versus “Hey here, now you have to use it” and the reality is nobody is doing it anyway.

Michelle:

Yes.

Ryan:

But I also think like with marketers, it is a behavior change with them. I just went for a long walk with somebody. You can do all the insights transformation you want, but if marketing's going to air tomorrow and they've never once had an insight.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

That's still a problem. So just because you can get the “it’s good” quickly, doesn't mean you're grounded in an insight, in a human truth. And so I actually think this industry's done enough with tech to probably last us a few years, we got to work on some of the people and process stuff. 

I also think marrying first party data with primary research is a really untapped opportunity. But you and I were talking about this on the phone the other night. We still talk about sample and you don't care about sample. Nope. Right? So be provocative. Tell me why. Unfiltered Michelle Gansle.

Michelle:

Well, so a big topic in the industry amongst suppliers is quality sample. Are these real people and the amount of cheating going on. But when you try to talk to a brand about that, honestly, we don't, not that we don't care of course we don't want to have bad quality sample, but we don't want… don't make it our problem is how I think I'm speaking to my peers that we're paying you to figure that out. We're paying you to get a sample and the baseline assumption is it's going to be quality sample. And so if it's an industry problem, I mean, my feeling is that suppliers need to figure that out. Right. And if that's going to end up costing me more money, then engage me in the conversation so I can understand why and the trade offs and the benefits and all that. But I don't want to engage in conversations about sample quality or sample at all.

Ryan:

You expect the flower to be fresh. Yeah. Right. And so I think...

Michelle:

I'm paying you to give me flowers, not seeds.

Ryan:

Yeah. Right. Exactly. So I think it's important if I have members of the data collection community listening to understand that. It's not that they're not an important part of the supply chain. It's just… it's table stakes.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Right. So, but first party data is useful. If you're in a panel taking surveys and I know how many times you went to McDonald's and where your credit card is and where you shop. I could be a lot more productive with my very limited time I have your attention, but we're not yet talking about that.

Michelle:

No, I agree.

Ryan:

And like your business as with, particularly with a lot of the stuff you're doing with mobile app, like there's so much opportunity to start to bring that together. But I am going to Sample Con in three weeks and we're not talking about that yet. So I would like to start to see that happen.

Ryan:

The other thing is, I think we need to start recruiting outside of this pond. I mean, we were at the CEO Summit in Miami, everybody's skin was white. Right. Everybody looks the same. It's like we're not going to step change with that. So to your point, positive side, we're talking about it. So that room in 20 years will be different. I think we've got to bring that along sooner. And it's not just demographic diversity, but you don't need to be a classically trained researcher to be successful in this industry. Because the software teaches you a lot.

Michelle:

So even if we want other people, like we don't make it very sexy or attractive to come into our industry. So why would a journalist want to come and work in the insights industry, for example.

Ryan:

And, so I have a customer who's a former journalist and she's like the best insights person.

Michelle:

Yeah. I know.

Ryan:

She's super curious. She asks why? Why, why, why, why, why, why? But she wouldn't probably even identify as an insights person still. So what do you think it is like, so that's the headline. We don't do a good job of marketing ourselves. Agree. Everybody here will probably agree. Why? Like what are, where do you think we alienate people that we shouldn't be?

Michelle:

I don't, I think it's the same thing that we are not good internally about tooting our own horn internally in our own companies too. I think it's a similar thing that we like to be, I don't know, backseat supporting actors. We don't like to be in the center of the spotlight. So I think maybe it's a, I don't know, I'm riffing, but maybe it's a, like a self-fulfilling prophecy that people currently today in the insights world are more like humble. They like to be service oriented. They don't like to be in the limelight. And therefore we don't think a lot about how do we attract other people outside of our industry.

Ryan:

Yeah, it's true.

Michelle:

It's like that idea of likeness brings likeness. And so we bring more of ourselves in.

Ryan:

And networks have that way of repeating that don't they?

Michelle:

Right. Exactly.

Ryan:

You know, I mean the amount of times somebody who we do business with goes to another company and then they bring their friends and then they...

Michelle:

Totally.

Ryan:

I've realized that networking is...

Michelle:

Yeah. You got to intentionally network in other pools.

Ryan:

You really do. So. I mean, I think we both have a great friendship with Steph Gans, not an insights guy, has I think the second or third largest insights team on the planet. That's been interesting to watch how he views the insights problems, but it also validates this conversation because he's not grounded in yesterday...

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

…he's able to be really quite pragmatic of the job that needs to get done. So yeah, I think we should just do more recruiting and listening. Right?

Michelle:

You talked about mentors earlier, Steph is one of my mentors. So one of the reasons is because he's so great at how do you elevate the function and how do you talk about the problem he solved and experiment and think differently about how we make an impact. And he's great at communicating it as well.

Ryan:

Final two questions. And you can ask them back to me. If you want, first question, your philosophy on leadership. You dabbled a little bit earlier, but say a bit more. What is like… Michelle's leadership principles are…?

Michelle:

Yeah. Good one. I think for me the whole being a leader is helping other people to feel successful and that they've made a difference in the world. And, but not just professionally, but personally. I think we were talking before about how we act like there's like your work-person and your outside-of-work-person, but that's not true. We're holistic humans inside and outside of work. So for me, leadership is not thinking about those as two separate things, but looking at people as a holistic human and helping them to be their most realized self inside and outside of work. 

And then also is helping to create clarity, whether it's what people want to hear or not helping to create clarity on where we should be going, what does that mean, what we should be doing, what we should stop doing, helping to provide resources or break barriers is my opinion, what a leader should do.

Ryan:

Clarity's so important. Yeah. Even if they don't agree. Bringing them on the journey.

Michelle:

Or if it's hurtful to them at the time.

Ryan:

Yeah. You know, it's funny, I've, I've seen this time and time again and a lot of people listening are going to be on some change management journey… saying to somebody, this is what I think we're going to do and actually listening to their advice, even if you disagree with it, they buy in. It's like a weird... Because someone's been heard, their slow nos are less relevant, not less relevant, but less prevalent. Like you're just not there as much because like, okay I've been heard, I had a voice in this process and I think a lot of leaders skip that step. So to your point, like what's our direction, what are we trying to do? And consistently repeating that. But when I say bring people on the journey, that's what I mean, like, this is what we're doing, does everybody agree? Does anybody want to give any advice? Are we missing something? And like having multiple checkpoints. 

I tried this thing this year where I presented our annual strategy personally to every single team in the company.

Michelle:

Wow.

Ryan:

And it was way better than like the token like executive town hall where there's every employee in the company, nobody asks a freaking question. It was interesting because the most introverted teams in our company asked the most questions.

Michelle:

Wow.

Ryan:

Which was cool.

Michelle:

Yeah. Smart.

Ryan:

And it's not like it was a checkbox exercise. They had good shit to say, which then shaped what we actually did.

Michelle:

Yeah. That's great. That's like an underutilized thing is listening sessions with small groups of people

Ryan:

Listening is important. Yeah. It's another reason why some people don't make the shift between player and coach. Because you have to use your ears more than your mouth and that's, that's hard. Right? Well I like to talk. We like to talk.

The other thing I'm passionate about. Cause I agree, we have obviously very similar leadership philosophies. I think people can be kind and be successful and can be themselves and be successful. I've had four people today make fun of me because I'm wearing a t-shirt I give zero F's about that. Cause I, and I believe as a leader, your job is to hold the space to be whatever your culture is. If you want to be unapologetically yourself or whatever, if you're not doing that, how are you going to expect everybody else to act that could be whatever your values are, but holding the space is something I think is one of the biggest jobs because you get a lot of pressure. I get a lot of pressure. If you let everybody feel that, well then they're going to, it goes everywhere. Right.

Michelle:

And it's yeah. Well it's funny because I know you are uniquely you and I am uniquely me and I get a lot of polarizing feedback about that and I'm sure you do too. Oh yeah, for sure. You're so authentic in a good way. And oh you're too authentic. You don't fit the mold or you're making me uncomfortable because you're not following in the robotic culture or whatever. But I agree. Like I think it's something that's special. It's a distinctive asset of ours that we are who we are and you don't ever have to wonder if I'm being honest or if I'm being real and same with you.

Ryan:

And I have a lot of empathy for people. So I've brought in several people who have worked in like I would say very diminishing cultures and they want it, but it's hard to take that armor off. If you've been getting beat up your whole career, it's hard to be like, okay, well what does unapologetically mean? Cause I've always had to have this mask on at work and then I've... And it's really quite interesting and you have to really help people find their way and because I'm of the view, everybody's got a superpower. Not just...

Michelle:

I totally agree.

Ryan:

And so often we stay in jobs that aren't good for us because the company's purpose isn't aligned or whatever. And so I would say out of 90% of the people who we've ended terms with it's ended with a thank you because they've gone and done something that's more aligned to whatever their magic is. Everybody's got something that they're special at.

Michelle:

So what's your superpower?

Ryan:

I can get on most people's level and I can process a lot of information quickly. What about you?

Michelle:

I always say that it's connecting people, dots and resources.

Ryan:

People, dots and resources. I'm glad that you said people first. Because if you said resources and meant people, I was going to…

Michelle:

That would suck.

Ryan:

Resources are not people. People have heartbeats. It's kind of a thing. Yeah. I think those are mine. I don't know. Maybe people have other things they want to say.

Michelle:

I mean dad jokes also.

Ryan:

I have a lot of dad jokes, I'm really trying to put the dad bod on the map. It used to be a thing. And then like tie dye shirts are back, but dad bods not. And like I'm really trying to embrace that. So yeah. I'm going to bring that back. 

So I have one more question for you. I ask every single guest this question and you'll be alarmed that I get basically the same answer every time. What are the traits you look for if you're building an insights team? Attributes and traits that you're looking for, not experience, we already talked about MBAs and all that stuff. What are some of the attributes you're looking for? This wasn't on the script.

Michelle:

Well, I can tell you one that I'm sure everyone says is curiosity. But that is a unique thing about our function. But the other one that I look for is command skills.

Ryan:

So what does that mean?

Michelle:

Somebody who isn't afraid to get up in front of a senior leader and tell them what they think.

Ryan:

Got it.

Michelle:

Because that's real important. Because often times as insights people we're talking to people much more senior than us.

Ryan:

Yep.

Michelle:

And then the third is someone who wants to grow and develop. So I'll often ask a question like what's on your development plan or what do you do to develop yourself? And you'd be surprised how few people can answer that question.

Ryan:

Yeah. That's interesting to me, where's my next step in my career. What do you want it to be? I don't know. Yeah. That's troubling. So my four: curious, just self-explanatory. Growth minded. What can I do today that makes me better than I was yesterday?

Michelle:

Yeah. Similar.

Ryan:

Adaptable because change is a constant. And a lot of people don't like change, but it's here to stay. You got to embrace it. And the next one's linked to adaptability, being comfortable with ambiguity.

Michelle:

Yeah. Similar.

Ryan:

Because you have to, it is similar, but you have to be able to take a messy ball of yarn and say, okay, I got to figure this out.

Michelle:

I'll figure it out.

Ryan:

Because you know, like all, and this is why like we talk a lot about modern culture because I think we've taken the principles from assembly line manufacturing work into knowledge work and it's completely different. So you don't have the answers because our market, this market, consumer insights has fundamentally changed in the last five years. Maybe we would've guessed this if we had this episode. But like who knows?

Michelle:

It made me think of another question I like to ask is like, how do you learn? How do you grow, develop and learn in the industry. Like, and I'm looking for, they saying, I go to conferences, I read, watch podcasts. I read newsletters or whatever. But that's another one it's like curiosity of course about the category, but also curiosity about the industry and where it's going.

Ryan:

So I'm going to make a parting statement on what you just said. And then maybe we should go have a cold beer. We're in Texas. We'll have a Shiner Bock or a no, the Lone Star beer’s tagline. “The national beer of Texas.” Is that not the most Texas thing you've ever heard?

Michelle:

I love it.

Ryan:

Love it. I love Texas. So I've lost my train of thought with my Texas joke. 

But oh, the growth stuff. Where do you go to learn? If you are listening to this and you go, I don't, you're in the wrong job. Because if you're passionate about what you're doing, then you will naturally learn and read stuff. It's a pretty sure thing that you're not interested. And we talked about work life harmonization. I don't really believe in balance because you work a lot and you live a lot. And so I'm excited about what I do and that's why I sound excited and that's why you read and it's, but people who don't read or it's not reading it's people who aren't curious about getting better. Probably just haven't found their thing yet. Would you agree?

Michelle:

Totally agree. And when people say I'm too busy to do that, that's also a warning sign that they're probably not in the right place or they're not prioritizing well. You should always have time for passions.

Ryan:

You should. And so we, I wish we had more time. We'll be a minute late because whatever, it is what it is, normally my podcast are an hour long, so we'll have to do another one.

Michelle:

I still don't understand why nobody has a beer in their hand already.

Ryan:

Yeah. Audience where the beer's at. 

So time management, people on balance, I would say suck at time balance. It's like a pretty human truth. And like, so let's... Bonus question, what are some of your hacks to manage your very demanding schedule?

Michelle:

Number one...

Ryan:

Or do you suck at time management?

Michelle:

The number one thing. How many people here? Oh, I bet no, one's going to admit to it, but I'm sure most people have done this in their career if not today, they get invited to a meeting so they show up to it because they're invited to it without questioning why am I being invited? What's my value? And is this the best use of my hour? Be honest, right? Yeah. So I've become hyper diligent about reviewing my calendar every week and not going to any meeting where I'm not clear that I can create value in that meeting.

Ryan:

Love that.

Michelle:

So I'm often getting invited to meetings and canceling out of them.

Ryan:

It's a CC culture, right? Like, oh, I got to have her there. So my rule on that topic is if I'm not existential to the success of the meeting, I'm not going.

Michelle:

Exactly.

Ryan:

So you shed four or five meetings a day if you're that ruthless. So that's let's say three hours of time. What else?

Michelle:

Well, I want to sidebar and tell you something, you know Michelle Hayward from Bluedog?

Ryan:

Yep.

Michelle:

She always talks about… working in a company is a relationship contract. That I am paying you a sum of money and you are there for agreeing to do something back for me, and people have forgotten that. Like people just feel like I have a job, I expect to get a salary and I expect to get raises over time. But actually, and she'll often be like, well, what are you doing for that? What if I give you a raise? What more value are you going to create for me? And I love that concept. And in that same vein of time management, shouldn't we always be asking ourselves like a consultant, is this the best use of company dollars? What I'm doing right now?

Ryan:

Yep. Right this second. And it's hard because there's so many I forget who told me this morning, but there's 50 ideas a quarter that could be companies in and of themselves but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do them. So ruthless prioritization is not a fun task but so what I do is once a quarter I write down, what am I driving? What am I helping with?

Michelle:

Oh, that's nice.

Ryan:

And then I have a group of people who will weigh in on that.

Michelle:

Yeah. Nice.

Ryan:

And then I give it, so I have the benefit of having an admin and she will manage my calendar to that. And then once a week I'm like to the meeting thing. But I think with time, the more you can manage it in macro, the easier it is on a Tuesday. So like, I'll be as anal to say like how many hours am I going to spend in one-on-ones and with whom this quarter, and then we'll sit down and review like, Hey you missed the last two one on ones with so and so is that really creating value? Because time is a very precious asset. And like, so I will say this, give some credibility to what I'm saying, I don't work past 5:30 at night.

Michelle:

Good for you.

Ryan:

I don't. And there's a lot of like glamor in hustle culture. I'd rather eat dinner with my kids. Yeah. But I think, I don't know if you found this being more ruthless means you can be more effective because you're not jumping from 50,000 things. You're like, no I'm working on these five. I'm going to nail these things.

Michelle, thank you. Thank you, everybody who sat here with headphones. You're lovely. I didn't get to look at you as much, but thank you.

Michelle:

Yeah. Thanks for staying out.

Ryan:

This was an interesting social experiment in podcasting. Shall we have a beer?

Michelle:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Thanks everybody.

Michelle:

Right. Bye.

Ryan:

So Patricia, I have a good authority that this was the hardest interview for you to codify, because-

Patricia: 

Oh my God.

Ryan:

And we actually weren't drinking wine, as I said in the preamble, but we were riffing. So sorry for that. You had two people live with a little ADD going on, just bouncing around the houses.

Patricia:

The two of you are a pleasure to listen to without taking notes. I mean, I've listened to you guys, I've been in meetings with you, it was a pleasure listening to the interview. But ooh, this one was a tough one, I will not lie. 

So here we go. 10 very important questions that you guys asked each other. And then a little nugget that I thought was too good to let go. Ready?

Ryan:

I'm ready.

Patricia:

First one. What are your passions? Now there's a loaded question. What's got your attention? Two ADHD people asking each other where their attention is? So learning from people in cultures, which includes business and music, I thought that was great, because music says so much about a culture. Balancing the essence of company culture, while at the same time bringing in new and different muscles. Got to keep the water fresh, right? And she's been rethinking, as well as you, work requirements. As in what it needs to work in insights industry. You guys touched back on that later. So I'm not going to go into it in very much detail. But you talk about changing from 20 years experience and an MBA at a certain university versus the capacity to learn and grow. So you can have fresh thinking and listen to it.

Now, I will have to admit that I'm biased, very positively biased, on this because I've been saying since I was a manager many years ago, but I didn't care how much insights they knew, I cared who they were as a person, and if they had remnants of the four year old that wanted to know why the moon doesn't fall down, and why boats don't sink, and why planes fly. I still want that in my research people and you guys touched upon that. So it touched a nerve deep with me.

The next question, where do you go to get inspired? Like so many places. So you were both able to shrink it down. And I put it into an order that I thought was pretty important, because you guys started with lateral thinking... Or maybe you didn't start, maybe I made you start. But lateral thinking, learning from other businesses. You talked about SaaS, you talked about technology, but that led you both into how other people solve problems. And that led you both into talking about adjacent insights, things to elevate your game, to synthesize stories, to tell a story, to figure out how to drive tech. All those things are related, because one thing is looking outside your world, the other thing is looking at all your entire world, not just the report that you're going to give to your customer. Because there are so many things behind the scenes, like in this podcast, like anything in the world, that goes into getting that report to where it needs to go.

Then you talked about things that we're pretty expected, conferences, books, podcasts, right? And Kelsey will help us, we'll link all of the books that you guys refer to. You spoke to Upstream by Dan Heath. You talked about Future Imagined by Jo Lepore. You talked about the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour. And then you brought up something, I think it was you, pre-mortems. I think that's a Zappi thing. Absolutely. I learned about pre-mortems and Zappi, and I've used them on everything since. I used to call it war gaming, but you guys call them pre-mortems. It's thinking of every single thing that could go wrong, before you even start. Now that might have a negative tinge to it, but hey man, I'd rather do it there than in course. And then you, of course you, talking to strangers. You love talking to strangers.

Ryan:

I do.

Patricia:

So those four, you guys both go to get inspired. 

Now, you brought up to Michelle, coaching and mentorship, and then you started also joining in the conversation. You asked about, where is the difference and how they compare? She was really clear. Coaches are generalists, to help you with whatever problems are coming your way. And you brought in that it's more aligned being a business therapist, which I love. It's the person that you speak to with absolutely no judgment, only a way to get better. But it's very clear, you got to do the work. The coach will keep you accountable, but you got to do your homework. You got to actually dig deep and do your thing, because if not, you're not going to improve. And usually you pay them.

Now, mentors are for a specific topic or a skill set, and you should have a mentor when you're really clear what you need to fix. Kind of like when you go to a language professor or a piano teacher, when you want to learn to play the piano. And those are usually free and they can help you support that. And when you're finished, you either move on to another topic or you part ways and remain friends.

Now, managers, you didn't ask about managers, but managers bled into this, because you both spoke about the job of a manager being more of a coach, because, and I love this, you shouldn't boss around really smart people, because that cuts their wings off. You need to know how to manage them, how to be a coach sometimes, how to be a mentor sometimes, which is a very interesting balance.

And that led you perfectly into number four. And this one was Michelle's 10 leadership principles, because you were talking about coaching and mentoring and managers. And you asked her, how do you handle managing people in that large organization? You asked her what's your philosophy on leadership, which led to her 10 leadership principles. Situational leadership, different levels of coaching, different strokes for different folks, different days, different ways, right? It's a nuanced way to handle things. You're not always on or off. And if an error is made, you're not going to shit... Pardon me. Not going to rub it in their face. I remembered the jar, the money jar, for the bad words. You got to find the learning in the error.

Number two, have a super deep awareness of yourself before you can work on your communications. Because you can't communicate if you don't know who you are, because many of the conversations, if not most, are messy and deep. You can't get lost in that. Number three, you both concurred on growth paths. You talked about growth mindset, she talked about growth paths, she asks people what they do, but allowing people to create their own growth path, not a copy paste. 

Number four seems like a really strong one for me, helping others. Maybe it's because I'm service-oriented. But help others feel that they're making a difference in the world, both professionally and personally. Which led to number five, which is treat people as holistic beings, not one half or the other half, not Jekyll and Hyde, not the work self and the home self. Help them be their most realized selves, in general, because you can't really separate it without hurting yourself along the way.

Now, changing gears. Creating clarity. That's the leader's job, create clarity on the direction, purpose, and objectives, but also what they shouldn't be doing. But that also leads to a manager having to break down barriers and providing resources, so that those objectives and purposes can be met, because sometimes they can't. The leader can, because they see the forest and the trees, but the team doesn't always have the way to do it. In order to do that, you have to do number eight, which is listen to them. You have to listen when they speak. Not only for you to be able to know what they need, but also so you get buy-in. You both spoke about buy-in and you need really smart people to have buy-in, so they feel that their voice was listened to and is part of the solution. That creates a team culture and all of you, especially the leader, which is number nine, I could do the fingers, there it is.

Number nine, has to represent the team culture. So that it's similar, it's stable, everybody knows who they are and where they are. Now this leads to number 10, which is one of the hardest and you wouldn't expect it to be, be yourself unapologetically. You said this, Ryan. Now, this is really hard. You have to be yourself within the team culture, but you have to be yourself, because if you're not authentic, why would they follow you? And you spoke to something that hit me in the heart, because you know, I'm a career corporate citizen and you helped me so much with this, help others remove their armor.

Ryan:

Yes.

Patricia:

Help others remove the masks, take off the masks they had to wear, because it was, you had to wear a certain type of earring, a certain color of clothes, your hair had to be in a certain way. You helped me. And it was weird, because I knew who I was outside of work. It's hard finding your way when you've never been allowed to. So that really touched me, which is probably why I left it last. So thank you for that.

Ryan:

You're welcome. Drop the armor everybody, just be yourself.

Patricia:

Yeah. It takes too much effort to put the armor on every morning. Now, number five, question. How do you strike a balance in your day-to-day, versus doing and letting your teams do? Now, being really clear on what success looks like, being really clear on what the outcome. So you had to do this by this. You do that and you walk away. You lift your hands up. You say, "This is what we want." Make sure everybody understands, listen to their questions, answer their questions, get their buy-in, but let them be. Let the team or the person figure it out.

It's really important to know when to help, when to intervene, and when to walk away. Now, in order to do that, you have to build capabilities with your team, so that they have the ways, they have the tools, they have the toolbox to do it. And the way to do that is to bring people on the journey and then let it roll. Bring them on your journey. Show them what you know. Let them use the tools, however they need to use them. But show them the tools. And then understand, this is the last one about the balance, understand that you don't have to know the answers. You don't have to know all the answers. Now, you asked her, why is that? Why do you think that is, that we finally figure out that we don't have to know the answers when we're senior? And she answered with only Michelle Gansle wisdom. She goes, the more senior, the broader your remit is.

Now, number six, I told you I'd talk about this, what are some of your hacks? You both had the same one in different ways, which I thought was really cool. Both of you are talking about ruthless prioritization. She calls it hyper vigilance. So hyper diligence. Reviewing her calendar and not going to meetings where she's not clear about the value. And you call it ruthless prioritization, and you slash and burn, and you make Katie your accomplice and your guard dog on your calendar. I loved all that. And you also bring in the whole rest of your team saying, okay, this is what I'm working on. And everybody agree? We all good on this? Am I missing anything? So you bring people in. She explains to people why she can't be in every meeting. 

Now, you both started riffing in number seven, about what happens next in this industry. Now, some of them were new for me, some of them were expected. The first one, on your educated guests, on your crystal ball, which neither of you have, is we're going to go from generalists to specialists. It's a pendulum swing. The world is fragmenting, so we have to figure out what's best. People are expected to go from doing everything, to doing what they're really good at. You still need to connect the dots. 

Now, letting go of your Legos, sharing your Legos, sharing your toys. You guys talked about non-value tactical things and letting others do those. You spoke about marketing, but it doesn't have to only be marketing, it could be anybody. It could be early in your career. It could be different things. Doesn't matter. But understanding where we have to prioritize our time. In order for this to happen, if it's going to be the marketers, they have to have a behavior change, both beginning and the end. One to help do the work. But two, to understand about the importance of using and leveraging human truths in everything they do. They can't launch their ad tomorrow and expect you to test today and have anything good. So they have to change the way, not only they think and work, but also how senior management expects from them, what they expect from them. You've spoken of this before and I'm looking forward to learning more when you go to your... What is it? Sample com? You're going to a thing that's coming in.

Ryan:

I went last week, SampleCon. Great conference. Wonderful conference.

Patricia:

Is that the one about primary data?

Ryan:

Yep. About respondents.

Patricia:

Exactly. I'm looking forward to learning more.

Ryan:

Really insightful few days.

Patricia:

I'm so looking forward to hearing more from you on that, because you talked about leveraging untapped opportunity and marriage between primary data, first party data and primary research. So that's part of the future and I'm looking forward to hearing about that. And you both spoke about recruiting outside of the pond. Now, you asked her straight up, because this was before you attended the SampleCon, you said, tell me again, in your most honest, unfiltered self Michelle, why you don't care about sample? And she was really in your face and she said, in her own nice way, "I don't care about sample, because it's not my problem. I just want high quality sample. Somebody else has to provide it for me. So the supplier, the vendor, has to provide it for me. If they need to charge me more, they have to go off, figure it out, come back and tell me why, how, right trade offs and benefits. But it's not a conversation I want to be part of. I just want to be the owner of high quality sample."

I thought that was fantastic, because she says, quality sample is table stakes. It's a category ante. I love that. And that goes back to what we talked about earlier, about getting specialized. She doesn't want to be a specialist in sample. She wants to be a specialist in insights and leadership. I love it.

Now, you asked her a deep question. You kept doing that. Why doesn't insights do a better job at marketing themselves? That was question number nine. I mean, you might as well ask her what does love mean? It's like really Ryan, really? But you did ask her and she answered. She says, we're not good internally about tooting our own horn outside the industry or in our companies. Maybe we're supporting actors. Maybe we like to be out of the limelight and the attention, and maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I thought, I can see myself there inside and outside. I've played with the limelight in and out, which is why I'm doing a podcast that was outside of my comfort zone. But I've been playing with escaping and jumping in, and escaping and jumping in, just a little aside, which is not from your call.

One of the ways that I progressed in life, in my career, I remember I got to Colgate. And remember Colgate was a very specific culture. And I arrived and at meetings, I was always listening, taking notes and listening. And whenever they asked a question that I thought might be in my remit, I didn't realize this, somebody was watching and they told me, I leaned forward. I wanted to listen better, and I wanted to be ready, and I was listening. And I leaned forward and I usually answered or participated in the conversation, so the senior leadership started expecting that, if she's leaning forward, she has something to say, slow down, let her speak. And I didn't even realize I was doing that. And that was my way of kind of, not only asking permission, but readying myself to be in the limelight. 

Now, Michelle talked about, maybe we should do more varied recruiting and have other people come in from other areas. I used to teach improv to all my insights teams, so that they could learn how to improv and be more comfortable doing improv. Stephen Gans which you're both friends with. The Pepsi insight, number one. He's not an insider and he's really great at elevating the function and experimenting, and maybe we can learn from people like Steph. So these are things that we have to learn to do from people that maybe are experts at it and we're not.

Number 10, you always ask this, I love it. What are the attributes or traits you look for when you're hiring or building an insights team? You both concurred on two, curiosity about consumers, about insights, about the industry, about learning, about growing. And then you both concurred on separating out growth-minded as a separate entity, because it's all about the desire to grow and learn, the desire to read, the desire to find answers, the desire to push yourself farther.

Then she talked about command skills, not being afraid to speak to senior leaders. And she brought something up that was a duh when she said it and I hadn't thought of it before. Insights people are almost always speaking to people that are two to three levels above them in the hierarchy. So you have to have brass underwear sometimes, or metal underwear, steel underwear, to be able to do that sometimes. 

Then she talked and she took the growth-minded stuff one step further. So I'm calling it out here. I'm saying self-motivation as a learner, self-motivated learning. She's like, she asks people a lot of times, what's your plan to grow? What's your plan to learn? And she, which broke my heart, said that many people don't even have an answer for that. They don't have an answer to how they're going to grow themselves, what they're going to do, how they're going to learn, where they're going to look for their next job? And you spoke of that. What is your next role? What do you want to do next? 

Then you added be adaptable, because the wind blows and you got to go, which is why I used to teach improv. And you talked about being comfortable with ambiguity. That is so true, because you never know what the results are going to bring. You never know what the next question is going to be. You got to have everything open. And that's something that's really important. Before I go into any meeting where I'm not absolutely a hundred percent sure what the topic is going, where it's going to go, I send a command. This sounds really weird, but I do. I speak to my brain. I say, "Brain, open all the folders." So I walk into the meeting with my brain open. Maybe I'm psychotic, I'm not sure. But that's how it helps me to be open and being comfortable with ambiguity. You just open all the toolbox, and see what happens, and see what gets needed. Those were the 10.

Ryan:

I like it.

Patricia:

You like it?

Ryan:

I like a little crazy. I got a little crazy. I've learned to embrace it. All right. You got a bonus one for me?

Patricia:

Yes. Michelle Hayward from Bluedog, she talked about working in companies as a relationship contract. I've forgotten about the way she looked at things. They're paying you money and you are promising to deliver a job. It's not like you've got a job and you expect a result, and they have to give you more. No, it's a win-win, it's a give-give. And so when you're at a job, you need to, yes, expect to get a salary, but you also need to give of yourself. You have to ask yourself every day, Michelle says, what are you doing for your salary? What are you doing to help grow the company? What are you doing to make yourself a more valuable asset? I love that concept. Michelle spoke of it. You spoke of it. And it's the same thing in time management. Think about, is this the best use of my time for the company? So whoever doesn't know about Michelle Hayward, follow her, she's amazing. But ask yourself, what am I doing right now? And is it helping me grow and the company grow? Am I earning my keep? It tied everything together really well.

Ryan:

I dig it. Particularly, I mean, look, I think rightfully there's a lot of employee empowerment, but yeah, you bring in the heat for what you're earning, I think is a really good question. Patricia, thank you, as always. Our next episode is with Shazia Ali, our very own head of community. We're going to talk about empathy and vulnerability, and a bunch of other topics. 

Thank you all for listening. Patricia, thank you for summarizing. Kelsey and everybody else behind the scenes, appreciate you. And to all of our listeners, I hope that this episode created some value for you. If you have any ideas to make it into our scratch pad for season five, hit us up. Thanks ladies.

Patricia:

Goodbye.

Content we discussed in this episode:

• Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

• Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smart by Liz Wiseman

• Future Imagined podcast

• Pop Culture Happy Hour NPR podcast