Kate Schardt: Transforming the world of insights

Ryan Barry:

Hi, everybody. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. In this podcast, we explore change all around us, in culture, in business, in education, and in our jobs and in our careers. I'm joined today by my distinguished co-host and good friend, Babita Earle. Hi, Babita.

Babita Earle:

Hi, Ryan. Hi, everybody. How're you doing Ryan?

Ryan:

Babita I'm doing great. This is being recorded on the day before the U.S. election and I'm hoping that we have some results tomorrow instead of what I expect to be multiple weeks of uncertainty.

Babita:

Oh no, I know. It's such a ... I'd say excited but it's such a... So scared as well. Let's hope we get the outcome we want.

Ryan:

That's it, that's it. All right. So let's change gears because we've got an exciting topic today, Babita.

Babita:

Yeah.

Ryan:

We're interviewing a good friend of ours. Tell us about it. Tell us about our interview today.

Babita:

Yeah, so this was a really great conversation, and it was with somebody who I talk to every single day, believe it or not. So Kate Schardt, she is senior director for Ada, which is PepsiCo's digital transformation initiative. So Kate and I are partners in crime and we work really closely together. And as you can imagine on a daily basis we talk about work. So this was a real opportunity for me to ask the kind of questions that we don't really get a chance to talk about. Understand a bit more about her, her journey, because she's in a really interesting role, which I think is going to become a more commonplace for other insight professionals. And I've got to tell you this Ryan, this was my second interview because the first one I did I forgot to record. Can you believe it? I was devastated, but if I was going to do that with somebody, Kate was the person. So Kate, thank you so much for putting up with my silliness. So should we go to the interview Ryan?

Ryan:

Yes. And we'll never know which version was best. I just have a question before we get to the interview. How long into the interview did you realize you weren't recording it?

It's only because I got a lot of love for you. That's one of the funniest things I've heard.

Babita:

I know.

Ryan:

I can only imagine all the words that hit that desk when it happened.

Babita

I know, I know. I would never make that mistake again but there you go. Lesson learned, so let's go to the interview.

Ryan:

Let's do it.

[Music transition to interview]

Babita Earle:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Inside Insights. So today I have a very special guest, Kate Schardt from PepsiCo. Kate is Global Senior Director in the digitization team. I'm really excited about this conversation, and I'll tell you why, because Kate and I talk every single day, well, it feels like every single day, and we talk about our day job, but what I have the opportunity now is to have a very different conversation with Kate, the kind that we should be having more frequently, to understand more about her. This is really cool, and I'm glad we've got the space to do this. 

I know you're really, really busy. So, Kate, did you want to introduce your role, what you do at PepsiCo, before I start asking you all the questions that I've always wanted to ask you?

Kate:

Great, yeah. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here today and to have this conversation as well. Like you said, we often don't have time to reflect and really think about our journey as professionals. I currently have a really interesting role at PepsiCo. So I'm leading what we call our digitization effort, which is really just a very fancy McKinsey-esque type of word that relates to how you use technology and digitizing of work to really change the way that people work to make it more productive, more impactful, better, that kind of a thing. So kind of all things tech but interrelated with the human side, right, of how do you use tech and how people work to drive impact?

Babita:

Right. There's a few things there which really resonate to our industry and the future of our industry. Obviously, our podcast is all about change, so we're going to dive into that a bit more, but also technology, the conversation about man and machine as well, because it seems to be a really important part of your role. I'd like to take you back to when you started in research because what we want our listeners to be inspired by is all these stories and journeys that are out there. So take us back to when you started in research. Was it a career that you chose, or was it a career that you fell into?

Kate:

I would definitely say it was the latter, fell into. It's kind of a roundabout journey, but when I was in college, I had been studying arts and sciences as a broad area for a degree because I liked lots of things and I had a lot of interests but it was hard for me to pin down exactly what I wanted to major in. So I ended up picking psychology after I took psych 101 and I completely fell in love with the topic. I found it to be just so fascinating to sit around and think about why people do what they do. Then the marriage of that with the science, the part of statistics and data collection and how you can use rigor to get signals in the noise, I found really fascinating. So instead of just thinking, "Well, I don't understand why that is the way it is," it's like, "Well, I can actually create an inquiry to figure this out." I found that really fascinating.

But as I got toward the end of my degree, my parents were asking me, "What are you going to do with a psychology degree," and I'm like, "I don't know." A lot of the career paths that are pushed in academia are either continuing and getting a PhD and becoming a professor or the clinical route where you can become a therapist. Neither of those really interested me that much. So I went out into the world and worked for a bit in employee opinion research. I did that gig for a couple of years, which was a way to apply statistics into a real world environment, but it was a little bit dry. Basically, every study we did said the same things, pay people more, give them better work-life balance, and make them empowered. So-

Babita:

And still today, really. Yeah, yeah.

Kate:

Right, right, exactly. Right. You don't really need to do a bunch of survey research to tell you that. So around that time, I had been watching this program on TV where they were delving into marketing and then more specifically research within marketing, and I was so fascinated. I'm like, "Wait, I can do what I like but apply it to brands? That's so cool." So I started researching, well, what kind of master's program should I do to be able to get into that and kind of fell into an MBA program coming off that because I wanted to learn more about marketing. Around that time, I also got the role at Nielsen, working in the BASES division. That's very much like sales forecasting and innovation testing and optimization as an area of discipline, and that was a really great fit for me, and it gave me an opportunity to really build out my expertise in that space.

I stayed at that company for quite a while. I was there for over seven years and worked on all different types of accounts and maximized my experience and wanted to do something new and, around that time, got an opportunity to come to PepsiCo when we were standing up our global teams to work on global snacks. I started off working in innovation and then expanded to having a brand experience and working on advertising, which was so cool. I got to work on Lay's brand, which is the biggest snack brand in the world. So I did that for a number of years, and then about two and a half, three years ago, we were really thinking about, as a function, how are we going to evolve, how are we going to change. Around that time, the capability team was standing up, which was really getting people dedicated to thinking about this, and that's when I came into this new role really leading this charge.

Babita:

Yeah. So, obviously, you went from agency side to client side. Both sides of the industry are changing and evolving. What do you see are the major differences? And, obviously, you've flourished at PepsiCo, and the current role that you have is super interesting. People who've gone agency side tend to stay in agency side, and client side tend to stay in client side, and there's just also this friction that I sometimes hear that, oh, client side is really easy. What's your reflection on that comment?

Kate:

Yeah, it's interesting because I think when I was at BASES, I saw a lot of that traditional insights role as a project manager type of role, and it didn't interest me that much because I enjoyed being the one to craft the story, to give the presentation, to influence the marketers and the business leaders to make the decisions they were making. But the opportunity when I came to PepsiCo was very much to take that skill set but bring it in house. So that was really exciting because I was able to come in and make an impact on day one. Then what was so compelling about being at PepsiCo is that it wasn't just this narrow engagement around I validated this product or did this forecast but actually having the full end-to-end experience and having access to running qualitative research and marrying that with quantitative research with sales and trend data, and just having a broader aperture for how to drive impact was really exciting to me. For me, it's a place I'm much more comfortable in and that I don't think I would go back to.

The other reason why I would be hesitant to go back to, quote-unquote, supplier side is that the industry was ripe for change and the opportunity for me to drive that change and to have influence in that way is greater in my new role and in my new gig than I felt in the past. I think, structurally, a lot of legacy or traditional insights companies are struggling to figure out how to evolve and change in ways that I'm not burdened with in my current role.

Babita:

So let's comment on some of that change. Can you describe to our listeners, what is the change that you are looking to drive? Because you've talked about marrying technology with human skills and digitization is at the center of all of that. Can you simplify what is that change and what's that from and to that you're looking to see?

Kate:

Right, yeah. So I would say that it started off with a fairly narrow focus on digitizing survey research. How do we take what we do on a daily basis but use technology and automation to make it much faster and much simpler and, in that process, also better? So let's not just take something that's not working very well and just make a digitized version of that, but can we actually, through this process, think about the methodology and the design of how we run the research and make it better. That's really the heart of the work that we do with Zappi, right, is how do we make that whole test and learn, as we call it, engine work more effectively. Then, in addition to that, the part where it brings in the human side is as we started embarking on making the survey research better and faster, it brings you to a broader point, which is if you start thinking at a platform level, how do we do more with all of the information that we have, not just survey research but broader insights learning, it brought us to the conclusion that we needed to think about building a bigger platform.

We've actually named that platform Ada, which you may have heard of. It's named after Ada Loveless, who is a famous mathematician that, one, is to have a bit of an internal brand and an inspiration. The natural progressions led us to this idea that we need to build something bigger. So what is Ada, right? What we've come to is about knowledge management, but it's bigger than that. It's about having access to all the information and democratizing that learning but also using technology to have a space to connect as professionals from a community perspective, ask an expert, that kind of a thing. So, over the last year, we've been really focusing on building out the Ada site, which is about to launch, actually, this month. That's the newer piece of what I'm working on, but at the heart of what we do is really that digitized survey research.

Babita:

So when we've talked to organizations about digitization, it's for a business purpose. What's your vision in terms of how this changes the role of you as an insight team within the broader PepsiCo and the business value and the business imperative around that change?

Kate:

Yeah, it's a really great question, and it's something that as insights professionals we don't always naturally do a good job of, of saying, "Is what I'm doing actually going to drive impact?" We tend to get caught up in intellectual pursuits and what I call navel-gazing, thinking about methodology in a narrow way, like scales and questionnaire design and those kinds of things. What's really important with what we're doing is always taking that step and saying, "Well, how can I drive impact? How can I make sure that we're getting the growth that we need?" I think it's really something that we're focusing on with two areas, innovation and then advertising, right?

So, from an innovation perspective, it's all about. How can we use the learning that we're getting from consumers to really ignite creativity and help the designers get the best outcomes that they can? That's a very different mindset than in the past, where innovation was very much stage-gate and we were using consumers to really tell us go, no go, which is kind of crazy, right? The consumers shouldn't be telling us what we should and shouldn't do. They should just be helping us understand if what we're doing is making sense. So that's very much a focal point of how we can drive innovation outcomes to be more effective.

On advertising, it's similar, but I think that the bigger opportunity with advertising is around how we link our survey data to our media performance. As we invest more in understanding how to make our media investments more effective, how can we link that back to a pretesting environment? And personalization is becoming a really hot area, right, so how can we get more granular in our learnings and more effective at that preflight, pre launch optimization space? So those are two ways in which we're really thinking about how we drive impact with the work that we do.

Babita:

Yeah. So, at the heart of this, you have got, what, 500 insight professionals across PepsiCo's organization? Technology alone, just activating new technology and rolling out new technology alone, is not going to cut it, I guess. Then, you've got to change the hearts and minds of the insights professionals to adopt this technology, use it, and activate it in the right way. I guess that's not an easy thing to do, especially when, as you say, we've been doing things in a certain way for such a long time. How are you finding that journey, that change behavior journey, basically?

Kate:

Yeah. I think it's a really great question, and it's been a lot harder than I thought it would be. Because I thought, "Of course, everyone's going to want this change because we really need to evolve and change as an organization," right? And I think that you get a lot of head nods when you talk about the vision, and people agree with that. I think where the change is hard is much more in how it is going to impact me and my life. On the one hand, I think nobody really loves the project management aspects of the insights role, but they're comfortable there. One of the things I think is going to change and already is changing is the amount of time that an insights professional spends on managing suppliers, managing projects, reviewing questionnaires, brands list, and all this kind of stuff goes away when you replace that largely with technology, right? So we standardize and we scale those things that don't really add value.

That's a good portion of how people spend their time today, and that goes away. What gets put in its place? One of the things that we had wanted to do initially was to very much land self-service as a primary output of this work, meaning that the insights ... It's like Amazon. The insights professional can order their research and then get the output of that, understand it, and then use that with their marketing and cross-functional teams to really land impact. What we've found is that that leap to adopting new methodology on top of tech-driven ways of commissioning to tech-driven ways to outputting it and then also you have to be the person who stands in the room and tells the team what does it mean and what do we do with it, that's a huge amount of change and it's overwhelming, is what we're finding.

Being able to provide people a bit of support in helping make that transition has become an important thing that we're learning, so making some investments within my team to have essentially that kind of consultant in-house, right? Rather than seeking that expert opinion outside, we want to build that expertise internally. But teams need a little bit of help. It's not that they're averse to doing the work. It's that they just want some support, right, like a sparring partner. Who can I call and bounce my ideas off of? How can I make sure that the way I'm interpreting this information is right? So that's one of the key learnings I've gotten in terms of how we think about change management and how we make this effective.

Babita:

Yeah, so would you say the easy bit or the challenging bit is the human change or the technological change? Because it seems like you probably went into this process thinking, "Actually, it's about getting the product automated and standardized," but, actually, perhaps the more challenging piece has been the human side of this.

Kate:

Yeah, I think so. I think they're interrelated. The technology bit, what's really hard on that is that as a function, we're not efficient to begin with. So when you try to automate something that's not efficient, it really makes it clear where the weaknesses are. The fact that we developed as a function very much in this highly-customized, long timeline type of projects, and in my past life, an average project probably took three months, three, four months, and it was very specific, very customized, right? All the research is done and then thrown away. There's no sense of platform reuse, recycling, and getting smarter over time. There's none of that kind of mentality within the function. We didn't grow up thinking that way, right? So when you then transition to getting people to think that way, there's a big learning curve around, well, how do you standardize.

Something as simple as a brands list, my god, everybody you ask will have a different opinion and none of them are particularly right or wrong. It's just like, okay, well, draw a line in the sand and make a decision, right? But even getting people to agree to that, some of that nitty-gritty detail in the questionnaire, has been hard. Then you look to the technology to try to solve the problem for you, right? So on things that don't matter that much, I'll be like, "Well, just let them do whatever they want on XYZ." Well, it turns out sometimes that that's actually really hard to execute from a technology perspective, so you end up with these tensions where we're trying to sometimes use tech to solve a human problem and vice versa.

I think that's a lot more complicated than I would've thought, but then, in hindsight, it's like, well, it kind of makes sense. We're not an efficient function. We haven't trained people to think in the right ways. We don't think about macro impact, we think about did I do this particular design right. It's a very narrow sort of intellectual perspective that we've been trained in, which on some level gives us rigor, it gives us expertise that's useful, but it's useful to a point and then it becomes a problem, right? So yeah.

Babita:

Yeah, yeah. Thinking about insight professionals of the future, what would you say are the most important skills of the future for teams like yours, like internal insight teams to continue to be relevant and at the forefront of commercial impact?

Kate:

Ooh, that's such a great question. I see it as twofold. The most critical work that robots or tech can't do, I think, becomes more and more central to the insights role of the future. So, for me, it's really around the human empathy building and what I refer to as culture savviness. I think that's becoming more and more critical. As we get greater understanding of insight from our data sources, how do you then layer on an interpretation and ensure that you're executing it in the right ways, right? That's where I think that kind of role will be critical to having that voice on the team that's helping interpret the learning and how we apply it and apply it in the best ways.

So almost like a journalist, right? Of all the stuff that's going on in the sea of information around you, what is the headline? What's the bottom line? I think that's really what the insights role is going to be to do. Like, how do I become that ambassador for culture or that journalist who can help make sense of the world?

Then I think, separately but interrelatedly, I think data science is going to become more and more of its own specialization. So if you're really into the kind of science statistical modeling, that side of what a lot of insights people do, I think that's going to become more and more of a specialization that will continue to grow and have prominence within organizations. So the idea of insights being a generalist is no more. I think that's a thing of the past.

Babita:

Do you think insights teams should fear from the data science teams, or do you think ... Because some organizations use them interchangeably as one, but, from what you're saying, there seems to be two separate parts for them. There's obviously the fear of automation and technology, but, as you and I discussed it, it's an enabler, it has to be an enabler, and the two need to work together. But when it comes to the data science side, how should insights approach those sorts of teams and those sorts of skills?

Kate:

Yeah, what I've found is that the data scientists are amazing at what they do, right? They really understand the math and the science behind how to model things. But where they lack experience is understanding how to interpret the information. They're not necessarily going to be experts in how to make great creativity and how to think about what the data means. Because, as with anything, there's an art and a science component, right? The modeling gets you 80% there or something like that, but there's an interpretative component and there's decisions you make that you can put more emphasis on one thing or another.

So it's an important partnership that will continue to forge and, I think, get the strongest outcomes. You have to be able to help the scientists get there. Or perhaps you just become a scientist yourself, right? I think, having a background in statistics, a lot of our traditional training around regression analysis, for example, translates. So I think you could potentially say, "I want to focus in and develop that as a specialization," and there's probably some skill gap and knowledge that you have to close, but I think that's not out of reach for people who have that background.

Babita:

Sure, sure. So it's about working in partnership, essentially, you're saying?

Kate:

Yeah.

Babita:

That's a really nice segue into the next topic because, obviously, you're working in partnership with a lot of smaller organizations, technology organizations, and obviously with us as well. That must've been an interesting journey for you. Do you want to talk about that and what you've learnt from that journey?

Kate:

Yeah, absolutely. It definitely is a very different way of approaching how we do our work as who we work with. Forging partnerships rather than relying on traditional supplier relationships is very exciting to me because it gives you an opportunity to co-create and do something new, but it also has its challenges, right? We partner, obviously, with Zappi and others who are new, more tech-oriented types of startups, which is a very different environment than a company like PepsiCo, which is very, very large. We're very complicated because it's almost like lots of little companies within a big company when you have that broad reach. But, at the same time, there's a lot to learn from smaller, more scrappy startups, right?

But I think where it's the biggest tension I've seen has been more the culture of embracing technology, which is not our area of expertise. Technology is difficult. Software in particular is a difficult space, huge amounts of unknowns, right? When you embark on a new project and you're like, "Okay, we want to build this new tool," my instinct is, "Okay, when's it going to be ready?" My [inaudible 00:26:58] team's like, "We don't know." "Wait, what?" And that pressure comes from my business leaders as well, which is like what's the roadmap, what's the rollout, when are things going to be ready, what's the schedule. For any software developer who's listening, they're probably laughing, right, because it's impossible to really predict with any level of certainty. That embracing of what we don't yet and being comfortable with that uncertainty and how you communicate and navigate that has been a big challenge for me.

With agile and with technology, you have to just be more comfortable with uncertainty and having things unfold the way that they do.

Babita:

So what are the good things that you say you've got from stepping out of the so-called corporate world and working more in partnership with these scrappy startups that perhaps you wouldn't have got within PepsiCo?

Kate:

Yeah, I think we, in the past, had started to embrace agile as a concept. We called it responsive ways of working, but it's basically just an internal branding around what agile is. So I had some familiarity with how that approach works, but I always say I got schooled in proper agile because it's one thing to apply agile to, I don't know, an innovation project but it's completely different, I think, to do it from a software perspective because you legitimately just don't know what you don't know. So I think I've gotten a much deeper understanding of the benefits of agile but also the pitfalls.

The other area is, I think, how to have fun, right? If you look at the culture of a startup and particularly Zappi, it's a really fun culture and people enjoy each other. It's very intellectual, very witty, they're just funny, and it's enjoyable to be around. I appreciate things like when you're on a Zoom and everyone's chatting on the side. There's just a lot of fun, positive energy that we can learn from that, I think.

Babita:

Yeah, yeah, it's good. We get the best of both worlds, I would say, by working together. Agile is a term that's used a lot. It's quite funny. You go to conferences, of course, and you get the same terms used again. You could do the bingo set. What does agile mean to you? I'm putting you on the spot here. How would you define it?

Kate:

I'm sure the scrum masters of the world are going to say I'm saying it wrong. But I think, for me, it's a way of working that is ideal for really ambiguous situations. So how are you going to tackle a problem? I'll give you an example. How do you automate research in India? Come on. It's so hard, right? I don't even know where to begin. So if you're feeling that way, well, agile is designed for that. So it's really a series of principals and ways of working, right, which is ... Sprint planning is basically saying, "Okay, I know what my end goal is. My objective is this. How do I start today to get there?" 

That idea of two-week sprinting, I think, is a really clever way to organize work. Then the standup is also a nice tool within agile, which is just getting the team together. We can't do it physically anymore, but through Zoom, quick standup. Okay, how are you progressing? Are you getting blocked? Where are you getting blocked? Raise your hand, ask for help. It's just a faster way of dealing with ambiguity and problems and getting the teams to move together collectively against the right goals.

The other tool that's in agile that I think has been really helpful is objective-setting, so the OKR framework, which is pretty well-known from Google, which is a quarterly or monthly basis, really getting clear with the team on this is what the objective is, what we need to accomplish, and the key result piece. How are we going to measure that we've done that? That mindset is, I think, important to layer onto sprints because, otherwise, you don't know if you've actually accomplished your goals. You're making progress, but is it where we need it to get to or not? So the combination of those tools together, for me, is when I think agile, I think of those things.

Babita:

Yeah, you've got it, Kate. You are really part of a startup now. So if you think about your journey in your current role, where you're looking to drive change at scale through the platform you're looking to implement, through the automation of various products, for insights professionals being strategic business partners, as a leader in this space and if you were to advise other peers in other organizations or industries, what are the top three or four learnings that you say, “These are the things that I've learnt are the most important things that you need to do?"

Kate:

That's a really good question. It's hard to narrow in. I think the first is one we've talked a bit about over the course of the conversation, but this idea of getting really clear about what drives impact and what doesn't, and having the ability to always take a step back and say, "Is this worth it?" I talk about applying a complexity ROI a lot with the team, right? Is the complexity you're adding worth it or not?

This is important because in a lot of ways what we're doing is servicing. We're servicing our clients, which are our insights managers on the ground, but also to the business, right? So you have to balance, okay, if the user wants something, is it actually good and worth it or not, and choosing which hills you want to die on. Because, at times, it's fine, we need to accommodate, and, actually, maybe it makes sense because the people know the category or the brands or the business better than you do. But at other times, you have to really challenge people, so it's kind of picking and choosing which battles you want to fight.

Then I think that if you're going to bring in-house and rely less on the external research companies, recognizing that that's going to take time and it's going to require support. So ensuring that you've got, in your team, almost that servicing kind of mindset of being able to help give people that reassurance that you're not going to be the only one in the room having to make this tough call with your agency partners and your marketing team, like the ad didn't test well, you've got a friend here. 

Babita:

Yeah, yeah, so that confidence-building, trust, and hyper-care throughout that transitionary period seems really, really important.

Kate:

Yeah. I guess the last thought, I didn't mention this but it's interrelated, is that platform mindset. So think about platform every day, right? How can I get more out of the information that I have? How can we prove that we're getting smarter and smarter and not just pay lip service to that but really ensure that you're building the right infrastructure and making the right investments to deliver on that? Single-use is no more.

Babita:

Yeah, and that platform mindset is new to our industry. It's not so new to other industries, is it? You have Salesforce and Apple with their software platforms. But within the insight industry, it is new because, typically, insight professionals do think project by project, unless you've got a tracking vehicle, and I guess what you're trying to do is move away from that mindset to actually learn from what we have and be smarter over time.

Kate:

Right, exactly.

Babita:

Which I think is incredible. Does it mean that as well as skilling up insight professionals in a different way and almost that transformation from being that internal consultant, does it mean you need new types of skills within your teams and recruit new types of people that you don't currently have?

Kate:

Well, yeah, I would say definitely within my own team. The transformation that we're trying to drive has driven us towards, well, we do need diverse talent, in particular, around, what do you call it, diversity of thought. So, for example, one of my colleagues on my team comes from an IT background because you need people who are technologists because they're going to bring a completely different set of skills and mindset to the table. 

We have a person on the team who's a traditional marketer, as somebody who's sort of ultimately an end user of what we're trying to accomplish, and having that different mindset in the room has been really helpful. So those are just two examples, but I think that you're going to see more of that cross-pollination happening as we become more integrated as marketing as a broad function.

Think about marketing as a big umbrella. As you start to drive efficiencies and integration as a function in accomplishing these goals, I think you'll see more of that cross-pollination of skill sets, which is a great opportunity for a, quote-unquote, insights person, right, because they're going to have, I think, opportunities to move about our organizations in more effective ways as we go forward and contribute in different and exciting ways. 

Babita:

Yeah. So we've talked about change a lot. One of the key points that came out during an interview that Ryan did with Eric Salama, I don't know if you got a chance to listen to that?

Kate:

Yeah, I did. It's great.

Babita:

It was a great interview, what are the constants? Because we're all driving to do something different, something better, but our industry is such a great industry to be in, and at the core of what we're trying to do is help our business make better decisions and understand consumers. Within all this change you're looking to drive, what are the things that you think will always remain the same and it's important that they remain the same?

Kate:

That's such a great question. I think it, to me, comes back to base knowledge around behavioral science and understanding bias. Bias is always going to be a problem that you have to manage, right? We need to be experts in that and understanding that. Layering on top of that, there is a curiosity component to all insights work, which is how do we provide interesting storytelling to the business that helps them see that bias and make better decisions around it. The tendency towards group think or just forgetting that we're not the consumer and thinking, "Look at my amazing thing," well, it doesn't necessarily resonate with people who are not you. I think that, to me, is going to be the constant and an area where we have to continue to be the experts.

I would say we aren't anywhere near as savvy about applying behavioral science internally as we are about thinking about it externally. You hear all the time, right, "system one, system one." Everyone's obsessed with it, when it comes to can we make better methodology in how we engage consumers. But you don't hear as much of that coming from our function about applying it internally. But I think that, actually, where you see some of the biggest challenges in how people use learning is because of bias internally. How many times did people get the warning or get the feedback, "This isn't a good opportunity or good idea," and the teams disregard it? Then you end up making bad decisions as an organization because of that. So that area, I'm really fascinated with, as I think it's a constant, and it's how do we help improve that piece of it using our skill sets and our curiosity and storytelling prowess to get people motivated in the right ways.

Babita:

Yeah. Interesting, interesting. So we're nearly at the end of our interview, and, God, what a year it's been. We're all stuck at home, and it's hard. It's going to be a hard winter. Normally, we'd be jumping on planes and going to see each other. What are the sort of things that you think, "Yeah, this is going to be really exciting for our future and looking to 2021," in the midst of all this gloom that we have?

Kate:

Right, right. Well, I assume you mean on a professional level, right?

Babita:

Professional level and personal level.

Kate:

Okay. So, on a professional level, I would say that what really excites me about this space around platform learnings and meta is in storytelling, I think that we have an opportunity to really become a powerhouse in publishing. So with the new Ada site, we have a whole space where we're going to be pushing content out. I'm really excited about sharpening that skill set and using that. How do we take all this great information and make it really compelling? We're also working on a newsletter for our marketing leadership of bite-size, simple case studies. The material right now, to be frank, is a little bit dry, so I'm excited about thinking about how we can use things like video to spice it up and tell those stories in ways that really motivate and compel people to want to make the change. So that's an area where I feel like we are very underdeveloped in our thinking, and I'm excited intellectually to spend time on that.

I think, on a personal level, we have been enjoying going out to dinner a bit but sitting outdoors. So I'm trying to get myself motivated to take on mini-projects. Over the summer, when we went to the full lockdown earlier this year, I took up needlepoint, and I started a painting project. It's a book where you paint 50 different little pictures, and it teaches you the techniques. So I'm going to pick those things back up because since it's gotten a little bit more open, I haven't had as much time. I'm expecting I'm going to be in lockdown again this winter, so I'd like to do that. I was thinking maybe pick up a cook your way through XYZ, these kinds of projects that can give yourself some motivation and something to do because it definitely is a bit boring, but it's like how do you use that boring downtime to do something enriching for you and your family?

Babita:

It's interesting because when we first all went into lockdown, where travel just got canceled, Everybody went into this hyper mode of trying out different things. Then we've just gone into this dip of Zoom fatigue, and we've stopped having Zoom calls with families and friends, the thought of it, just like, "Oh, no, can't bear it." But you're right. With winter coming up, with everybody working from home, there's going to have to be this sense of how do you keep yourself going and motivated throughout that period. 

I personally keep on thinking about taking up a musical instrument, which I've been meaning to do. I keep on talking to my husband about it, but I just need to actually make it happen. Maybe we can motivate each other and you can show me your paintings, and I could play you a tune on whatever musical instrument I decide to take up.

Kate:

I love that.

Babita:

So, Kate, thank you so much for your time. This has been really interesting.

Kate:

Yeah, likewise.

Babita:

It's been really good to find this space to talk to each other out of our daily roles in what we're driving. So I'm sure I'll speak to you again, but thanks so much, and take care.

Kate:

Thank you.

Babita:

Bye. 

[Music transition to takeaways]

Babita:

So that was my interview with Kate. Ryan, what did you think?

Ryan:

I thought it was awesome. Similar to what you said prior to the episode, Kate, somebody who I know really well, I've worked with really closely for a long time. And so to zoom out a bit, in that interview, was awesome. I can only imagine how much we would have covered if you had both of them recorded. But the thing that strikes me is Kate has embodied the very reason why we started this podcast which is that she's embraced change. So I remember vividly when I first met Kate, she was running insights projects for the global snacks business at Pepsi. And we were concurrently coming up with this insane joint venture between the two companies. And then she was going to join the team. And this is before you were joining the team because you were still managing Kantar at that time.

And she was a researcher and now she's a digitally transformed program manager. She's taking an entire insights function and automating key components and understanding the people and the process and the politics and working within them. 

So I know this was an interview about Kate, but the work that you two have both done with a really unique partnership between a soda company and a software company is something that people should study as they're thinking about partnerships and change management. So I'm really glad that you folks did it.

Babita:

Yeah, I know. I totally echo what you're saying about Kate. And as we see through our insight lines, lots more people in that insight professionals are transitioning to that position. And coming from focusing on what a brand tracker should consist of to really learning what agile means and what scrum masters mean and just really being open to a new way of working has been a real privilege to see. So you say it's something that other insight professionals who are looking to take the skills that they have and move to this kind of role should really reach out to Kate and then talk to her more.

But actually one of the things we see that we talk about understanding, misunderstanding, and this is a really good sequel into our sort of final part of this podcast is digital transformation. And that's something Kate and I talked about. Digital transformation for me my career has been around for many many years, but it means different things. So it's something that is commonly misused and commonly misunderstood. So what do you think digital transformation means for our industry, Ryan?

Ryan:

Wow. Digital transformation is like such a buzzword that I'm not even sure that I can unpack it. So if you think about it, as you say that term has been around for a long time, because in the early 2000s it became accessible for businesses to reach consumers easily, to transact on the internet and to disrupt supply chains; Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix. I mean all of these companies that we all still put all our keynotes on and I love them all, they changed the world. I think what you're seeing here is businesses are at varying degrees of their journey to modernize their business models, to shake their legacy, supply chains and ways of working and organizational structures and cultures and technology. And so it's an initiative that I think a lot of organizations are on a long journey with but for whatever reason it seems to be an initiative that is more in vogue right now more than ever.

And I can only attribute it to be due to the fact that nobody has a choice. I mean Zappi is a 6-year-old startup. We had to evolve our business model 2 years ago. And so to me it's distilled into the fact that people move, markets move, companies need to keep up, and companies that have supply chain oriented business models from the seventies can't operate on a competitive scale regardless of how big their brand is in this marketplace today in 2020/21. And so digital transformation is this act of looking at a business ecosystem from culture to systems, to processes, to talent and optimizing it so that it can play in an on-demand climate. What do you think it is though?

Babita:

Oh, if I relate it to our industry specifically, way way back then digital transformation could have been from going from telephone research to online research. Today it's a means for insight professionals to work within their organizations to provide better insights faster and to enable smarter learnings. What's key is if you're in a digital transformation role you need to be clear as to the business benefit. What is it that you're trying to do with that transformation? And you need to take the people along with you because transformation is not just the technology but it's the people that work with it as well.

So digital transformation sometimes you think it needs to be a tech person but actually I think it needs to be somebody like Kate, who understands yes the legacy of their department and the role of insights, but manage stakeholders and manage people, manage processes. So it's about improvement but you need to be clear on what that improvement is.

Ryan:

I like that. And it is interesting as much as it's a buzzword, there is a correlation between the Kates of the world the Matt Cahills of the world, the Michelle Ganslers of the world, the Christian from Colgates of the world and their desire to digitally transform and brands that are hitting their Q3 numbers, insights departments that are growing, budgets that are growing. And there's another correlation between those who say, "We're going to just keep doing it the way we've always been doing it," and job cuts and budget cuts. So all I know is the companies that are pushing the ball forward are winning. So I'm glad that we can unpack the definition, but there is a correlation between that desire to change and optimize performance.

Babita:

And COVID has only accelerated that need.

Ryan:

Totally, totally. I mean, you know this Babita we both have been in this game too long like, "Oh we can't do X because it changes the trend lines." Who gives a shit about the trend lines when we're in a global pandemic? It doesn't matter. So now all of a sudden everybody who needed one is getting the benefit of... It doesn't matter what the trend lines are because we're in a new environment, we're operating where trend lines are being created and there's uncertainty in front of us. So I think it's a really good point you made.

Babita:

As always Ryan, it's good to have deeper meaningful conversations with you about digital transformation and anything else. So I look forward to our next podcast and to those listeners out there please subscribe to our podcast. 

Ryan:

Please reach out to us if you'd like to hear us interview anybody. You can find us at insideinsights@zappistore.com. And Babita I think for our next episode given I haven't seen your lovely face in person in 9 months or however long, I think we should bring some champagne to the next episode. I just think it's the right thing to do Babs.

Babita:

Yeah, sounds like a grand idea. Cheers, bye.