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These are the latest articles posted by the IMA.

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Who's afraid of the big bad strategy?

Does the challenge of developing an effective strategy for Insight seem daunting? Might it be easier than we think? Developing a strategy can help us off the proverbial hamster wheel, and it can also be critical to motivating and inspiring our teams to deliver greater value.

Does bigger mean better for Insight teams?

It is often said that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and the same can be said for Insight teams. The latest IMA research reveals that larger Insight teams rank slightly higher for overall capability than smaller teams, but larger teams are not better at everything.

IMA members' update, August 2018

Wherever you're spending time this August, we hope that you've found time to both relax and reflect on how much difference your Insight team is making. Here's a short summary of the things that we're working on this month, please contact us if any of them could help you and your company.

Could snackable content improve your Insight communication?

A bowl of fresh strawberries is a quintessential image of the British Summer. Eye catching and attractive, they make for an easy healthy snack. What if we could display insights to our various audiences of decision makers and stakeholders in attractive, bite sized, easy to digest formats?

Is your Insight knowledge system fit for purpose?

A truly effective Insight team does so much more than generating new Insights by undertaking new projects and analysis. Indeed, much of the Insight that a team can generate comes from their accumulated knowledge and understanding achieved over many years.

Are your Insight communications lost in translation?

We certainly don’t have to be from different sides of the pond to have trouble communicating effectively with each other. Sometimes, within our organisations, communication between Insight teams and their stakeholders can make it feel as though the two parties are speaking different languages!

How are your influencing tactics?

If you’re watching the World Cup at the moment you’ll hear lots about tactics. A key part of those tactics involves psychology. But how is that relevant to Insight? In the world of influencing, it is psychology that needs to come to the fore, best done through the use of Behavioural Economics.

True insight requires time for reflection

Make time for reflection. Use your team meetings to develop a common understanding of customers’ value, behaviour, drivers and environment. An Insight team can’t create value unless it agrees on what it knows.

Think like a designer to generate insights

Design thinking encourages organisations to focus on the people they're creating for and leads to human-centred products, services, and internal processes. The core of design thinking is to know the questions you need to answer and make sure that solutions are actionable.

What sort of relationships do you have with decision makers?

Progressive Insight teams say that they are on a journey from the model of a remote service team, to a much closer business partnership model with their key stakeholders or decision makers. Best practice is to aim at becoming trusted advisers to the senior decision makers in your organisation.

Does your organisation nurture Insight?

Does your organisation really have Insight, or does it merely have a large and varied collection of individual insights from countless different insight projects? Why creating a curated overview is the most valuable Insight work you can do.

Grab the moment and maximise your impact

As Insight professionals, we get to attend lots of meetings. But when someone turns to us for our opinion, do we always make the most of the opportunity? We share our top tips to maximise your impact, not just immediately, but also longer term, by performing well when given the chance in a meeting.