This week I’ve been thinking about the roles that Insight professionals are likely to play in an AI-shaped world, which is the topic of the IMA’s Insight forums in November and December.
It’s too early to see the details of any reporting line roles, but I think we can start to map a journey that we will all need to go on – or continue along. A journey from being researchers or analysts to becoming Insight activists.
This topic is framing the way I’m thinking about the content I’m reading and listening to, including a new edition of Matthew Syed’s book Black Box Thinking which has been published to mark its 10th anniversary.
It’s a great book, packed full of examples of how some sectors (such as aviation) have become famous for how they record and share learnings when accidents occur, whilst others have a culture of sweeping problems under the carpet and never moving forward.
10 years ago, Steve Wills and I became rather obsessed by this book, and it helped contextualise some of our thinking on Insight farming – the critical habit of discussing new research and analysis findings, checking facts and figures that seem at odds with existing learning, investigating contradictions, and building big picture summaries drawn from multiple sources.
It’s not just the summaries themselves that are critical, it’s the discussions between Insight people along the way.
But as we think about Insight roles of the future, I think one of the behavioural roles that will give us great opportunities to expand our remit is that of the knowledge steward, where we are not only farming the collective insight produced by the Insight team, but checking, challenging, combining and curating the information, intelligence and purported insights produced by many others around the organisation.
Please listen to find out more!
Topics Discussed
- A framework for Insight management (2.02)
- Black Box Thinking: the differences between industries (4.39)
- The relevance for Insight teams (8.43)
- The importance of discussing insight (10.53)
- Learning from John Cleese (11.42)
- The emerging need for knowledge stewards (15.42)
- Thank you for 20,000 downloads! (22.57)
James Wycherley
Chief Executive, IMA and
Host of the Transforming Insight podcast