Our Customer-Driven, 'Sense & Respond' Process

We believe that good 'process' is a critical success factor.  And, while every project is unique, we typically suggest these 4 steps:

Establish mutual understanding of objectives

From the beginning of a project we work with you to establish a mutual understanding of project objectives and critical business issues. Inputs might include team pre-briefings, industry reports, past research and direct category experience.

Assemble and equip a core 'sense & respond' team

While each client relationship is unique, we try to foster a collaborative working relationship with you and your team. Shared learning experiences energize teams and we create those experiences. To help out, we offer to equip teams via ‘process training’, ‘team-building’, ‘creativity/ideation training’ and ‘back-room listening skills’ prior to research.

Conduct stakeholder research

Qualitative research—direct, unbiased stakeholder engagement—is the single most-valuable tool an organization has to quickly explore, generate, evaluate and refine ideas and issues related to virtually any topic.  Stakeholder insights, that are properly discovered, understood, interpreted and deployed,  provide an excellent starting point for every conceivable strategic decision an organization must make. So, we conduct qualitative research with relevant stakeholders—customers, employees and other communities—to reveal valuable and timely insight into their ever-changing thoughts and feelings. Whenever possible and appropriate, we encourage teams to actively observe, and sometimes to even participate in the interview process.

Facilitate team-based concept development, problem-solving & action planning

While we certainly do provide reports, nothing can replace the value of a committed team that  processes information together, makes decisions and energetically moves forward with joint resolve. So, we facilitate a variety of debriefing, ideation, problem-solving and action planning sessions. We mobilize your team and promote thoughtful team immersion in the learning, concept development and action-planning process. Reports are optional—rapid, on-target results are not.