AR2021-What is Research Strategy? (Chris Geison, Senior Research Strategist, Workday)
—> You are the reason of this talk, I’m tired of seeing researchers I respect, doing work that wastes their time and talent
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But we do deserve this seat of the table
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But we need to get more strategic part of about our practice
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My concern is that focusing on leadership, excludes research consultants, teams of one, non-profits, etc.
—> My title says I’m a research strategist, so many people ask what is research strategy
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I was conducting foundational research to demonstrate to the org that research could drive strategic decisions
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At end of presentation, there is a link where you can access resources discussed during course of talk, and invitation to join him
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Need people in space who are interested in this work, to collaborate with him, and define research strategy
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Libraries could be filled trying to figure out that definition
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Researchers need to get better at saying no, otherwise they have no strategy, but just sense of urgency
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Don’t feel bad if you don’t
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Kate Towsey of ReOps, ran a workshop and attendees included leaders from all big companies
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She got many blank stares and question marks, when she asked these leader about their strategy
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Marketing, Sales, IT will provide a strategy. Why can’t research do the same?
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Otherwise research won’t be taken seriously
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Locus of decision making (individual, team, org)
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Org structure
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UX maturity level
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Define strategy
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Collecting research opportunities
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Prioritizing opportunities
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Measuring research actvitiies
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Defining through a mission statement
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Collecting through question workshops
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Prioritizing through assessment grids
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Measuring-it depends, but I have some thoughts on that too
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This is a default research strategy
- Driven by most urgent demands, greater political clout, and the rest put into a backlog
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But what are we saying “no” to here?
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What are we not doing ?
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Who determines what is important, and does a small number of users get minimal attention?
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Looks to be optimizing product, rather than doing foundational, generative work
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What kind of impact?
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What will it take?
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Your SWOT?
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What is your value proposition? You should say this succinctly and compellingly.
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What are you saying no to?
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How to measure success?
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Shout-out to Sinead Davis Cochrane for providing this inspiration
—> Goal of questions workshop is to see unknowns in the research project
—> The workshop can be run to address whenever you want to address: a backlog, new priorities, new teams forming, etc.
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Manager, researchers, designers, PMs (depending on org)
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Goal to develop muscles for good research, and questions for the business
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Since teams are a site of good thinking
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Create a space where surfacing ideas is critical
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Two themes (People/Product)
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Revealing Objectives or Driving Objectives (the solution space)
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Facilitating discussion is critical as goal of any framework is not to answer question, but provide a structure for discussion
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Surface issues, clarify issues, and document them
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—> Do an assessment matrix whenever you complete a questions workshop
—> Purpose of simplicity criteria is to figure out how much work is required.
—> Risk is critical column and can determine ultimate prioritization, but need to place it against other factors
—> The value to users, organization, or specific to research organization itself, will show case research orgs ability to do certain things
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Don’t assume every project requested has strong buy-in. Be clear on what level of stakeholder buy-in is required to help determine level of resources, and level of partnership
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We need time to implement significant findings
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And if users don’t see utility of solution, is there time to check what can be done?
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Or is there?
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Did project achieve aims?
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Was the research used by stakeholders?
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There are lot of metrics that float around orgs, and PMs are assessed on certain metrics like reducing churn, usability scores, etc.
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Researchers need to ask what these metrics are, and ask whether project achieved the aims of these metrics in some way
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This can be measured and can be tracked and can be done
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I hope you’ll join me, as I want us to get this right together,
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What to address if organizational objectives are many?
- What’s an example of a project / initiative / research study you’ve said no to?
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What happens when you feel you need to say no to leadership? How does leadership respond?
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Thing to keep in mind is that by saying “no”, you are saying “yes” to something else.
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You have limited resources and need to figure out where to invest
- To what degree can we build a useful/helpful research strategy when the organization itself doesn’t have a well-formed mission or strategic perspective?