Day 2-Using Integrated Insight to Drive Growth
— Good morning. It is a delight to join you all and hear about your world and where it connects with mine
— I will share the journey my team went on to transform our research team into an integrated insights team
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Changing our organization from “how we work” to “what we do”
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How we moved from business insights teams providing tactical services to feeling like we were driving the strategic direction of the BBC
— But first, a bit of market context and business context to understand why we did what we did
— In 2017, we were given approach to reshaping and developing team at BBC World Services
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I’ll go through our proposed solutions
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I’ll also go through the pitfalls and reflections on what we did right and where to improve
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I’ll also have reflections on what I’d do differently
— Then I’ll discuss the benefits of these changes to the team, the people in it, and the outcome for the BBC as a whole.
— Our vision was as follows: Build a multi disciplinary team to help BBC achieve ambitious growth targets, and transition our operations to a digital world
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This all had to be done optimizing for efficiency in our existing services
— The big question was: How to achieve that transformation when you only have nine people, and a budget less than 1% of a division of 3,000 people
— But first let’s begin with where we started and what caused the need for change
— The BBC set out ambitious growth targets of reaching 550 million people by the BBC centennial celebration in 2023
— Where would this growth come from? Who would be our users? What would they want?
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Traditionally our audiences were tv and audio, but growth would clearly from digital content where there was both fierce competition and different audience habits
— Our team was small, data limited and not prioritized, our research potential was not understood. And in a large, established organization like the BBC ,it was hard to pitch for funding
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The assumption was that the digital future would minimize need for research, without expensive specialist projects
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Investment resources were typical made for editorial content, and improving content
— The business was not set up to think about innovation and growth funding for a broad variety of teams
— Our team was great and committed, but there was a disconnect between business need and actual information supplied
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We were not investing time or project budgets in the right area
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Our main focus was on tactical queries or performance reporting
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The remaining time was spent arguing with stakeholders about the reporting
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— The structure of the team was suited to larger headcount and we were organized according to reporting specialty, while our sub-teams were siloed into teams of 2-3 people delivering qualitative research and quantitative insight
— Research plan was driven by reporting methodology rather than business need
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Clear need for broader methods for our projects
— A new model for how to work needed to be created, which would allow us to pitch for more reputations and resources
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Solutions came from new approach on how we commission and undertake projects, and allocate resources
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Rather than structure to allocate workflow
— Based on my prior role at Center Office for Information, I shifted our team from a task based approach rather than a team-based one
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We also commissioned work at multiple skill-levels and skillsets
— We then reviewed business priorities to see where research could drive particular impact
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We’d consult with stakeholders across the organization, but would prevent them from handing over a shopping list, and capturing priorities for year
— We would then scope and define research objectives, then allocate a virtual team
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The team had a blend of expertise, which led to far more creative approach and brings us closer to the audiences we serve
— Budgets were allocated by project, and scale/scope of work, rather than assessment of how much to spend on a particular type of work
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This has improved capacity planning across the year, and helped us solve key business questions
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Commissioning projects across multiple regions, and kinds of content
— Short-term requests are managed via allocation team, and requests measured against an annual plan
— Right disciplines now lead the project, not the most senior person. This enables all members to develop leadership skills
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This can introduce new skills and provide a balance of expertise across the team
— This enables us to remain within head-counts, and we don’t need to include specialists for brand new disciplines
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Manage is to coach and develop direct reports, which creates line management oppotunties without having them wait for an opening for promotion
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It also supports BBC diversity commitments and more flexibility with the team
— As with any change program, there were transition challenges with this approach and staff push-back
— What helped was the shift of emphasis to proactive planning. Instead of firefighting, it felt like stepping away to get a better view of serving customers
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People wanted to have view of scenarios that were avaiable
— There was also a fatigue of change, given prior restructurings
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Fear of being given too much work, and being overloaded
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Managers also felt like they were losing status and control, as they liked being in charge of the delivery team
— What helped us? First, clear communication is important to keep reinforcing the benefits of the change, and to show-case examples of what was working really well
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Framing was interesting, as making the effort about future-proofing and remaining relevant was a good source of motivation
— There was also tenacity and energy in pushing the changes forward
— We found the project allocation process needed to be transparent for the team. After experimenting, found allocation given by team leads and managers to ensure clear collaboration across management team
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By being part of this allocation process, managers regained status they lost
— Waiting for allocations meeting often slowed down our response
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To speed this up, came up with decision tree for day-to-day use to consider work that needed to be triaged vs. a straightforward request vs. a long-term project
— We also found a way to meet the desire of stakeholders for a dedicated research team/person for a specific market or platform.
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Found go-to person who worked as an account manager for business’s built virtual teams that have expertise or interest in different disciplines
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Proof of concept was in delivery, and concentrated on delivering to model rather than trying to document all details
— Ability to pitch for reinvestment budget for year one, and adopting principles into new process
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Team felt the benefits of change quickly
— Service also accelerated digital transformation in 2017, and model was expanded to the marketing team,
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This created change across the organization as a whole, and galvanized us to work
— So what to do different?
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With any change or transition, relay to staff that change isn’t happening to them, but that staff should drive change they want to see.
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This would have been useful for me, as it lets people take ownerships of challenge and solutions
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We needed more time to plan and allocate resources, and getting communication right
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We found that junior members were doing same work as manager for less money— so needed clear roles and responsibilities for someone more senior and one with less experience
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Accountable layers for each project teams
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Our project suffered from scope creep, becoming too unwieldy or taking too long
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Added project management support to let key milestones be met
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— So what were the outcomes and benefits?
— More career development opportunities in the org, and job satisfaction improved as work stayed interesting
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Team developed transferrable new skills
— Tailored training and development needs to the team
— Team members all gained leadership experience without being promoted to management roles
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For those who don’t want to move to people management, this enabled us recognize craft skills of senior individuals
— For the team, we had the benefit of a helicopter view of the business:
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Taking ownership of audience narrative, and more confidence in presenting data to stakeholders
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Much closer to business cycle and business planning as research is integrated into business action like product and editorial
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Team has developed multi-disciplinary skills, and recognize disciplines to solve business problems
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Became more valued source to the business. Created culture of innovationa nd learning within the team, and lets us work on problems
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Improved staff retention
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Investment in team increase four-fold, and less vulnerable to cost-cutting and being outdated
— For the business, we had the following benefits:
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It was cost effective, expanding to a new approach enabled us to free up 25% of total budget to focus on research projects, rather than headcount
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Saw truly innovative thinking on solving a business challenge, and won industry awards for proejcts
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Responded to evolving needs of the organization, without having to restructure ourselves
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Efficient and dynamic decision making
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Able to contribute to decision making for the business
— We have the capability to tell world service what to do, rather than just tell them what the audience thinks
Q&A
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How did you get buy-in for discipline agnostic delivery model?
— Within the team, it is quite tricky. I would say that mantra was digital transformation and there was a sense that digital skills had better career opportunities
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The transformation was a chance to bring groups together, allowed people to value these skills, and transfer capabilities from one team to another
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How did you handle changes in strategic priorities during the year?
— News organization priorities can change very quickly
— We are confident that our work-slate and main core is something that adds value longer-term
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We add value to business and we are thinking of what we need to do to get strategic growth through the business
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Having tactical resource and budget for the group allows us to provide tactical information
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Can you tell us about the decision tree?
— Simple decision tree where someone comes and asks a question
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Putting every request form stakeholder into allocation group. This was not sustainable
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Box with arrows with goal of following critical path
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Classifications include: Is it something we were working on, just get on and do that work, something immediate triage team, items stakeholders could work on themselves
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How well were stakeholders in design/delivery aligned with approach?
— I think if we tried to align with stakeholder there would have been pushback
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Situation of hamster wheel where you don’t have resources, but facing stakeholder demands beyond those resources
— We did transformation in spite of changes, and focused on making research team do differently, with goal of improving quality of research coming out
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Once stakeholders saw increased quality, they didn’t push back
— It wasn’t all about as working as a team. Also made changes to things like self-serve data to make data provided easier to access and manage capacity within the team, rather than a request response unit.