Day 2- Getting to the ‘So What?’: How Management Consulting Practices Can Transform Your Approach to Research

— Thrilled to be here as part of this incredible line-up

— So what does I mean by phrase “so what”?

 

— From my tenure at McKinsey, heard the phrase, and it means get to point and don’t make me wait

— I leveraged management consultant practices to be seen as deeply trusted advisor instead of a technician, to provide specific ways of working with practices, to help amp up research work to extend influenc,e and drive action and how to measure success

 

— Worked in management consulting for 20 years, but not as consultant, and transitioned into UXR a decade ago, and built a team of fifty

  • McKinsey one of big three consulting strategy firms, and influential in private and public sector and has grown significantly over past 20 years
    • From 15,000 when I started, to 50,000 people today

— To navigate org, you needed to act as an internal consultant, and leadership roles are filled by former consultants

  • I will talk about strategy consulting and how to strengthen own practices

— Why talk about this?

  • UXR is at an inflection point, as we shift and resettle, with some evolution happening

— Can borrow best practices from those on understanding problems, and proposing solutions

  • Strategy consultants demonstrate this well

 

— Helped position research in role of trusted adviser and working in enterprise context, helped free from tech org and UX in particular, and got to work on problems and apply craft to unusual opportunities

  • Whole time using tools from MC to bring people along adventures in design thinking

— For org using data to solve, problems, UXR worked to bring me influence

 

— Best practices are shaped by culture and structure, and think important to share McK team structure and culture with you, to understand how embedded they are

 

— McKinsey retains an entrepreneurial spirit, as partnership, which owns stake in org, like law firm

  • Delivering great client work and influencing org, as it grows

— Day 1, have obligation to dissent and push on problems and do something about it, and identifying opportunities and seizing them

— Decentralized org, in form of committees, as global network with different nodes of power around various senior partners, and own technology

  • Not one company, but federation of firms

— Doing anything at scale means being good at navigating web of stakeholders and coalitions of support for what you want to get done

— Finally, there are dynamic teams

  • As consultant, you are thrown in new context, and new problem, and collaborate very closely with new people, every 8-12 weeks
  • Importance of shared playbook, vocab, and norms important for high quality product

— Culture like this is crucible for user researchers who need to explain reasoning and if you want to get anything done

 

— Consider management consulting practices to extend our influence

 

— Practice 1: Bring truth to power, and take bold stance on what to come next

  • You should feel empowered to challenge status quo

— UXRs can take advantage of combining subject matter expertise, and combine willingness to challenge power, and bold stance on what org and team should do next

  • Typically stop at findings and insight, but don’t advocate for direction
  • We are experts and should provoke vision

— Consultants rely on rich primary data, and analyzing client data and grasp health of organization and secondary industry data, and outside perspectives from team

— UXRs focus too much on user data, and letting it eclipse other sources of data

  • Should consider other data sources

— We should also focus more relentlessly on outcomes, as consultants define targets, but don’t have same stake in long-tail of work

  • Outcome orientation with short-term thinking, can lead to short-term solutions

— When paired with empathy and design thinking, incredibly power

  • UXR can define goals and identify changes in user and person behavior to move to lagging outcomes and progress to outcomes and can work more collaboratively and shared definition of done

— When communicating with management consultants, you find they rely on treasure troves of road-tested frameworks for achieving goals

  • Tons of resources for goals
  • Help communicate impact, and refined

— Help insight to refine and impact every hour of work, and take note what accelerates impact, and reuse them

  • Publicly available resources

 

— Consultants write docs, slides, memos like middle school essay

  • Take most important message upfront, regardless of format
  • This is way of life, and will be called out for it

— In UXR, often presented with lack of clear idea of what comes next. Infinitely ups memorability of work across the org

— Without adoption, the value of an initiative is zero, as people here know how to develop understanding empathy for users, and lack of being seen trusted advisors

  • Core difference between launch and landing
    • How we can communicate matters
  • Introducing products and features that encourages adoption

— How to apply in real world?

  • In move from silos to more tech organization model, and where falling in love with problems
  • Needed to build new ways of working

— To help ease transition, define scope and vision of program called Product University

  • Will walk through step by step process

— Asking the Experts: Asked colleagues, and looked outward to research design and curricula from other consultancies, and asked in-house learning expert to joining team

— Focusing on Outcomes: Identified indicators to monitor outcome of work as decreased time for release over time

— Hoarding (and re-using) Jewels: Used existing frameworks for communicating findings, like template for a memo, and wrote it up with salient points

— Focus on Adoption: Stepped back that idea of transformation as positive force, and focused on understanding what brought joy and what brought frustration

  • Listened to what people struggled with, and blocked from doing, and position in ways that would work for day-to-day

— Getting to the ‘So What’?: Wrote out memo to articulate what to do

— Bringing Truth to Power: Can imagine was sensitive topic and people’s expertise at job and tried to be honest and protective of colleagues of how legacy culture

  • Concrete recommendations for right curriculum
  • Asked teams to attend training together and lack of understanding of other people’s jobs and felt if attended training together would better understand
    • Went to friends first, and asked to try this. Risking little budget, and used impact to get whole org on board

— The result? Product University rolled to several thousand colleagues across world, and included service blueprinting and journey mapping

  • Increased customer satisfaction

— So how do we do this for other ventures?

  • Go find big decisions: Reach out to leaders in org who are leading, whether laterally or by default— ask about decisions coming up and unusual opportunities for what is on their minds, to get deeper and broader influence
    • Seek opportunities for impact, even if immediately outside of lane, as will help build your reputation
  • Invest in relationships, and build trust and social capital with teams to amplify your work, and establish as expert and generate interest

— Strategy consultants succeed when establish themselves as expert advisors, and these practices will help you do the same

— So thank you with trip down memory lane, and would love to chat more

Q&A

  1. How to measure impact in scenarios with frequent moving?
    1. Always suggest how they measure success with something they are doing. Provide clear idea of what success will look like:
      1. Be directive and advisory in regarding to putting something in place
  2. How to ace expert interviews from UXR perspective?
    1. Expert interview doesn’t need to be perfectly constructed, so approach as being curious about experience and why they value what they value
    2. Understand why they believe what they believe and why they do what they do
  3. What can in-house researcher add to conversation working with MC?
    1. So much knowledge and perspective, and likely analyzed situation and secret weapon to management consultant
    2. Goal to be seen as collaborator and partner
  4. Top things outside of McK that you will take with you?
    1. Learning lay of land, and figuring out strategy to figure out motivations of people working with, before implementing agenda
    2. Idea of being experts if we work hard enough. Empowers you to figure it out and gives confidence to ask questions
  5. Threatening when consultant comes up— so how to have productive relationship?
    1. Ally self with person, and give ability to share, and ask questions about their work