05 - GRIT Report Sneak Peek: The State of Insights In 2022

Lenny: 00:00:10

Hello everybody.

Lenny: 00:00:11

It is Lenny Murphy here with episode five of the green book podcast.

Lenny: 00:00:16

Before this, we were trying to think of some pithy star wars

Lenny: 00:00:19

reference for episode five.

Lenny: 00:00:21

We won't go there.

Lenny: 00:00:22

But what we are going to do is to talk about the upcoming grit report.

Lenny: 00:00:27

This is kind of a labor of love, uh, this, this session, because

Lenny: 00:00:31

we are going to be talking to our secret weapon Nelson Whipple.

Lenny: 00:00:35

And before I actually bring Nelson on, I want to give you a

Lenny: 00:00:38

little bit of background because he's a bit of an unsung hero.

Lenny: 00:00:41

I've known Nelson for gosh, probably 10 years or so, and an amazing

Lenny: 00:00:47

researcher and the opportunity presented itself a few years ago

Lenny: 00:00:50

to uh, bring him in, to help with.

Lenny: 00:00:55

Little did I know that that help would turn into an amazing collaboration

Lenny: 00:01:01

where Nelson has raised the bar on every single aspect of grit from

Lenny: 00:01:05

questionnaire design certainly through the analysis and in writing he's driven

Lenny: 00:01:10

the expansion of the usability of grit data to address other use cases and other

Lenny: 00:01:15

product lines that we are launching.

Lenny: 00:01:17

He has just made everything better.

Lenny: 00:01:19

He challenges me to be better.

Lenny: 00:01:21

In most recently for this grit report that is about to come out.

Lenny: 00:01:24

I was was ill during that time.

Lenny: 00:01:27

We were under a deadline.

Lenny: 00:01:28

He, He did most of the heavy lift from a writing standpoint.

Lenny: 00:01:30

It's, we've tried to keep it about 50, 50 this next report that is is coming out.

Lenny: 00:01:36

It's probably 90%.

Lenny: 00:01:38

And it's damn good.

Lenny: 00:01:40

So with that I would like to bring on my friend, my

Lenny: 00:01:44

colleague Nelson Whipple Nelson.

Nelson: 00:01:46

Welcome.

Nelson: 00:01:47

Thank you, Lenny.

Nelson: 00:01:48

And uh, going to be hard to follow that interim.

Lenny: 00:01:51

Everything I said is absolutely true.

Lenny: 00:01:53

And I just haven't had the opportunity to say that.

Lenny: 00:01:54

So, Nelson do you want to give the audience a little bit more background

Lenny: 00:01:59

on on you before, the grit era of your.

Nelson: 00:02:05

I spent most of my life working with four smaller consulting

Nelson: 00:02:10

firms on strategic projects for clients of all sizes in all kinds

Nelson: 00:02:13

of industries, mostly using contract analysis and building simulation

Nelson: 00:02:17

models, but also using other techniques, mostly quantitative work, but also.

Nelson: 00:02:22

Uh, But they call them quality quantum projects in some circles where do the

Nelson: 00:02:26

qualitative and the quantitative, so that you get marketing input the vocabulary

Nelson: 00:02:31

and so forth, built directly into it.

Nelson: 00:02:33

So I'm pretty sensitive to a lot of the different areas that we look at and also

Nelson: 00:02:38

what they're supposed to mean and the impact that they're supposed to have.

Nelson: 00:02:41

So when we look at things like this, the selection criteria for

Nelson: 00:02:45

suppliers and methods, you know, there's always at the top of the list.

Nelson: 00:02:49

Insights quality, but that's hard to define and it's not defined in terms

Nelson: 00:02:54

of any of these specific methods.

Nelson: 00:02:55

And it's interesting to see how we can discern whether people are actually

Nelson: 00:03:01

getting the quality that they say they want from the kinds of things.

Lenny: 00:03:05

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:03:06

So, And we always make a point in the introduction that

Lenny: 00:03:09

grit, it is an evolving tool.

Lenny: 00:03:11

And that's a great example, right?

Lenny: 00:03:13

We, I think every iteration we realized there's a better way to ask

Lenny: 00:03:16

this question, or there's a follow-up question we need to ask, or uh, sometimes

Lenny: 00:03:20

we don't need to ask that anymore.

Lenny: 00:03:21

So we can get to, to better a better data, but we're probably

Lenny: 00:03:25

putting the cart before the horse.

Lenny: 00:03:26

I think we'll get into some of that stuff.

Lenny: 00:03:28

One thing we don't have the opportunity to do is the authors often is to kind

Lenny: 00:03:32

of step back and think and share, what we personally found to be most

Lenny: 00:03:37

interesting from this massive dataset that, that we collect and the analysis.

Lenny: 00:03:44

And again, I want to reiterate that most of the heavy duty analysis uh, Nelson

Lenny: 00:03:47

as far closer to, even than I am and taking just a little bit of a step back

Lenny: 00:03:51

from from the grunt work of producing Greg, what did you find most interesting?

Lenny: 00:03:58

What popped out for you when you were doing the analysis?

Lenny: 00:04:01

I'm thinking, this is important.

Lenny: 00:04:02

This is something that really is a finding that is impactful

Lenny: 00:04:07

for the industry as a whole.

Nelson: 00:04:08

Well, First I was looking through the draft that we got back from the.

Nelson: 00:04:13

And what I noticed the most, what stood out the most to me was

Nelson: 00:04:15

the number of blank pages in it.

Nelson: 00:04:19

And first I thought, oh, those must be the ones that Lenny road, but

Nelson: 00:04:22

no, they're actually the ones where the commentaries are going to go.

Nelson: 00:04:25

And I just wanted to mention that so that people know where we are

Nelson: 00:04:27

in the process, but also because.

Nelson: 00:04:29

The quality of the commentaries has gotten a lot better over the years.

Nelson: 00:04:33

And so I'm looking forward to when we have those in this edition, and then

Nelson: 00:04:36

I'm sure we'll find even more impactful stuff because those are, and this is

Nelson: 00:04:39

not a plug because I don't do that.

Nelson: 00:04:40

But uh, I was really impressed with the ones that we've gotten

Nelson: 00:04:42

the last couple of issues, I think.

Nelson: 00:04:44

And it'll be really interesting to see what we get this time to.

Nelson: 00:04:47

Uh, I think overall what stood out for me is if we think about two of the sections

Nelson: 00:04:53

that we don't usually make very much.

Nelson: 00:04:55

Um, Maybe because we save them for the last, maybe because if we don't see much

Nelson: 00:04:59

change the day in the life of the insights professional and the evolving insights

Nelson: 00:05:02

professional, those kind of seem to be in some ways at the core of the findings,

Nelson: 00:05:09

because one of the things that we, one of the things that we always see is that

Nelson: 00:05:12

when we look at the day in the life, which is how much of your time are you

Nelson: 00:05:15

spending on these various activities?

Nelson: 00:05:17

We always find that it doesn't change year to year, and it literally.

Nelson: 00:05:20

Doesn't change, even though the sample might change a little bit, even though

Nelson: 00:05:24

there might be other, the percentages, literally don't change for what

Nelson: 00:05:27

they're spending on, implementing the research uh, designing the research,

Nelson: 00:05:32

managing the research, analyzing reporting, and consulting and so forth.

Nelson: 00:05:36

But if you pull it apart more, you start to see that there are lots of things

Nelson: 00:05:40

going on underneath that and that.

Nelson: 00:05:43

One of the things that we see when we pull it apart is that people that are using

Nelson: 00:05:48

more technology are we, I think always had the supposition that if you leverage

Nelson: 00:05:54

technology more and automate more things, then you can spend more time consulting.

Nelson: 00:05:58

But what we found on the buyer side is.

Nelson: 00:06:01

Some of the people that are investing more in technology are investing in it so they

Nelson: 00:06:05

can bring more of the research in house.

Nelson: 00:06:07

So it actually spending more time on the research and a lower

Nelson: 00:06:10

percentage of time on the consulting.

Nelson: 00:06:12

So that's interesting and it gets to this dynamic that we see under all

Nelson: 00:06:16

of the sections, which is good to think about is that some people are

Nelson: 00:06:20

leveraging actually using suppliers more so they can spend less time on

Nelson: 00:06:25

research and spend more time consulting.

Nelson: 00:06:27

And then other people are leveraging technology so that they can take more of

Nelson: 00:06:30

that work in-house and control more of it.

Nelson: 00:06:33

And that was a trend that I think is a little bit counterintuitive to what we

Nelson: 00:06:37

had expected, but we see that through all of the different sections on supplier

Nelson: 00:06:41

criteria, the methods they're using.

Nelson: 00:06:44

And I think it gets to one of the things that seems to be a major theme is that

Nelson: 00:06:51

in addition to the people that are taking investing in technology solutions

Nelson: 00:06:54

in DIY, so they can do more of the.

Nelson: 00:06:58

They also seem to be doing things that are not things that they

Nelson: 00:07:03

would want the supplier to do.

Nelson: 00:07:04

So it's not actually taking work away from the supplier.

Nelson: 00:07:07

So we see that the major investments or to do visualization that consistently

Nelson: 00:07:12

or wave after wave after wave suppliers, get low scores from the buyer.

Nelson: 00:07:17

Uh, Always low on data visualization.

Nelson: 00:07:20

They seem to be investing in it more and perhaps doing more of that themselves.

Nelson: 00:07:23

So what we see as a driver of satisfaction, but as a driver

Nelson: 00:07:28

of satisfaction for buyers is.

Nelson: 00:07:31

Reporting, they want good reporting from suppliers, but they don't necessarily

Nelson: 00:07:35

need good visualization because I think they've given up on that expectation

Nelson: 00:07:38

to electric stent and more of them are doing the visualization themselves.

Nelson: 00:07:42

So while they need the results to be clear and to be accurate and to be high

Nelson: 00:07:46

quality, they're not necessarily at this point in time expecting suppliers

Nelson: 00:07:50

to take it all the way into the organism.

Lenny: 00:07:52

that is an interesting point and it makes me think about, for

Lenny: 00:07:56

years, when we looked at adoption of emerging methods a few things

Lenny: 00:08:01

stood out social media analytics, text analytics, big data is having.

Lenny: 00:08:05

In use or being considered levels on the buyer side and on the supplier side.

Lenny: 00:08:10

And it's supposition that we repeated it every year is those

Lenny: 00:08:13

may be areas where that ship has sailed for the supplier community.

Lenny: 00:08:16

We miss the opportunity to rise to the occasion to deliver that buyer need.

Lenny: 00:08:22

But this year, this wave we finally saw pretty close to parody from an

Lenny: 00:08:27

adoption standpoint, that suppliers were now just as engaged and utilizing

Lenny: 00:08:31

those solutions as buyers, which begs the question, where are we wrong?

Lenny: 00:08:38

Because the supplier community decided there is a, there is an opportunity here

Lenny: 00:08:44

to capture some of that business from the buyers that they were obviously were doing

Lenny: 00:08:49

it, but they were doing it with some, in some other resource, either another

Lenny: 00:08:52

type of supplier in house, something.

Lenny: 00:08:56

but I would suspect that a supplier would not offer something unless

Lenny: 00:09:01

there were buyers for that.

Lenny: 00:09:02

So we see that that change But it's an interesting question for us to think about

Lenny: 00:09:07

as an industry, if that is true, that the supplier community stepped up and was

Lenny: 00:09:14

able to capture a seat at the table for lack of a better term in those solutions.

Lenny: 00:09:21

Is there an opportunity that if the around data visualization, for instance,

Lenny: 00:09:25

those functions that buyers are keeping in-house because they're not getting

Lenny: 00:09:29

what they need from this supplier.

Lenny: 00:09:32

For suppliers to step up and start earning that business.

Lenny: 00:09:37

And we'll see that reflected down the road.

Lenny: 00:09:40

Now I know you prefer to look at the data.

Lenny: 00:09:43

So this is an opinion.

Lenny: 00:09:44

Um, What do you think, is that an aspirational goal that, that we can on the

Lenny: 00:09:50

supplier side uh, shoot for that may be.

Nelson: 00:09:54

Well, you know, I think that what we see in the data to go back to the

Nelson: 00:09:58

data is that there hasn't been as much opportunity as there used to be over the

Nelson: 00:10:04

last two years to think about the future.

Nelson: 00:10:07

So I'm not sure that's the question that people are asking.

Nelson: 00:10:09

I know that's the question you're asking because you're very future

Nelson: 00:10:11

oriented, but remember, we've got the five big buckets of suppliers that

Nelson: 00:10:15

we look at and obviously they're.

Nelson: 00:10:19

They're hybrids and so forth, but there's the full service research.

Nelson: 00:10:22

There's the field services, there's technology providers, data and analytics

Nelson: 00:10:26

providers and strategic consultancies.

Nelson: 00:10:29

And what we've seen particularly over the last year is the percentage

Nelson: 00:10:32

that define themselves as strategic consultancies has dropped and their

Nelson: 00:10:37

service portfolio has changed a bit.

Nelson: 00:10:39

The ones that have that are full service have rebounded

Nelson: 00:10:42

and technology has rebounded.

Nelson: 00:10:44

So what we're seeing is more, I think, of a division of.

Nelson: 00:10:49

And I think what we saw last year is that the many of the buyers of,

Nelson: 00:10:56

of insight services had to take the business aspect of it in-house because

Nelson: 00:11:02

so much was happening real time in terms of understanding the needs.

Nelson: 00:11:05

In terms of, I was mentioning in here that they had to deal with a

Nelson: 00:11:09

situation where it was not safe.

Nelson: 00:11:12

To deal with consumers and research participants in the same way,

Nelson: 00:11:17

they had novel issues to address, which they didn't have before.

Nelson: 00:11:20

And they also needed to do a lot more uh, that had to be cost-effective.

Nelson: 00:11:25

And that came into, I think the portfolio of technology that people used as well

Nelson: 00:11:32

as a portfolio of suppliers, where there was much more, we talked about this, a

Nelson: 00:11:35

division of labor, where for example, you might hire a full service provider.

Nelson: 00:11:40

Full-service research provider to be your project coordinator and they

Nelson: 00:11:43

would hire the different aspects.

Nelson: 00:11:45

They would hire the technology provider.

Nelson: 00:11:46

They would hire the data and analytics and bring it together.

Nelson: 00:11:49

Or you would focus on finding out what people internally.

Nelson: 00:11:54

And how you would serve them and communicating with them

Nelson: 00:11:56

because there wasn't a lot of time to go through many channels.

Nelson: 00:11:59

It wasn't a lot of time to bring a new supply.

Nelson: 00:12:01

And this is the other, the other major point.

Nelson: 00:12:03

When we see in the selection criteria for suppliers, we see all around relationship

Nelson: 00:12:08

is much less important than it is.

Nelson: 00:12:11

So people aren't just going back to the same people.

Nelson: 00:12:12

They're having to find, to address the novel issues in novel ways,

Nelson: 00:12:16

having to find novel solutions.

Nelson: 00:12:17

So they have to go to new suppliers.

Nelson: 00:12:19

So they don't have time for all those people to learn about their

Nelson: 00:12:21

business while they try to survive.

Nelson: 00:12:23

COVID.

Nelson: 00:12:25

So I think that's a lot of what we're seeing.

Nelson: 00:12:27

uh, When we compared this year, the areas for which insights groups are responsible

Nelson: 00:12:31

versus last year to me seemed a lot.

Nelson: 00:12:35

They're focusing on areas to maintain the business.

Nelson: 00:12:38

Whereas a year before they were focused on areas to grow the business.

Nelson: 00:12:43

Now there seem to be a lot more of them being able to focus more on, on

Nelson: 00:12:47

growing the business and maintaining the long-term health of the business,

Nelson: 00:12:51

rather than trying to find stock gap solutions to, to keep afloat.

Nelson: 00:12:55

That's how it seems to me

Lenny: 00:12:56

though.

Lenny: 00:12:57

And I think that's right.

Lenny: 00:12:57

And for the audience get, this is the little bit the

Lenny: 00:13:00

dynamics three Nelson NY, right?

Lenny: 00:13:01

He keeps my feet somewhat on the ground, at least maybe a pinky

Lenny: 00:13:05

toe while my head is going in other directions, and I, you know, I'm

Lenny: 00:13:09

obsessed with the idea of, defining.

Lenny: 00:13:12

The market structure and the dynamics that drive that structure from an

Lenny: 00:13:17

evolutionary perspective, that's my default view in thinking about grit

Lenny: 00:13:22

overall and its usefulness is as some level of predictive tool, right.

Lenny: 00:13:27

To give, uh, at least some signals on where things may go and yeah, based on

Lenny: 00:13:32

that piece of the conversation I would say that the more things change, the

Lenny: 00:13:36

more they stay the same that, although we are, I think we've certainly seen an

Lenny: 00:13:42

adjustment of a size of pie by segment with technology, probably being the

Lenny: 00:13:49

best example of that from a growth perspective, but at the same time, to

Lenny: 00:13:54

your point, Fully rebounded while uh, groups that we thought were going to grow

Lenny: 00:13:59

well even a few years ago, like strategy consultancies, that was the big thing.

Lenny: 00:14:03

All the full service companies wanted to be strategy consultancies, but it

Lenny: 00:14:06

looks like now not so much they're back to being, we're comfortable being full

Lenny: 00:14:09

service suppliers which seems that.

Nelson: 00:14:12

Yeah, go ahead.

Nelson: 00:14:12

When we talk about whether.

Nelson: 00:14:15

Full service providers, for example, want to provide strategic consulting or not.

Nelson: 00:14:19

They still say that's one of their revenue sources.

Nelson: 00:14:22

It's just for fewer of them, their primary revenue source, because there

Nelson: 00:14:26

was a lot of focus in the last year of just being able to get things done.

Nelson: 00:14:29

And so what we see when we look at the methodology sections of this is we see

Nelson: 00:14:34

what probably a lot of people would have predicted that last year, there's

Nelson: 00:14:37

an increase in remote methods, online telephone and so forth to conduct

Nelson: 00:14:42

research rather than in-person then.

Nelson: 00:14:44

No surprise there.

Nelson: 00:14:45

And that's a year old.

Nelson: 00:14:46

Now what we see this year is that some of those have increased a little

Nelson: 00:14:50

bit, but mostly they've leveled off.

Nelson: 00:14:52

But what we've seen is the continued decline of in-person methods, as well as

Nelson: 00:14:58

a decline in some of the more traditional methods like telephone interviewing,

Nelson: 00:15:02

which isn't what you can do in.

Nelson: 00:15:04

you know, But obviously that there are challenges to doing telephone interview,

Nelson: 00:15:07

but some of these more traditional areas that are not in-person are also

Nelson: 00:15:11

declining and the hypothesis is that people were forced to use some of these

Nelson: 00:15:17

newer methods, some of these online methods and remote methods last year.

Nelson: 00:15:21

Just to be able to get their work done and decided now, when things are returning

Nelson: 00:15:26

more towards a more normal perspective, at least in time that we've been

Nelson: 00:15:30

doing the analysis they find the deal.

Nelson: 00:15:32

They like them, and they don't necessarily want to go back to the old ones.

Nelson: 00:15:35

Or you could take a dimmer view and say that more of the people

Nelson: 00:15:38

that provided those kinds of services aren't around anymore.

Nelson: 00:15:42

So it's just not available to go back to that.

Lenny: 00:15:45

Well, So the idea of the sea change, right?

Lenny: 00:15:47

If I had to sum up and overall view I would say that the, many

Lenny: 00:15:52

trends that we have already seen in place for years accelerated.

Lenny: 00:15:56

The migration of technology, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Lenny: 00:16:00

Those are the obvious ones.

Lenny: 00:16:01

And the proportion of how technology is redefining even the service-based sector

Lenny: 00:16:06

of our industry while the sea change.

Lenny: 00:16:10

And as you just pointed out, Really was that shift towards, in particularly

Lenny: 00:16:15

qualitative and things where it stands out the most and from an in-person perspective

Lenny: 00:16:19

that ship has sailed, that he did change the there was the necessity to shift

Lenny: 00:16:24

to online qualitative, for instance.

Lenny: 00:16:27

And now those folks, yeah, I like it.

Lenny: 00:16:29

Why would we go back when we've proven that we can

Lenny: 00:16:33

achieve most of our objectives?

Lenny: 00:16:35

And a more scalable, easy, safer way.

Lenny: 00:16:38

And I would not expect to see in person bounce back it at the level that it

Lenny: 00:16:44

was the, I think we'll find new use cases for in-person anything sensory,

Lenny: 00:16:49

for instance, we're not there yet.

Lenny: 00:16:51

Maybe when the metaverse launches and they'll have some type of of a device

Lenny: 00:16:55

that duplicates our census, but we're not.

Lenny: 00:16:59

So those will continue on while the scalability of online qual

Lenny: 00:17:05

seems to Trump, the benefits of the immediacy of being face-to-face.

Lenny: 00:17:10

So that's a sea change, but I don't see a lot more.

Lenny: 00:17:15

Massive sea changes into your, go back to your original

Lenny: 00:17:18

thought on the day in the life.

Lenny: 00:17:20

That was a great example, right?

Lenny: 00:17:21

We kept expecting to see something change and people allocating their time.

Lenny: 00:17:26

And that's not really what we've seen.

Lenny: 00:17:28

The we've seen people still do things they've always done.

Lenny: 00:17:32

Although the proportions are not necessarily changing radically.

Lenny: 00:17:38

If anything, maybe the volume.

Lenny: 00:17:41

Of the activities are changing to an extent but not as it fits

Lenny: 00:17:45

in with the overall change.

Lenny: 00:17:47

The industry is in an interesting state of flux and change,

Lenny: 00:17:53

but it seems as if it is a.

Lenny: 00:17:57

Natural progression of evolution versus a disruptive, oh crap.

Lenny: 00:18:04

Everything is changed kind of moment.

Lenny: 00:18:07

I don't see much evidence of disruption.

Nelson: 00:18:10

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:18:11

I want to go back to what you first said, which was about how you brought me into

Nelson: 00:18:16

this to change how we're doing everything.

Nelson: 00:18:19

And so one of these.

Nelson: 00:18:21

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:18:21

What I said about the day in the life is that the percentages

Nelson: 00:18:24

on average do not change.

Nelson: 00:18:26

There's absolutely.

Nelson: 00:18:27

There's not even in some cases, there might be a 1%

Nelson: 00:18:29

change, but there is no change.

Nelson: 00:18:31

But if you look below the surface and this is the thing, is that things on

Nelson: 00:18:34

average, they're canceling each other out.

Nelson: 00:18:37

There's just as many people, it seems to be just as much work being brought

Nelson: 00:18:40

in-house as being outsourced more.

Nelson: 00:18:43

Time added a question.

Nelson: 00:18:44

Are you outsourcing more or bringing more work in house?

Nelson: 00:18:47

And we saw that there's about a quarter that are outsourcing more and is

Nelson: 00:18:50

about a quarter that are doing more in-house more than they were before.

Nelson: 00:18:55

So it's not that nothing is disrupted.

Nelson: 00:18:59

It's just, it's not universally disruptive in the same way.

Lenny: 00:19:03

Ah, so like the William Gibson quote the future is already here.

Lenny: 00:19:07

It's just not evenly distributed I'm.

Nelson: 00:19:09

Sure.

Nelson: 00:19:10

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:19:10

But then back to the, how we got off on this, I pushed us off on tangent,

Nelson: 00:19:14

which is actually, one of our, one of our main conversation screens, I think.

Nelson: 00:19:17

But you had been talking about whether.

Nelson: 00:19:21

People I've given up on strategic consulting, whether they should be

Nelson: 00:19:24

giving up on data visualization.

Nelson: 00:19:26

I just wanted to return to that for a minute because that's where we

Nelson: 00:19:28

jumped off onto this, but people are offering strategic consultants

Nelson: 00:19:34

consulting and strategic services.

Nelson: 00:19:38

It's it just seems like the mix has changed more to where people

Nelson: 00:19:42

have had to get more of the revenue from research then from consulting.

Nelson: 00:19:46

Partly I think because stuff needed to get done.

Nelson: 00:19:50

And that's where buyers had to put their money, but also because buyers had to

Nelson: 00:19:53

spend more time doing the consulting and doing the business aspect of it.

Nelson: 00:19:57

And couldn't bring buyers, couldn't bring suppliers up to speed.

Nelson: 00:20:00

I don't know if that will come back or not, but they're still

Nelson: 00:20:03

saying that's among their services.

Nelson: 00:20:05

So it might, but that will be one of the things to watch is if this

Nelson: 00:20:09

relationship where people are really as comfortable with somebody, external

Nelson: 00:20:14

being somebody who's positioned as.

Nelson: 00:20:17

You know, As someone who is a true partner and, they're like an employee and whatnot,

Nelson: 00:20:22

I don't know how feasible that is.

Nelson: 00:20:25

And how versus how much more comfortable buyers are taking that

Nelson: 00:20:29

role in their own organizations on the data visualization point.

Nelson: 00:20:32

Let's remember when we look at the big buckets technology providers and

Nelson: 00:20:37

data and analytics providers are very focused on data visualization, but.

Nelson: 00:20:43

They're providing it, but providing those capabilities to buyers.

Nelson: 00:20:47

So it's not as though suppliers should give up on that.

Nelson: 00:20:51

It's just, who is doing it.

Nelson: 00:20:53

Might change from business to business.

Nelson: 00:20:55

I don't know that buyers are waiting for suppliers to come in and take

Nelson: 00:20:59

a strong role consulting like that and doing the data visualization.

Nelson: 00:21:03

I think they see a distinction between reporting and data visualization.

Lenny: 00:21:08

Well, Yeah.

Lenny: 00:21:09

As is, and maybe that's been that always been the disconnect

Lenny: 00:21:12

from a research world, right?

Lenny: 00:21:14

We're really good at reporting results.

Lenny: 00:21:16

Um, We're just not very creative and we report the results.

Lenny: 00:21:20

I'm not sure how the audience thinks about grip, but give you a little

Lenny: 00:21:23

peak in how the sausage is made.

Lenny: 00:21:25

The, those nice, cool, pretty charts that we use.

Lenny: 00:21:27

Those aren't things that Nelson and I developed.

Lenny: 00:21:29

We have designers who do that.

Lenny: 00:21:30

So we deliver table.

Lenny: 00:21:34

That designers, based the day you go into the data tables

Lenny: 00:21:37

and create a chart off of that.

Lenny: 00:21:39

So we're not very imaginative, but that does bring up a and to something

Lenny: 00:21:45

that is new or different in this wave.

Lenny: 00:21:47

And let's talk about it because we touched on.

Lenny: 00:21:51

The idea on a, on mapping, the industry visualizing the industry and those who

Lenny: 00:21:57

were followed grit, for a few years, we used our grit scape, the LUMAscape that

Lenny: 00:22:01

was this, fund map model that we used kind of game of Thrones fantasy world.

Lenny: 00:22:06

And that's my geekiness that was manifesting.

Lenny: 00:22:08

We pulled back from that this year, not just because we thought

Lenny: 00:22:13

it was just time to do something.

Lenny: 00:22:15

But it wasn't reflective of the industry.

Lenny: 00:22:17

So that those questions that you forced us to add on looking at a

Lenny: 00:22:24

proportion of revenue by different different offerings, products and

Lenny: 00:22:28

services across the board in driving this idea of trying to understand what.

Lenny: 00:22:36

Isn't really such thing as a pure technology company, for instance, was

Lenny: 00:22:40

one of the obvious examples of that.

Lenny: 00:22:42

No, there's not right.

Lenny: 00:22:44

As we look at that, we see that every company is still doing lots of different

Lenny: 00:22:48

things and is generating revenue that their proportion of revenue may be higher

Lenny: 00:22:52

for technology licensing, but there is significant service oriented revenue

Lenny: 00:22:56

involved in their businesses as well.

Lenny: 00:22:59

So to map that out and this is one of the things, again, that would give you

Lenny: 00:23:03

credit Nelson uh, we're really trying to struggle, but how do we show this?

Lenny: 00:23:07

Cause it's just like a big, messy, nasty Venn diagram, you know, when you think

Lenny: 00:23:11

about from an overlap perspective, but.

Lenny: 00:23:14

We started thinking, is there a way to, to almost show this as a, in a

Lenny: 00:23:18

spatial way of some type of almost quadrant type of analysis and you

Lenny: 00:23:24

crack that code on how to do that.

Lenny: 00:23:25

And there's lots of complications in doing it.

Lenny: 00:23:28

The, what do you want to describe what we've come up with at a high level in.

Lenny: 00:23:34

In showing the relationship between big bucket and sub-segments

Lenny: 00:23:38

visually that we'll be debuting.

Lenny: 00:23:40

And in this group report

Nelson: 00:23:42

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:23:42

I mean, It really gets back to something that I think is important.

Nelson: 00:23:45

For people to conduct surveys, for example, is we have this, we ask people

Nelson: 00:23:50

about now I think it's 25 services.

Nelson: 00:23:52

Do you offer it or not or not?

Nelson: 00:23:53

And we ask them which one is primary.

Nelson: 00:23:55

And I know from the comments that people leave, some of them are frustrated because

Nelson: 00:23:59

they say they're all equally important.

Nelson: 00:24:01

Yeah, okay, fine.

Nelson: 00:24:02

You can think that.

Nelson: 00:24:04

But when we ask people to say, which one is most important, or just to

Nelson: 00:24:07

pick one, regardless, they might think that they're making an arbitrary

Nelson: 00:24:10

choice of which one is most important, but it does help to focus things.

Nelson: 00:24:13

There is some meaning to the top of mind.

Nelson: 00:24:15

How do I identify myself?

Nelson: 00:24:17

Even if many things apply.

Nelson: 00:24:19

And so we use that in the visualization we used all of the services.

Nelson: 00:24:24

Do you offer them or not?

Nelson: 00:24:25

And then what's your, what do you, where do you get most of your revenue

Nelson: 00:24:28

from full service, strategic strategy, finance analytics, and I guess one of

Nelson: 00:24:34

the things that Lenny that the result of putting all those together is that we

Nelson: 00:24:40

came up, something came up with something that we probably would have drawn by.

Nelson: 00:24:44

Because it's intuitive.

Nelson: 00:24:46

So we've got, if we think in terms of quadrants, we have on the one side, the

Nelson: 00:24:49

generalists, the strategic consultants and the full service providers on

Nelson: 00:24:53

the other side, the specialist, the data and analytics, technology,

Nelson: 00:24:56

and field services providers at the top we have more of the consultant.

Nelson: 00:25:01

Type areas at the bottom, we have more of the getting the research done type areas.

Nelson: 00:25:05

So we have those four quadrants.

Nelson: 00:25:07

And then if we look at the real, so we have strategy generalist versus

Nelson: 00:25:11

specialist in strategy versus tactical strategic versus tactical research.

Nelson: 00:25:17

And then within those, if we look at the detail, we can also see

Nelson: 00:25:20

that there are areas where online services have grouped together.

Nelson: 00:25:26

In person or, other not specifically online services or grouped together

Nelson: 00:25:30

and you know, get a, you get a clearer picture of what are the

Nelson: 00:25:34

combinations of things that people are offering that, that are most common.

Nelson: 00:25:39

Does that answer your question?

Lenny: 00:25:40

Well, It does.

Lenny: 00:25:41

And we're also, we're trying to explain something that's inherently visual just

Lenny: 00:25:44

using words but I think the the point.

Lenny: 00:25:46

the high level view.

Lenny: 00:25:48

And I think the audience will see this when you see the report, is that

Lenny: 00:25:50

there's a one we've made, we tried to do something really cool and interactive

Lenny: 00:25:54

and we'll see whether we succeed or not.

Lenny: 00:25:55

I think it will be, I think it's pretty cool.

Lenny: 00:25:57

But the overall view is to show the complexity of relationships between

Lenny: 00:26:01

the supplier community, based upon the revenue contribution of services and

Lenny: 00:26:05

solutions and the message there is that.

Lenny: 00:26:08

It is a very intertwined industry.

Lenny: 00:26:11

Right.

Lenny: 00:26:11

You know, Sometimes.

Lenny: 00:26:13

people will say you use the word ecosystem too much.

Lenny: 00:26:15

We work in a synergistic ecosystem.

Lenny: 00:26:18

That's just the way that it is.

Lenny: 00:26:20

It's a very complex industry.

Lenny: 00:26:22

There's lots of interrelationships.

Lenny: 00:26:24

No man is an island, so to speak, right?

Lenny: 00:26:27

There's very few kind of really, truly standalone companies that

Lenny: 00:26:31

are not interconnected with others.

Lenny: 00:26:33

Uh, And I think that's only going to grow in complexity as more and more

Lenny: 00:26:37

companies enter the space from outside.

Lenny: 00:26:40

We'll see this things progress, but it's also one of those evolutionary

Lenny: 00:26:43

components of the report that I think keep it really interesting for you.

Lenny: 00:26:46

And I hopefully interesting for the audience as well.

Lenny: 00:26:49

You know, you've always been kind behind the scenes when it comes

Lenny: 00:26:52

to grit, obviously, which is one reason why I wanted to do this.

Lenny: 00:26:56

if there's something you've always wanted to say to the industry, now be careful.

Lenny: 00:27:00

Nelson, because I can imagine this few things you might want to say.

Lenny: 00:27:04

And

Nelson: 00:27:04

so we added it right

Lenny: 00:27:09

uh,

Lenny: 00:27:10

about grit.

Lenny: 00:27:11

What would that be?

Lenny: 00:27:12

What's something you've always wanted it to communicate to everybody about grit.

Nelson: 00:27:15

Well, To be perfectly honest, All of the comments that people leave.

Nelson: 00:27:21

We read the emails that they send about it.

Nelson: 00:27:23

And, you know, just to start on one end, I understand a lot of the

Nelson: 00:27:27

frustrations that some people have and a lot of limitations and a lot of

Nelson: 00:27:29

the criticisms that they have, but we know that too, and we deal with it.

Nelson: 00:27:34

So it's constantly evolving.

Nelson: 00:27:35

We're constantly doing additional analysis to test whether any of

Nelson: 00:27:41

these criticisms Under undermine what we're trying to report And, you know,

Nelson: 00:27:46

like I said, one of them might be, you know, people don't want to pick

Nelson: 00:27:49

what their primary service area is.

Nelson: 00:27:51

And I understand that because that's true with any survey that people answer.

Nelson: 00:27:55

But when we look at the results, there is some meaning to it.

Nelson: 00:27:59

When.

Nelson: 00:28:00

The population, there's some meaning to it.

Nelson: 00:28:02

It helps us organize it.

Nelson: 00:28:03

And we understand that there is a lot of complexity.

Nelson: 00:28:06

We understand that some of the questions are simplifications.

Nelson: 00:28:09

We understand some of the conclusions are simplifications, but I would

Nelson: 00:28:12

think, something I would like to, I guess, tell people would be to spend

Nelson: 00:28:16

as much time as you can looking through the whole report and you'll see.

Nelson: 00:28:20

We are making generalizations about things were pulling things back layer

Nelson: 00:28:25

upon layer, as much as we can to show all the individuality and diversity in

Nelson: 00:28:30

the industry, because it isn't one thing.

Nelson: 00:28:32

Something else that supports this and you read in the first part

Nelson: 00:28:35

of the grit report, we talk about the sampling method and so forth.

Nelson: 00:28:39

It's a very, we don't say who's in and who's.

Nelson: 00:28:43

We contact people and let them say if they're in the

Nelson: 00:28:46

industry or out of the industry.

Nelson: 00:28:47

So in this way, the grit survey has the potential to grow.

Nelson: 00:28:52

As the industry goes to identify new niches.

Nelson: 00:28:54

Now it may take us a wave or two for the questions to catch up with

Nelson: 00:28:57

the new people who've come in, but we catch up and we, you know, it's

Nelson: 00:29:01

a constantly evolving process and it's a very thoughtful process.

Lenny: 00:29:05

Thank you.

Lenny: 00:29:05

Now, one of the cool things too, the tapping in the past year or

Lenny: 00:29:08

so is that we obviously grit's a beast from a size standpoint, right?

Lenny: 00:29:12

It just is there's a lot to cover and we've played different

Lenny: 00:29:15

ways to try and cut it down.

Lenny: 00:29:16

And you know what it could easily be two to three times as long.

Lenny: 00:29:21

Um, But we've started exploring spinoff reports with new things.

Lenny: 00:29:27

Can you describe the spinoff reports and the surprises that have

Lenny: 00:29:30

come for you as a result of that?

Nelson: 00:29:33

I've always felt that, that even as we use more of this in

Nelson: 00:29:36

each sprint report, that there's still some that's underutilized.

Nelson: 00:29:39

And we know that we want to, to some extent have portion control because

Nelson: 00:29:44

there's a lot to digest in any one issue.

Nelson: 00:29:46

A part of that is reflected in moving this to a digital HTML version where

Nelson: 00:29:51

people can skip around to what they want to see and pick and choose.

Nelson: 00:29:55

Although the whole report, I'm always surprised by the time we

Nelson: 00:29:58

get to the end of it, that every section seems to be pretty valuable.

Nelson: 00:30:02

But there's other areas that we take a deep dive in at the

Nelson: 00:30:04

beginning of last year, we put out.

Nelson: 00:30:06

Field guides, what we called field guides to help with targeting

Nelson: 00:30:10

customers so that suppliers could use that to target their customers.

Nelson: 00:30:15

And the original idea was, yeah, let's do a field guide.

Nelson: 00:30:18

And what it became was seven field guides, because it can't come up with

Nelson: 00:30:22

one set of recommendations or one set of.

Nelson: 00:30:25

Things to think about for strategic consultants, consultancies that also

Nelson: 00:30:29

applies to field services providers.

Nelson: 00:30:32

It's just not responsible.

Nelson: 00:30:34

So we put the time into doing seven of those and put those out.

Nelson: 00:30:38

We are about to release the industry benchmarking report, which looks at

Nelson: 00:30:44

different behaviors and different ways of doing business within different

Nelson: 00:30:48

segments so that we can compare.

Nelson: 00:30:53

Uh, So that people can look at it and say, oh, my business is the same as others.

Nelson: 00:30:58

We need to differentiate.

Nelson: 00:30:59

Or my businesses, the same as others, we can leave that alone

Nelson: 00:31:01

because that's not an issue.

Nelson: 00:31:02

You can look at it through whatever lens you want, whether being the same as is

Nelson: 00:31:07

good for you, or whether being different would be a better strategy for you.

Nelson: 00:31:11

But what we try to do in all of these, I think when you've written this in one of

Nelson: 00:31:15

the, maybe in the forward or something is we want people to see themselves in the.

Nelson: 00:31:21

If we just report the top line findings across suppliers, for example, a

Nelson: 00:31:27

technology provider is not going to see themselves in that and at a full

Nelson: 00:31:31

service provider might because they might be a bigger part of the sample.

Nelson: 00:31:36

You where you want to do is you want to be able to use the report

Nelson: 00:31:39

to see what matters to you.

Nelson: 00:31:41

If you're a small company, you want to know, what does

Nelson: 00:31:44

this mean for small companies?

Nelson: 00:31:45

If you're a big company, what does this mean for a big company.

Nelson: 00:31:47

you know, I always felt coming from smaller companies, I read the old

Nelson: 00:31:50

grit reports and I think this is interesting, but this doesn't really have

Nelson: 00:31:53

anything to do with my small company.

Nelson: 00:31:56

And so we trying to bring that out more so that any so that people don't just see.

Nelson: 00:32:02

Spaghetti thrown against the wall or whatever.

Nelson: 00:32:04

They see a particular pattern that applies to what they're trying to do, and

Nelson: 00:32:09

they can see themselves in the reports.

Lenny: 00:32:11

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:32:12

Now, and there's more to come we'll continue to experiment with that.

Lenny: 00:32:15

So for the audience Nelson, I made copious use uh, use of slack often

Lenny: 00:32:20

when writing in sharing quotes from.

Lenny: 00:32:23

Songs or movies or books.

Lenny: 00:32:26

And he wins every time.

Lenny: 00:32:28

This man has an encyclopedic.

Lenny: 00:32:30

He's almost an autodidact in terms of his memory, to be able to memorize the

Lenny: 00:32:34

most obscure reference you can possibly think of from any type of media.

Lenny: 00:32:40

And it impresses the hell out of me all of the time.

Lenny: 00:32:42

If you get a chance to just sit down and chat with Nelson about popular

Lenny: 00:32:45

culture and particularly music of movies that it is time well spent.

Lenny: 00:32:49

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:32:49

So Lenny and that point, we could have a contest and this might encourage

Nelson: 00:32:53

people to read more of the group.

Nelson: 00:32:55

To whoever's the first to identify all the Beatles first,

Nelson: 00:32:59

identify the doors reference,

Lenny: 00:33:00

There.

Lenny: 00:33:01

So guys there are Easter eggs and grit it tell Nelson I entertain each other.

Lenny: 00:33:04

Most of them are his but they're already strikes.

Lenny: 00:33:07

But Nelson for wrap up just to humanize this whole thing.

Lenny: 00:33:10

What are you currently watching.

Lenny: 00:33:13

Reading and listening to that you're just really enjoying right now.

Nelson: 00:33:18

Yeah.

Nelson: 00:33:18

Well, This is a leading question because you know, for Christmas,

Nelson: 00:33:22

I know for Christmas, I got the, a complete dark shell.

Nelson: 00:33:27

She's a 1966 to 1971 TV series daily soap.

Nelson: 00:33:32

So over those five years, there's 1,273 episodes.

Nelson: 00:33:37

So I'm making my way through those.

Nelson: 00:33:39

I'm in uh, around number four 30.

Lenny: 00:33:41

Very cool.

Lenny: 00:33:41

What about reading?

Nelson: 00:33:42

Uh, The original gold key series, dark shadows.

Nelson: 00:33:45

No, I'm actually reading.

Nelson: 00:33:46

I'm actually reading a novels.

Nelson: 00:33:49

I've been reading a master and commander, which everybody has told

Nelson: 00:33:52

me, when our MPB people rave about it, they say how, how wonderful it is.

Nelson: 00:33:55

And so I've always been intimidated to try to read it because it's a.

Nelson: 00:34:02

When people read that much about something, I think it

Nelson: 00:34:03

might be too hard for me.

Nelson: 00:34:05

So it has been taking me a long time to make it through it because it's about

Nelson: 00:34:09

the Napoleonic wars and in particular Naval activities in the Napoleonic wars.

Nelson: 00:34:15

So every third word is a word I have to look up either because it's an

Nelson: 00:34:19

archaic reference or because it's a nautical term so it's taking me

Nelson: 00:34:22

a long time to go through that.

Nelson: 00:34:23

And I had just finished reading a crime novel from takes place in 1933

Nelson: 00:34:28

in Germany after the Weymar Republic has collapsed and Hitler taken over.

Nelson: 00:34:33

And that I also had to, I also had to.

Nelson: 00:34:36

A lot of stuff in that, because it's really interesting how they bring you into

Nelson: 00:34:40

the everyday reality of it by referring to these things that, for me, unless

Nelson: 00:34:44

I look it up, I don't know what that meant to somebody in Germany in 1933.

Nelson: 00:34:49

So learning more is a way of learning more about the film industry or learning more

Nelson: 00:34:53

about the history and more of learning about the cultural sites and so forth.

Nelson: 00:34:57

So that's an example of what I've been.

Lenny: 00:34:59

Thank you.

Lenny: 00:35:00

Oh, and yes, I did know those, but I trust your tastes and think

Lenny: 00:35:03

our audience may enjoy it as well.

Lenny: 00:35:04

So Nelson, thank you for making the time.

Lenny: 00:35:08

This was long overdue.

Lenny: 00:35:09

I'm sure that we will do this again with other iterations of grit and

Lenny: 00:35:12

really appreciate you sharing your time with the, with me and with

Lenny: 00:35:16

Greenberg podcast and our audience.

Nelson: 00:35:19

Thank you for the.

Lenny: 00:35:22

All right, everybody be well.

Lenny: 00:35:23

And we'll have another one of these coming out real soon.

Lenny: 00:35:26

Thanks a lot.