Episode 5
05 - GRIT Report Sneak Peek: The State of Insights In 2022
In this week's episode: Lenny Murphy, is joined by Nelson Whipple, GRIT Research Director at GreenBook, to talk about the upcoming Insights Practice GRIT Report!
GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report is the #1 strategic planning tool in consumer insights, and because we're just about 2 weeks away from publishing our 30th edition, we're celebrating by providing an ultra-rare GRIT Report sneak peek with Lenny and Nelson - the masterminds behind the magic!
Listen in to get exclusive details like:
- Emerging Methods
- Visualization Trends and Buyer Sentiment
- Strategic Consultancy Supplier Trends
- Primary Revenue Sources
- Remote, In-Person, and Traditional Methodology Trends
- Qualitative shifts + scalability
- Permanent changes for 2022
Links From The Show:
- GreenBook --> https://greenbook.captivate.fm/gb
- Lenny Murphy --> https://greenbook.captivate.fm/lenny
Many thanks to Emily Fullmer, for producing and editing this episode, and to Zappi, for sponsoring this podcast.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Hello everybody.
Lenny:It is Lenny Murphy here with episode five of the green book podcast.
Lenny:Before this, we were trying to think of some pithy star wars
Lenny:reference for episode five.
Lenny:We won't go there.
Lenny:But what we are going to do is to talk about the upcoming grit report.
Lenny:This is kind of a labor of love, uh, this, this session, because
Lenny:we are going to be talking to our secret weapon Nelson Whipple.
Lenny:And before I actually bring Nelson on, I want to give you a
Lenny:little bit of background because he's a bit of an unsung hero.
Lenny:I've known Nelson for gosh, probably 10 years or so, and an amazing
Lenny:researcher and the opportunity presented itself a few years ago
Lenny:to uh, bring him in, to help with.
Lenny:Little did I know that that help would turn into an amazing collaboration
Lenny:where Nelson has raised the bar on every single aspect of grit from
Lenny:questionnaire design certainly through the analysis and in writing he's driven
Lenny:the expansion of the usability of grit data to address other use cases and other
Lenny:product lines that we are launching.
Lenny:He has just made everything better.
Lenny:He challenges me to be better.
Lenny:In most recently for this grit report that is about to come out.
Lenny:I was was ill during that time.
Lenny:We were under a deadline.
Lenny:He, He did most of the heavy lift from a writing standpoint.
Lenny:It's, we've tried to keep it about 50, 50 this next report that is is coming out.
Lenny:It's probably 90%.
Lenny:And it's damn good.
Lenny:So with that I would like to bring on my friend, my
Lenny:colleague Nelson Whipple Nelson.
Nelson:Welcome.
Nelson:Thank you, Lenny.
Nelson:And uh, going to be hard to follow that interim.
Lenny:Everything I said is absolutely true.
Lenny:And I just haven't had the opportunity to say that.
Lenny:So, Nelson do you want to give the audience a little bit more background
Lenny:on on you before, the grit era of your.
Nelson:I spent most of my life working with four smaller consulting
Nelson:firms on strategic projects for clients of all sizes in all kinds
Nelson:of industries, mostly using contract analysis and building simulation
Nelson:models, but also using other techniques, mostly quantitative work, but also.
Nelson:Uh, But they call them quality quantum projects in some circles where do the
Nelson:qualitative and the quantitative, so that you get marketing input the vocabulary
Nelson:and so forth, built directly into it.
Nelson:So I'm pretty sensitive to a lot of the different areas that we look at and also
Nelson:what they're supposed to mean and the impact that they're supposed to have.
Nelson:So when we look at things like this, the selection criteria for
Nelson:suppliers and methods, you know, there's always at the top of the list.
Nelson:Insights quality, but that's hard to define and it's not defined in terms
Nelson:of any of these specific methods.
Nelson:And it's interesting to see how we can discern whether people are actually
Nelson:getting the quality that they say they want from the kinds of things.
Lenny:Yeah.
Lenny:So, And we always make a point in the introduction that
Lenny:grit, it is an evolving tool.
Lenny:And that's a great example, right?
Lenny:We, I think every iteration we realized there's a better way to ask
Lenny:this question, or there's a follow-up question we need to ask, or uh, sometimes
Lenny:we don't need to ask that anymore.
Lenny:So we can get to, to better a better data, but we're probably
Lenny:putting the cart before the horse.
Lenny:I think we'll get into some of that stuff.
Lenny:One thing we don't have the opportunity to do is the authors often is to kind
Lenny:of step back and think and share, what we personally found to be most
Lenny:interesting from this massive dataset that, that we collect and the analysis.
Lenny:And again, I want to reiterate that most of the heavy duty analysis uh, Nelson
Lenny:as far closer to, even than I am and taking just a little bit of a step back
Lenny:from from the grunt work of producing Greg, what did you find most interesting?
Lenny:What popped out for you when you were doing the analysis?
Lenny:I'm thinking, this is important.
Lenny:This is something that really is a finding that is impactful
Lenny:for the industry as a whole.
Nelson:Well, First I was looking through the draft that we got back from the.
Nelson:And what I noticed the most, what stood out the most to me was
Nelson:the number of blank pages in it.
Nelson:And first I thought, oh, those must be the ones that Lenny road, but
Nelson:no, they're actually the ones where the commentaries are going to go.
Nelson:And I just wanted to mention that so that people know where we are
Nelson:in the process, but also because.
Nelson:The quality of the commentaries has gotten a lot better over the years.
Nelson:And so I'm looking forward to when we have those in this edition, and then
Nelson:I'm sure we'll find even more impactful stuff because those are, and this is
Nelson:not a plug because I don't do that.
Nelson:But uh, I was really impressed with the ones that we've gotten
Nelson:the last couple of issues, I think.
Nelson:And it'll be really interesting to see what we get this time to.
Nelson:Uh, I think overall what stood out for me is if we think about two of the sections
Nelson:that we don't usually make very much.
Nelson:Um, Maybe because we save them for the last, maybe because if we don't see much
Nelson:change the day in the life of the insights professional and the evolving insights
Nelson:professional, those kind of seem to be in some ways at the core of the findings,
Nelson:because one of the things that we, one of the things that we always see is that
Nelson:when we look at the day in the life, which is how much of your time are you
Nelson:spending on these various activities?
Nelson:We always find that it doesn't change year to year, and it literally.
Nelson:Doesn't change, even though the sample might change a little bit, even though
Nelson:there might be other, the percentages, literally don't change for what
Nelson:they're spending on, implementing the research uh, designing the research,
Nelson:managing the research, analyzing reporting, and consulting and so forth.
Nelson:But if you pull it apart more, you start to see that there are lots of things
Nelson:going on underneath that and that.
Nelson:One of the things that we see when we pull it apart is that people that are using
Nelson:more technology are we, I think always had the supposition that if you leverage
Nelson:technology more and automate more things, then you can spend more time consulting.
Nelson:But what we found on the buyer side is.
Nelson:Some of the people that are investing more in technology are investing in it so they
Nelson:can bring more of the research in house.
Nelson:So it actually spending more time on the research and a lower
Nelson:percentage of time on the consulting.
Nelson:So that's interesting and it gets to this dynamic that we see under all
Nelson:of the sections, which is good to think about is that some people are
Nelson:leveraging actually using suppliers more so they can spend less time on
Nelson:research and spend more time consulting.
Nelson:And then other people are leveraging technology so that they can take more of
Nelson:that work in-house and control more of it.
Nelson:And that was a trend that I think is a little bit counterintuitive to what we
Nelson:had expected, but we see that through all of the different sections on supplier
Nelson:criteria, the methods they're using.
Nelson:And I think it gets to one of the things that seems to be a major theme is that
Nelson:in addition to the people that are taking investing in technology solutions
Nelson:in DIY, so they can do more of the.
Nelson:They also seem to be doing things that are not things that they
Nelson:would want the supplier to do.
Nelson:So it's not actually taking work away from the supplier.
Nelson:So we see that the major investments or to do visualization that consistently
Nelson:or wave after wave after wave suppliers, get low scores from the buyer.
Nelson:Uh, Always low on data visualization.
Nelson:They seem to be investing in it more and perhaps doing more of that themselves.
Nelson:So what we see as a driver of satisfaction, but as a driver
Nelson:of satisfaction for buyers is.
Nelson:Reporting, they want good reporting from suppliers, but they don't necessarily
Nelson:need good visualization because I think they've given up on that expectation
Nelson:to electric stent and more of them are doing the visualization themselves.
Nelson:So while they need the results to be clear and to be accurate and to be high
Nelson:quality, they're not necessarily at this point in time expecting suppliers
Nelson:to take it all the way into the organism.
Lenny:that is an interesting point and it makes me think about, for
Lenny:years, when we looked at adoption of emerging methods a few things
Lenny:stood out social media analytics, text analytics, big data is having.
Lenny:In use or being considered levels on the buyer side and on the supplier side.
Lenny:And it's supposition that we repeated it every year is those
Lenny:may be areas where that ship has sailed for the supplier community.
Lenny:We miss the opportunity to rise to the occasion to deliver that buyer need.
Lenny:But this year, this wave we finally saw pretty close to parody from an
Lenny:adoption standpoint, that suppliers were now just as engaged and utilizing
Lenny:those solutions as buyers, which begs the question, where are we wrong?
Lenny:Because the supplier community decided there is a, there is an opportunity here
Lenny:to capture some of that business from the buyers that they were obviously were doing
Lenny:it, but they were doing it with some, in some other resource, either another
Lenny:type of supplier in house, something.
Lenny:but I would suspect that a supplier would not offer something unless
Lenny:there were buyers for that.
Lenny:So we see that that change But it's an interesting question for us to think about
Lenny:as an industry, if that is true, that the supplier community stepped up and was
Lenny:able to capture a seat at the table for lack of a better term in those solutions.
Lenny:Is there an opportunity that if the around data visualization, for instance,
Lenny:those functions that buyers are keeping in-house because they're not getting
Lenny:what they need from this supplier.
Lenny:For suppliers to step up and start earning that business.
Lenny:And we'll see that reflected down the road.
Lenny:Now I know you prefer to look at the data.
Lenny:So this is an opinion.
Lenny:Um, What do you think, is that an aspirational goal that, that we can on the
Lenny:supplier side uh, shoot for that may be.
Nelson:Well, you know, I think that what we see in the data to go back to the
Nelson:data is that there hasn't been as much opportunity as there used to be over the
Nelson:last two years to think about the future.
Nelson:So I'm not sure that's the question that people are asking.
Nelson:I know that's the question you're asking because you're very future
Nelson:oriented, but remember, we've got the five big buckets of suppliers that
Nelson:we look at and obviously they're.
Nelson:They're hybrids and so forth, but there's the full service research.
Nelson:There's the field services, there's technology providers, data and analytics
Nelson:providers and strategic consultancies.
Nelson:And what we've seen particularly over the last year is the percentage
Nelson:that define themselves as strategic consultancies has dropped and their
Nelson:service portfolio has changed a bit.
Nelson:The ones that have that are full service have rebounded
Nelson:and technology has rebounded.
Nelson:So what we're seeing is more, I think, of a division of.
Nelson:And I think what we saw last year is that the many of the buyers of,
Nelson:of insight services had to take the business aspect of it in-house because
Nelson:so much was happening real time in terms of understanding the needs.
Nelson:In terms of, I was mentioning in here that they had to deal with a
Nelson:situation where it was not safe.
Nelson:To deal with consumers and research participants in the same way,
Nelson:they had novel issues to address, which they didn't have before.
Nelson:And they also needed to do a lot more uh, that had to be cost-effective.
Nelson:And that came into, I think the portfolio of technology that people used as well
Nelson:as a portfolio of suppliers, where there was much more, we talked about this, a
Nelson:division of labor, where for example, you might hire a full service provider.
Nelson:Full-service research provider to be your project coordinator and they
Nelson:would hire the different aspects.
Nelson:They would hire the technology provider.
Nelson:They would hire the data and analytics and bring it together.
Nelson:Or you would focus on finding out what people internally.
Nelson:And how you would serve them and communicating with them
Nelson:because there wasn't a lot of time to go through many channels.
Nelson:It wasn't a lot of time to bring a new supply.
Nelson:And this is the other, the other major point.
Nelson:When we see in the selection criteria for suppliers, we see all around relationship
Nelson:is much less important than it is.
Nelson:So people aren't just going back to the same people.
Nelson:They're having to find, to address the novel issues in novel ways,
Nelson:having to find novel solutions.
Nelson:So they have to go to new suppliers.
Nelson:So they don't have time for all those people to learn about their
Nelson:business while they try to survive.
Nelson:COVID.
Nelson:So I think that's a lot of what we're seeing.
Nelson:uh, When we compared this year, the areas for which insights groups are responsible
Nelson:versus last year to me seemed a lot.
Nelson:They're focusing on areas to maintain the business.
Nelson:Whereas a year before they were focused on areas to grow the business.
Nelson:Now there seem to be a lot more of them being able to focus more on, on
Nelson:growing the business and maintaining the long-term health of the business,
Nelson:rather than trying to find stock gap solutions to, to keep afloat.
Nelson:That's how it seems to me
Lenny:though.
Lenny:And I think that's right.
Lenny:And for the audience get, this is the little bit the
Lenny:dynamics three Nelson NY, right?
Lenny:He keeps my feet somewhat on the ground, at least maybe a pinky
Lenny:toe while my head is going in other directions, and I, you know, I'm
Lenny:obsessed with the idea of, defining.
Lenny:The market structure and the dynamics that drive that structure from an
Lenny:evolutionary perspective, that's my default view in thinking about grit
Lenny:overall and its usefulness is as some level of predictive tool, right.
Lenny:To give, uh, at least some signals on where things may go and yeah, based on
Lenny:that piece of the conversation I would say that the more things change, the
Lenny:more they stay the same that, although we are, I think we've certainly seen an
Lenny:adjustment of a size of pie by segment with technology, probably being the
Lenny:best example of that from a growth perspective, but at the same time, to
Lenny:your point, Fully rebounded while uh, groups that we thought were going to grow
Lenny:well even a few years ago, like strategy consultancies, that was the big thing.
Lenny:All the full service companies wanted to be strategy consultancies, but it
Lenny:looks like now not so much they're back to being, we're comfortable being full
Lenny:service suppliers which seems that.
Nelson:Yeah, go ahead.
Nelson:When we talk about whether.
Nelson:Full service providers, for example, want to provide strategic consulting or not.
Nelson:They still say that's one of their revenue sources.
Nelson:It's just for fewer of them, their primary revenue source, because there
Nelson:was a lot of focus in the last year of just being able to get things done.
Nelson:And so what we see when we look at the methodology sections of this is we see
Nelson:what probably a lot of people would have predicted that last year, there's
Nelson:an increase in remote methods, online telephone and so forth to conduct
Nelson:research rather than in-person then.
Nelson:No surprise there.
Nelson:And that's a year old.
Nelson:Now what we see this year is that some of those have increased a little
Nelson:bit, but mostly they've leveled off.
Nelson:But what we've seen is the continued decline of in-person methods, as well as
Nelson:a decline in some of the more traditional methods like telephone interviewing,
Nelson:which isn't what you can do in.
Nelson:you know, But obviously that there are challenges to doing telephone interview,
Nelson:but some of these more traditional areas that are not in-person are also
Nelson:declining and the hypothesis is that people were forced to use some of these
Nelson:newer methods, some of these online methods and remote methods last year.
Nelson:Just to be able to get their work done and decided now, when things are returning
Nelson:more towards a more normal perspective, at least in time that we've been
Nelson:doing the analysis they find the deal.
Nelson:They like them, and they don't necessarily want to go back to the old ones.
Nelson:Or you could take a dimmer view and say that more of the people
Nelson:that provided those kinds of services aren't around anymore.
Nelson:So it's just not available to go back to that.
Lenny:Well, So the idea of the sea change, right?
Lenny:If I had to sum up and overall view I would say that the, many
Lenny:trends that we have already seen in place for years accelerated.
Lenny:The migration of technology, et cetera, et cetera, right?
Lenny:Those are the obvious ones.
Lenny:And the proportion of how technology is redefining even the service-based sector
Lenny:of our industry while the sea change.
Lenny:And as you just pointed out, Really was that shift towards, in particularly
Lenny:qualitative and things where it stands out the most and from an in-person perspective
Lenny:that ship has sailed, that he did change the there was the necessity to shift
Lenny:to online qualitative, for instance.
Lenny:And now those folks, yeah, I like it.
Lenny:Why would we go back when we've proven that we can
Lenny:achieve most of our objectives?
Lenny:And a more scalable, easy, safer way.
Lenny:And I would not expect to see in person bounce back it at the level that it
Lenny:was the, I think we'll find new use cases for in-person anything sensory,
Lenny:for instance, we're not there yet.
Lenny:Maybe when the metaverse launches and they'll have some type of of a device
Lenny:that duplicates our census, but we're not.
Lenny:So those will continue on while the scalability of online qual
Lenny:seems to Trump, the benefits of the immediacy of being face-to-face.
Lenny:So that's a sea change, but I don't see a lot more.
Lenny:Massive sea changes into your, go back to your original
Lenny:thought on the day in the life.
Lenny:That was a great example, right?
Lenny:We kept expecting to see something change and people allocating their time.
Lenny:And that's not really what we've seen.
Lenny:The we've seen people still do things they've always done.
Lenny:Although the proportions are not necessarily changing radically.
Lenny:If anything, maybe the volume.
Lenny:Of the activities are changing to an extent but not as it fits
Lenny:in with the overall change.
Lenny:The industry is in an interesting state of flux and change,
Lenny:but it seems as if it is a.
Lenny:Natural progression of evolution versus a disruptive, oh crap.
Lenny:Everything is changed kind of moment.
Lenny:I don't see much evidence of disruption.
Nelson:Yeah.
Nelson:I want to go back to what you first said, which was about how you brought me into
Nelson:this to change how we're doing everything.
Nelson:And so one of these.
Nelson:Yeah.
Nelson:What I said about the day in the life is that the percentages
Nelson:on average do not change.
Nelson:There's absolutely.
Nelson:There's not even in some cases, there might be a 1%
Nelson:change, but there is no change.
Nelson:But if you look below the surface and this is the thing, is that things on
Nelson:average, they're canceling each other out.
Nelson:There's just as many people, it seems to be just as much work being brought
Nelson:in-house as being outsourced more.
Nelson:Time added a question.
Nelson:Are you outsourcing more or bringing more work in house?
Nelson:And we saw that there's about a quarter that are outsourcing more and is
Nelson:about a quarter that are doing more in-house more than they were before.
Nelson:So it's not that nothing is disrupted.
Nelson:It's just, it's not universally disruptive in the same way.
Lenny:Ah, so like the William Gibson quote the future is already here.
Lenny:It's just not evenly distributed I'm.
Nelson:Sure.
Nelson:Yeah.
Nelson:But then back to the, how we got off on this, I pushed us off on tangent,
Nelson:which is actually, one of our, one of our main conversation screens, I think.
Nelson:But you had been talking about whether.
Nelson:People I've given up on strategic consulting, whether they should be
Nelson:giving up on data visualization.
Nelson:I just wanted to return to that for a minute because that's where we
Nelson:jumped off onto this, but people are offering strategic consultants
Nelson:consulting and strategic services.
Nelson:It's it just seems like the mix has changed more to where people
Nelson:have had to get more of the revenue from research then from consulting.
Nelson:Partly I think because stuff needed to get done.
Nelson:And that's where buyers had to put their money, but also because buyers had to
Nelson:spend more time doing the consulting and doing the business aspect of it.
Nelson:And couldn't bring buyers, couldn't bring suppliers up to speed.
Nelson:I don't know if that will come back or not, but they're still
Nelson:saying that's among their services.
Nelson:So it might, but that will be one of the things to watch is if this
Nelson:relationship where people are really as comfortable with somebody, external
Nelson:being somebody who's positioned as.
Nelson:You know, As someone who is a true partner and, they're like an employee and whatnot,
Nelson:I don't know how feasible that is.
Nelson:And how versus how much more comfortable buyers are taking that
Nelson:role in their own organizations on the data visualization point.
Nelson:Let's remember when we look at the big buckets technology providers and
Nelson:data and analytics providers are very focused on data visualization, but.
Nelson:They're providing it, but providing those capabilities to buyers.
Nelson:So it's not as though suppliers should give up on that.
Nelson:It's just, who is doing it.
Nelson:Might change from business to business.
Nelson:I don't know that buyers are waiting for suppliers to come in and take
Nelson:a strong role consulting like that and doing the data visualization.
Nelson:I think they see a distinction between reporting and data visualization.
Lenny:Well, Yeah.
Lenny:As is, and maybe that's been that always been the disconnect
Lenny:from a research world, right?
Lenny:We're really good at reporting results.
Lenny:Um, We're just not very creative and we report the results.
Lenny:I'm not sure how the audience thinks about grip, but give you a little
Lenny:peak in how the sausage is made.
Lenny:The, those nice, cool, pretty charts that we use.
Lenny:Those aren't things that Nelson and I developed.
Lenny:We have designers who do that.
Lenny:So we deliver table.
Lenny:That designers, based the day you go into the data tables
Lenny:and create a chart off of that.
Lenny:So we're not very imaginative, but that does bring up a and to something
Lenny:that is new or different in this wave.
Lenny:And let's talk about it because we touched on.
Lenny:The idea on a, on mapping, the industry visualizing the industry and those who
Lenny:were followed grit, for a few years, we used our grit scape, the LUMAscape that
Lenny:was this, fund map model that we used kind of game of Thrones fantasy world.
Lenny:And that's my geekiness that was manifesting.
Lenny:We pulled back from that this year, not just because we thought
Lenny:it was just time to do something.
Lenny:But it wasn't reflective of the industry.
Lenny:So that those questions that you forced us to add on looking at a
Lenny:proportion of revenue by different different offerings, products and
Lenny:services across the board in driving this idea of trying to understand what.
Lenny:Isn't really such thing as a pure technology company, for instance, was
Lenny:one of the obvious examples of that.
Lenny:No, there's not right.
Lenny:As we look at that, we see that every company is still doing lots of different
Lenny:things and is generating revenue that their proportion of revenue may be higher
Lenny:for technology licensing, but there is significant service oriented revenue
Lenny:involved in their businesses as well.
Lenny:So to map that out and this is one of the things, again, that would give you
Lenny:credit Nelson uh, we're really trying to struggle, but how do we show this?
Lenny:Cause it's just like a big, messy, nasty Venn diagram, you know, when you think
Lenny:about from an overlap perspective, but.
Lenny:We started thinking, is there a way to, to almost show this as a, in a
Lenny:spatial way of some type of almost quadrant type of analysis and you
Lenny:crack that code on how to do that.
Lenny:And there's lots of complications in doing it.
Lenny:The, what do you want to describe what we've come up with at a high level in.
Lenny:In showing the relationship between big bucket and sub-segments
Lenny:visually that we'll be debuting.
Lenny:And in this group report
Nelson:Yeah.
Nelson:I mean, It really gets back to something that I think is important.
Nelson:For people to conduct surveys, for example, is we have this, we ask people
Nelson:about now I think it's 25 services.
Nelson:Do you offer it or not or not?
Nelson:And we ask them which one is primary.
Nelson:And I know from the comments that people leave, some of them are frustrated because
Nelson:they say they're all equally important.
Nelson:Yeah, okay, fine.
Nelson:You can think that.
Nelson:But when we ask people to say, which one is most important, or just to
Nelson:pick one, regardless, they might think that they're making an arbitrary
Nelson:choice of which one is most important, but it does help to focus things.
Nelson:There is some meaning to the top of mind.
Nelson:How do I identify myself?
Nelson:Even if many things apply.
Nelson:And so we use that in the visualization we used all of the services.
Nelson:Do you offer them or not?
Nelson:And then what's your, what do you, where do you get most of your revenue
Nelson:from full service, strategic strategy, finance analytics, and I guess one of
Nelson:the things that Lenny that the result of putting all those together is that we
Nelson:came up, something came up with something that we probably would have drawn by.
Nelson:Because it's intuitive.
Nelson:So we've got, if we think in terms of quadrants, we have on the one side, the
Nelson:generalists, the strategic consultants and the full service providers on
Nelson:the other side, the specialist, the data and analytics, technology,
Nelson:and field services providers at the top we have more of the consultant.
Nelson:Type areas at the bottom, we have more of the getting the research done type areas.
Nelson:So we have those four quadrants.
Nelson:And then if we look at the real, so we have strategy generalist versus
Nelson:specialist in strategy versus tactical strategic versus tactical research.
Nelson:And then within those, if we look at the detail, we can also see
Nelson:that there are areas where online services have grouped together.
Nelson:In person or, other not specifically online services or grouped together
Nelson:and you know, get a, you get a clearer picture of what are the
Nelson:combinations of things that people are offering that, that are most common.
Nelson:Does that answer your question?
Lenny:Well, It does.
Lenny:And we're also, we're trying to explain something that's inherently visual just
Lenny:using words but I think the the point.
Lenny:the high level view.
Lenny:And I think the audience will see this when you see the report, is that
Lenny:there's a one we've made, we tried to do something really cool and interactive
Lenny:and we'll see whether we succeed or not.
Lenny:I think it will be, I think it's pretty cool.
Lenny:But the overall view is to show the complexity of relationships between
Lenny:the supplier community, based upon the revenue contribution of services and
Lenny:solutions and the message there is that.
Lenny:It is a very intertwined industry.
Lenny:Right.
Lenny:You know, Sometimes.
Lenny:people will say you use the word ecosystem too much.
Lenny:We work in a synergistic ecosystem.
Lenny:That's just the way that it is.
Lenny:It's a very complex industry.
Lenny:There's lots of interrelationships.
Lenny:No man is an island, so to speak, right?
Lenny:There's very few kind of really, truly standalone companies that
Lenny:are not interconnected with others.
Lenny:Uh, And I think that's only going to grow in complexity as more and more
Lenny:companies enter the space from outside.
Lenny:We'll see this things progress, but it's also one of those evolutionary
Lenny:components of the report that I think keep it really interesting for you.
Lenny:And I hopefully interesting for the audience as well.
Lenny:You know, you've always been kind behind the scenes when it comes
Lenny:to grit, obviously, which is one reason why I wanted to do this.
Lenny:if there's something you've always wanted to say to the industry, now be careful.
Lenny:Nelson, because I can imagine this few things you might want to say.
Lenny:And
Nelson:so we added it right
Lenny:uh,
Lenny:about grit.
Lenny:What would that be?
Lenny:What's something you've always wanted it to communicate to everybody about grit.
Nelson:Well, To be perfectly honest, All of the comments that people leave.
Nelson:We read the emails that they send about it.
Nelson:And, you know, just to start on one end, I understand a lot of the
Nelson:frustrations that some people have and a lot of limitations and a lot of
Nelson:the criticisms that they have, but we know that too, and we deal with it.
Nelson:So it's constantly evolving.
Nelson:We're constantly doing additional analysis to test whether any of
Nelson:these criticisms Under undermine what we're trying to report And, you know,
Nelson:like I said, one of them might be, you know, people don't want to pick
Nelson:what their primary service area is.
Nelson:And I understand that because that's true with any survey that people answer.
Nelson:But when we look at the results, there is some meaning to it.
Nelson:When.
Nelson:The population, there's some meaning to it.
Nelson:It helps us organize it.
Nelson:And we understand that there is a lot of complexity.
Nelson:We understand that some of the questions are simplifications.
Nelson:We understand some of the conclusions are simplifications, but I would
Nelson:think, something I would like to, I guess, tell people would be to spend
Nelson:as much time as you can looking through the whole report and you'll see.
Nelson:We are making generalizations about things were pulling things back layer
Nelson:upon layer, as much as we can to show all the individuality and diversity in
Nelson:the industry, because it isn't one thing.
Nelson:Something else that supports this and you read in the first part
Nelson:of the grit report, we talk about the sampling method and so forth.
Nelson:It's a very, we don't say who's in and who's.
Nelson:We contact people and let them say if they're in the
Nelson:industry or out of the industry.
Nelson:So in this way, the grit survey has the potential to grow.
Nelson:As the industry goes to identify new niches.
Nelson:Now it may take us a wave or two for the questions to catch up with
Nelson:the new people who've come in, but we catch up and we, you know, it's
Nelson:a constantly evolving process and it's a very thoughtful process.
Lenny:Thank you.
Lenny:Now, one of the cool things too, the tapping in the past year or
Lenny:so is that we obviously grit's a beast from a size standpoint, right?
Lenny:It just is there's a lot to cover and we've played different
Lenny:ways to try and cut it down.
Lenny:And you know what it could easily be two to three times as long.
Lenny:Um, But we've started exploring spinoff reports with new things.
Lenny:Can you describe the spinoff reports and the surprises that have
Lenny:come for you as a result of that?
Nelson:I've always felt that, that even as we use more of this in
Nelson:each sprint report, that there's still some that's underutilized.
Nelson:And we know that we want to, to some extent have portion control because
Nelson:there's a lot to digest in any one issue.
Nelson:A part of that is reflected in moving this to a digital HTML version where
Nelson:people can skip around to what they want to see and pick and choose.
Nelson:Although the whole report, I'm always surprised by the time we
Nelson:get to the end of it, that every section seems to be pretty valuable.
Nelson:But there's other areas that we take a deep dive in at the
Nelson:beginning of last year, we put out.
Nelson:Field guides, what we called field guides to help with targeting
Nelson:customers so that suppliers could use that to target their customers.
Nelson:And the original idea was, yeah, let's do a field guide.
Nelson:And what it became was seven field guides, because it can't come up with
Nelson:one set of recommendations or one set of.
Nelson:Things to think about for strategic consultants, consultancies that also
Nelson:applies to field services providers.
Nelson:It's just not responsible.
Nelson:So we put the time into doing seven of those and put those out.
Nelson:We are about to release the industry benchmarking report, which looks at
Nelson:different behaviors and different ways of doing business within different
Nelson:segments so that we can compare.
Nelson:Uh, So that people can look at it and say, oh, my business is the same as others.
Nelson:We need to differentiate.
Nelson:Or my businesses, the same as others, we can leave that alone
Nelson:because that's not an issue.
Nelson:You can look at it through whatever lens you want, whether being the same as is
Nelson:good for you, or whether being different would be a better strategy for you.
Nelson:But what we try to do in all of these, I think when you've written this in one of
Nelson:the, maybe in the forward or something is we want people to see themselves in the.
Nelson:If we just report the top line findings across suppliers, for example, a
Nelson:technology provider is not going to see themselves in that and at a full
Nelson:service provider might because they might be a bigger part of the sample.
Nelson:You where you want to do is you want to be able to use the report
Nelson:to see what matters to you.
Nelson:If you're a small company, you want to know, what does
Nelson:this mean for small companies?
Nelson:If you're a big company, what does this mean for a big company.
Nelson:you know, I always felt coming from smaller companies, I read the old
Nelson:grit reports and I think this is interesting, but this doesn't really have
Nelson:anything to do with my small company.
Nelson:And so we trying to bring that out more so that any so that people don't just see.
Nelson:Spaghetti thrown against the wall or whatever.
Nelson:They see a particular pattern that applies to what they're trying to do, and
Nelson:they can see themselves in the reports.
Lenny:Yeah.
Lenny:Now, and there's more to come we'll continue to experiment with that.
Lenny:So for the audience Nelson, I made copious use uh, use of slack often
Lenny:when writing in sharing quotes from.
Lenny:Songs or movies or books.
Lenny:And he wins every time.
Lenny:This man has an encyclopedic.
Lenny:He's almost an autodidact in terms of his memory, to be able to memorize the
Lenny:most obscure reference you can possibly think of from any type of media.
Lenny:And it impresses the hell out of me all of the time.
Lenny:If you get a chance to just sit down and chat with Nelson about popular
Lenny:culture and particularly music of movies that it is time well spent.
Lenny:Yeah.
Nelson:So Lenny and that point, we could have a contest and this might encourage
Nelson:people to read more of the group.
Nelson:To whoever's the first to identify all the Beatles first,
Nelson:identify the doors reference,
Lenny:There.
Lenny:So guys there are Easter eggs and grit it tell Nelson I entertain each other.
Lenny:Most of them are his but they're already strikes.
Lenny:But Nelson for wrap up just to humanize this whole thing.
Lenny:What are you currently watching.
Lenny:Reading and listening to that you're just really enjoying right now.
Nelson:Yeah.
Nelson:Well, This is a leading question because you know, for Christmas,
Nelson:I know for Christmas, I got the, a complete dark shell.
Nelson:She's a 1966 to 1971 TV series daily soap.
Nelson:So over those five years, there's 1,273 episodes.
Nelson:So I'm making my way through those.
Nelson:I'm in uh, around number four 30.
Lenny:Very cool.
Lenny:What about reading?
Nelson:Uh, The original gold key series, dark shadows.
Nelson:No, I'm actually reading.
Nelson:I'm actually reading a novels.
Nelson:I've been reading a master and commander, which everybody has told
Nelson:me, when our MPB people rave about it, they say how, how wonderful it is.
Nelson:And so I've always been intimidated to try to read it because it's a.
Nelson:When people read that much about something, I think it
Nelson:might be too hard for me.
Nelson:So it has been taking me a long time to make it through it because it's about
Nelson:the Napoleonic wars and in particular Naval activities in the Napoleonic wars.
Nelson:So every third word is a word I have to look up either because it's an
Nelson:archaic reference or because it's a nautical term so it's taking me
Nelson:a long time to go through that.
Nelson:And I had just finished reading a crime novel from takes place in 1933
Nelson:in Germany after the Weymar Republic has collapsed and Hitler taken over.
Nelson:And that I also had to, I also had to.
Nelson:A lot of stuff in that, because it's really interesting how they bring you into
Nelson:the everyday reality of it by referring to these things that, for me, unless
Nelson:I look it up, I don't know what that meant to somebody in Germany in 1933.
Nelson:So learning more is a way of learning more about the film industry or learning more
Nelson:about the history and more of learning about the cultural sites and so forth.
Nelson:So that's an example of what I've been.
Lenny:Thank you.
Lenny:Oh, and yes, I did know those, but I trust your tastes and think
Lenny:our audience may enjoy it as well.
Lenny:So Nelson, thank you for making the time.
Lenny:This was long overdue.
Lenny:I'm sure that we will do this again with other iterations of grit and
Lenny:really appreciate you sharing your time with the, with me and with
Lenny:Greenberg podcast and our audience.
Nelson:Thank you for the.
Lenny:All right, everybody be well.
Lenny:And we'll have another one of these coming out real soon.
Lenny:Thanks a lot.