Growing research ‘impact radius’ by connecting learning to more internal product audiences — to get more done with insights
Integrating research > Expanding reach and connectivity > B. Turning up research communications > Article B1
NOTE: This earlier article series has pivoted into ‘Stop Wasting Research’ book for Rosenfeld Media > Subscribe for updates (monthly at most)
So much research conducted, but so few potential stakeholders seeing it. Researchers’ in expanding tech organizations often limit their focus to certain silos — despite the fact that many of their insights could be valuably put to use in other teams, landing a broader ‘impact radius’ over time.
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When great researchers take on projects, they work hard to shape a clear notion of their audience, narrowing in on internal stakeholders that will help bring the work to life. But researchers often don’t realize how exclusive they are being with their resulting insights, to the detriment of the products they are working to humanize and improve.
As someone who works to activate research, I’ve seen a ton of reports. And there have been many times when I have gotten my hands on a fantastic, mindset-altering research output. Game changers.
Yet when I check in with the authors about who they’ve actively spoken to about their insights, they name one or two teams within an organizational silo. The product people that commissioned the project and one or two others, with a lunchtime learning session catching a few other folks. Or just one product team and then a blast message to a big audience, lost in scrolling feeds and some intranet location. For the breadth of teams that could have used the game-changing insights, but never heard about them, the research becomes more of the ‘unknown known.’
Omitted audiences — untapped product people who researchers could have valuably engaged with about their insights — represent a huge waste of potential impact. Waste that only grows with each new research project. Waste that’s pervasive across research of every stripe and discipline, whether UX, Market, Data Science, Customer Success, or otherwise.
Extending reach is not just about landing a specific insight in more places. Ongoing efforts to drive broader insight use can shift product leaders’ perceptions and shape organizational culture. It can elevate the idea of what a research community fundamentally provides. Broader ‘impact radius’ can set the stage for investing in new research programs — along the lines of improved knowledge management, centralized research repositories, and better integration of insights into product plans.
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Improving your insight operations
Get more done with your research community’s insights by:
- Challenging research teams to do more hands-on insight activation work for each project
Start a cross-disciplinary discussion space to help researchers of different stripes track down the teams and individual product leaders that they could be inspiring. Start communicating the desire to get more done with each research investment, rather than touting research throughput as the primary measure of success. - Visualizing current and desired impact radius
Maintain a map of internal audiences across your organization. A traditional org chart works great. Highlight which teams have used different streams of research to date, and which uses have led to launched improvement. Identify who would need to use existing and future research in order to actualize the impacts that your research community wants to see happen. - Raising the impact ceiling to reach more leaders
Set higher ambitions for the upward reach of insights in your org chart. Experiment with new ways of communicating selected learnings to leadership. It may be as simple as asking for time in standing meetings. - Starting to ‘break up’ the outputs of research projects to get more done with the insights they contain
Explore creating different reporting ‘versions’ from the same research project. Narrow in on subsets of topics that will be of interest for particular teams. Try ‘abstracting up’ selected insights into more general learning that could be applied by a broader audience. - Celebrating stories where research crossed silos to score ‘bonus’ impact
To continue to yield more of this impact, codify successful research communication and activation experiments into regular research operations. - Your idea here…
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On the path from insight to product impact
Growing research ‘impact radius’ is part of product teams achieving awareness of possible planning targets from their research. It’s also part of usefully articulating insights, envisioning solution ideas, and actually getting plans prioritized.
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Let’s connect
If you’ve read this far, please don’t be a stranger. I’m curious to hear about your challenges and successes expanding the ‘impact radius’ of research in your organization. Thank you!
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Related posts
- A1. Fighting insight waste with research repositories
- A2. Aiming for integrated research, not just a research repository tool
- B2. Improving internal marketing about new and upcoming research — to get more done with insights
- View list of all ‘Integrating Research’ posts (and upcoming topics)
Selected references
- “We repeatedly hear the same problems regarding how user research data and insights are created and shared… User research is siloed within departments” Kai Forsyth
https://dovetailapp.com/blog/user-ux-research-repository/ - “… once you or your user research team has achieved terminal velocity with any given method, stop trying to speed it up. Instead, focus on capturing each insight, leveling it up to organizational knowledge, and applying that learning in the future.” Joe Munko
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/skip-user-research-unless-youre-doing-it-right-seriously-15494e5ee033 - “The term Sweating the Assets originated in the IT environment over a decade ago. Variously defined as… ‘getting as much use as possible out of what you already possess’” Curtis Arthur
https://www.insightplatforms.com/how-to-sweat-your-insight-assets/
