“Babel Worksessions” : or how to overcome participant language skills in meetings designed to generate insight

Insights lie in the words and ideas we express and their connections . But what happens when you are in a meeting, or running one, where you have people with different mother tongues or levels of language competence? How does this affect the quality of insight you can generate?

I recently asked a question about this on a LinkedIn discussion group ( Consumer Insights Group) about the impact of mother tongue and uncovered some really useful insights about this from participants (for those in Linkedin you can see the thread here (thanks to all who contributed)

Here are my top-line take outs.  I will look for opportunities to use these in my work at Nokia.

1. Start Local first : Where possible discover your insights in local language first…then translate.
2. Local Moderator : Aim to use a good local speaking moderator,  someone who is familiar with local culture.  They can provide local examples.
3. Get clear on Values behind insights : Don’t judge the differences in a culture around an insight – focus on understanding the values creating this.  Work through the differences.
4. Use Insight statements: Use an English (or the  main work language) statement of the insight then translate it into local language applying your understanding of the local markets values and cultural norms.
5. Prepare to take more time : there is a need to discuss and work through terms and definitions – structure in small exercises.
6. Try and have a native speaker (or the “work” language”) in the session to be able to translate.
7. Use visual methods over words : images and other visual representations of insight can be better than spoken word or written text.  this enables you to go deeper and explore symbology and metaphor.  It  encourages people to explain at their own speed what they mean.   This makes it more engaging and everyone can contribute.
8. Get participants to bring images : make participants bring an image, related to the insight subject to the session, and have them explain them. Everyone gets a turn and explains their thinking in their time.
9. Pre-work is very important : give people time to think and prepare for the session.  Set pre-reading and use “workbooks” to record thoughts in own language can be helpful.  Can then be translated if need as record.
10. The overall Insight for me is that to be serious about including everyone of mixed language ability (be it consumers, or people in the company)…you should take more time and prepare more.

Synthesis over analysis – Insights from 1984

I was browsing a friend’s bookcase and saw Megatrends by John Naisbitt.  It was written back in 1984 and I was intrigued to see what the big trends were thought to be back when I was just leaving Uni.

One quote caught my eye calling for “synthesis over analysis” :

In a world where events and ideas are analysed to the point of lifelessness, where complexity grows by quantum leaps, where the information din is so high we must shriek to be heard above it, we are hungry for structure.

…things have not changed much.

Insights on Insights from Advertising

Phil Phil Dusenberry of BBDO the ad agency has commented on insight in the context of advertising creative in Fast Company Magazine

I have snipped some of his comments (and added my own reaction), as I think they have relevance to subjects and contexts in business beyond advertising.

• “In the advertising business, a good idea can inspire a great commercial. But a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials.”

Insights are platforms for a stream of ideas and actions

• “In a business world bedeviled with the problems of differentiating yourself from the crowd, moving the needle and selling enough stuff to have a measurable impact, telling the world you’ve arrived, fighting off or attacking the competition, and establishing or improving an image, insights are essential. They’re as essential to the budding entrepreneur as they are to the master marketers at Nike.Insights are what will let you stay in business, build market share, open new income streams, cement relationships with old customers, and attract new ones”

Sounds like insights are pretty important things in many contexts

• How do you go from an idea that might make a good ad to an insight that reshapes a business for a generation? Let your gut guide you. This is what customers do, but beyond that, it’s the most trustworthy meter for measuring the power of an insight. If you laugh, it’s funny. If you cry, it’s moving. If you feel a jolt of any kind, it’s breaking through the clutter. When you don’t feel it in your gut, chances are no one else will, either.

Using your gut to measure the power of an insight, maybe this creates power and passion.

• “You have to be optimistically patient. Insights and great ideas don’t come to you with clockwork precision, perfectly timed to suit your needs when you snap your fingers. They come at their own pace, and you have to patiently wait for them. If you have had useful insights in the past, you will have them again in the near future. I can’t say when exactly, but they will come.”

Suspend judgment and be comfortable with ambiguity, giving time for insights to emerge.  Be brave, get some air cover to give you the time.

• “I call it “optimistic patience.” Stay at your desk and be patient. There is no rational reason to think that you are blocked (whatever that means!), that you have dried up, that you have used up your full quota of good ideas (as if there is a quota). You simply have to keep scratching and clawing and groping for the answers — and trust that they will come.  The only thing you can’t do is rush the process, or grab on to the first idea that pops into your head because you’re in a hurry.”You don’t ordinarily find advertising insight in the hearts of the employees who work for the client. You find it in research and marketing data. You find it in the CEO’s statements. You find it in throwaway comments in meetings. You find it in customer complaints.”

Insights are found/created from data, leadership and chance connections of ideas…but you need to be able to be open to receive them!  Sounds like it helps to have an idea first.

Ideas create Information not visa versa

In  the Web of Life by Fridjof Capra he discusses the parallels of the mind with computers and references the work of Theodore Roszak and his book the Cult of Information.  Two  ideas struck me :

• Information does not create idea; ideas create information.
• Ideas are integrating patterns that derive not from information but from experience.

So this means facts grows from ideas. We have to have an idea before we can ask a question and seek the answer (or information for it). The idea is needed to label a part of the world and to give it our attention.

When interpreting information we need to become aware of our ideas as they will determine what we recognise as relevant and of value.  But if we change our ideas we will see different information.

Isn’t this what happens when we have insights? Its not about amassing more information, its about having a new idea?

If an idea is an integrating pattern, could a change in pattern be seen as the point of insight?  What we experience as an “aha” moment might then be simply be an emotional reaction to the creation of a new integrating pattern?  The written insight is only one way of crystallising this emotion and its meaning after the event.

Might this line of thinking mean that when we inquire into people’s thinking and behaviours we must make explicit what our current ideas are about them?

I have begun thinking about these initial ideas as “mental models”, made up of beliefs, values, rules.  How can we best make them explicit?  Also I feel there is some connection here to the idea of systems thinking and employing a more dynamic, holistic view of information – getting behind the patterns and looking at our own personal deeper thinking structures.

Explorate’s Golden Rules of Branding

Was stimulated by a question on Linked in for your Golden Rules of branding. I created the following List

1. Be different
2. Be relevant
3. Don’t become too proud of your brand’s success -> complacency
4. Think of your brand as “relationship nurturing system”
5. Never forget… the brand only exists in people’s heads – your marketing is not your brand
6. Do what you say you do – keep promises made, meet the expectation
7. For longevity have a purpose beyond profit – constantly be creating a positive legacy
8. Be conscious of the need to adapt brand behaviour
9. Listen to consumers actively, and act on what you hear