Denver 2023: themes of the day

On Monday 23rd October 2023, the opening day of TMRE 2023, roughly 40 senior insight and analytics leaders left the main conference for a full day off the record at Meow Wolf Denver, an immersive art venue in downtown Denver, Colorado. It was an invited, in-person retreat: talks, panel discussions, conversations around cabaret tables, a cooking session, time loose in the art, a puzzle challenge, and an open floor to close. The day ran under the Chatham House rule: take the learning home, leave the name and the company behind. These notes pool the day's thinking by theme, not by session, and are written to carry no participant names or participant companies. Each view is framed as it was held in the room, by one participant or by several where several held it.

I. What the room came to talk about

Before anyone spoke, the pre-event survey had set the agenda. Three themes led: getting influence at the strategy table, redefining what insight means inside an organisation, and storytelling. In the open answers, AI came up again and again, though it was not one of the top votes. People described being thrown in at the deep end, and saw the technology as a double-edged sword that helps the work and challenges it at the same time. Doing more with less, and keeping up with the pace of change, came close behind.

What people wanted from the day was just as clear. Real challenges, not theory. Practical tips they could take back on Monday. And above all, connection with peers. The host set the tone for the floor: better to give a colleague practical advice that might not be quite right than to be too timid, because everyone in the room can judge what fits their own business. He also offered a rule for the introverts: an awkward introduction beats no introduction.

The round of introductions showed how much was shared. One participant wanted fresh approaches to persistent problems. Others were building new teams with few resources, adjusting to a new leadership team, or watching several rival insight groups spring up inside their own company. Several were hiring and wondering what skills the next generation of insight leaders will need. One named joy as the thing on their mind. Another quoted Amara's law: we overestimate a new technology in the short run and underestimate it in the long run.

So what for your team

• Use the survey's three leading themes, influence, the meaning of insight and storytelling, to frame a team discussion.
• Treat connection with peers as part of the job. The problem one team is stuck on is often one another team has already solved.

II. Making research useful

One participant argued that research should be judged by the decisions it improves. Others came at the same idea from different directions through the day. One participant said their leadership would not take a meeting unless it was told the why, and above all the "now what", so they open every presentation with the business problem and end on implications.

The how was practical. Before taking on a request, ask what business decision it serves and what gap in knowledge stands in the way of that decision. If the requester cannot say, send them away to think, or work it out with them. One participant asks for a hypothesis, and the action that will follow if it is proved or disproved, to be agreed with stakeholders before the analysis starts, which holds everyone to account for using the answer.

One participant warned that overhead budgets can be particularly vulnerable to cuts, and suggested running the function as an owner would: if a question costs a certain sum to answer, ask whether the business will get at least that back. The same discipline, on this view, applies to people's time, weighing which project an analyst spends a month on by its value to the business and to that person's development.

One participant emphasised communication and working relationships as much as research skill. Another argued that the job is moving from knowing what people do to understanding why, and that this often depends on asking a different question.

So what for your team

• Ask after each piece of work which decision it changed.
• Agree the hypothesis and the action it will trigger before the work starts, with the person who will act.
• Put the business question on slide one. Method belongs in the appendix.
• Weigh what an answer is worth against what it costs before committing to it.

III. Getting a seat at the strategy table

Strategy was the top theme in the survey, and the host pressed the room on it at the close. Before he ran insight teams, he said, he worked in corporate strategy, where teams often skipped the insight team because its data was expensive, slow and hard to get. His question was whether insight teams now have the skills to be the people strategists come to. He also owned a mistake: asked by a senior executive where growth would come from, he once answered with a research process when she wanted a strategist's answer.

Answers from the floor were practical. One participant argued that internal partners "don't want a market researcher. They want a critical thinker", and suggested looking at your own team through the eyes of the strategy function you want to sit beside. Another urged learning the strategists' language: read the financial reports, understand the balance sheet, learn how consultants structure a problem, and teach the team those tools. A third suggested inviting strategy colleagues into research sessions so they learn your language in return. One participant asked whether the function should call itself something else, consumer strategists perhaps. Another argued that demonstrating research's commercial contribution can strengthen its influence.

Influence came up well before the close. One panellist was blunt: "if you can't convince someone to do something differently", the most sophisticated analysis wastes everyone's time. Storytelling, and the ability to move between the detail and the boardroom view, was described as a skill to invest in ahead of more technical training. Delivering bad news constructively was named as one of the hardest parts of the job, and building champions who speak for the team when it is not in the room as one of the most useful. One participant suggested listening carefully before trying to persuade.

So what for your team

• Ask what your strategy colleagues would want from a partner, then hire and train for that.
• Learn the language of finance and strategy, and teach yours back.
• When a senior leader asks a strategic question, answer the question before proposing a study.

IV. Doing more with less, faster

Budgets and speed came up from many directions. One panellist put it as "do more with less, and faster", adding that slow, considered work had lost some of its shine because leadership struggles to see it as actionable. Getting leaders to look even twelve months ahead was described as a battle of its own.

Ideas for coping were concrete. One participant runs very short tests with product teams, and said it works because the tests start from the stakeholders' problems. Another said they deliberately turn down much of the innovation proposed to them because short-term pressure is real, and that what keeps good ideas coming is a culture where people feel safe to bring them. On budgets, one participant described relying on internal experts once outside spending was cut; another said the approach was to deliver what leadership needs, then pick the one line to defend in budget season.

The vendor deluge got a candid airing. One participant said their inbox and phone had never been so full of unsolicited pitches, many of them about AI, and admitted to guilt at ignoring them in case one was the idea that mattered. Replies varied. One filter: does the partner start from insight or from technology, and will they help you think better as well as execute faster? Another participant takes the occasional exploratory call to see what is out there, and judges it a success if they learn something. A third said the best partners arrive with an idea about the business instead of a tour of their technology. The host made a related point: a good vendor is a thinking partner as well as a supplier.

So what for your team

• Set a time limit on tests and stick to it.
• Defend one budget line hard, not all of them.
• Give vendors a simple bar: show me an idea about my business.

V. AI alongside people

AI ran through the whole day, discussed with more curiosity than alarm. One view held that the technology will take on tasks such as summarising and searching well before it touches the judgement and advice that make insight valuable. One participant raised the risk of unrealistic expectations: senior leaders hear a hot topic and assume it is the new way to do everything. One panellist warned that AI hands research skills to everyone, so insight teams are no longer the gatekeepers they once were. One participant suggested evaluating new technology against a practical need.

A floor point added a caution specific to insight. The most powerful insights are often counter-intuitive and come from what we do not yet know, and a system trained on what has been said before may be poorly placed to find them.

The open floor raised a fresh worry: senior leaders can now generate plausible consumer "insight" themselves, without calling the insight team, and sometimes only call later to have it validated. Responses were measured. One participant compared it to the earlier wave of do-it-yourself surveys and proposed that research across a company needs someone with oversight of how it is done. Another reframes requests from "prove" to "understand". A third tracks how much effort goes to validating existing beliefs against exploring new ground. Another asked a sharper question of stakeholders: will you act if the answer contradicts you? Behind these sat trust. One participant described the team as the business's neutral ground, and argued that independence is earned through relationships over time.

Two practical points came from the floor. Online survey quality, with bots and fake respondents, was named as an area where the industry is moving too slowly. And on getting AI tools past security review, one suggestion was to ask vendors for both their solution today and their longer-term plan, since the two may differ.

So what for your team

• Decide which tasks you want AI to take, so the decision is not made for you.
• When others run their own "research", offer to help them do it well instead of fighting it.
• Ask stakeholders up front whether they will act on an answer they do not like.

VI. Seeing what your own data cannot

Several conversations turned on blind spots. One participant warned that incomplete evidence can produce misleading conclusions, and another that transaction records may give an incomplete picture of a customer's value. Future customers who are not buying yet are invisible to a business that only counts buyers. A falling category, one participant noted, could mean trading down, a change in what households need, or a quiet shift to another channel, and each calls for a different response.

Signals were questioned too. One participant suggested checking whether familiar measures still help anticipate change. Another described consumer expectations of personalisation racing ahead of what the algorithms can deliver, with insight left to close the gap. Another view held that people share personal data willingly when what they get back is worth it.

So what for your team

• List what your own data cannot see, and what would change if you could.
• Before accepting a decline, check whether the market shrank or the spending moved elsewhere.
• Review your lead indicators. Some may no longer predict anything.

VII. Teams: hiring for curiosity, keeping people, passing it on

Discussion also covered recruitment, development and retention. On hiring, one participant said: "anybody can, like, write the surveys". What is scarce, on this view, is curiosity and business sense. Another participant described almost turning down candidates without the expected technical skills, then realising their storytelling and drive were the real asset. Genuine interest in the subject was said to matter: people who live and breathe a category see things others miss. The hardest profile to find, one view held, combines data science with classic research and the emotional maturity to work at mid level.

New talent can unsettle long-serving staff. One answer offered was to promote high performers quickly and let the signal spread. Another was mentoring: once you find someone curious, teach them the business, so they can connect a market trend to the decisions it drives.

On keeping people, one participant said engagement surveys showed staff want to see how their work ladders up to strategy, and want flexibility. Teams agreeing together when and why to meet in person was offered as one way through office mandates. Another participant said that in their company it is still hard to be promoted without time in the office.

Knowledge transfer drew practical ideas. Rotations long enough for early-career people to learn something. One participant found voluntary peer learning more useful than centrally delivered training. Simple training for colleagues outside the team on what the team's own measures mean. And a single place to find past work, so a team stops repeating itself every time someone leaves.

So what for your team

• Hire for curiosity and business sense; teach the tools.
• Agree office time as a team, with a reason for each day.
• Make past work easy to find before buying anything new.

VIII. Play

The day built in play on purpose: a cooking session, an hour among the art, a race to finish a puzzle against the clock. In the AI discussion, experimenting with a new tool was offered as the quickest way to learn what it can and cannot do. The host noted that fun was one of the things people had said they wanted from the day.

So what for your team

• Make room for play with new tools. It is how teams find the edges.

If there is only one page

• The room came for connection, strategy and practical help with doing more with less. AI was everywhere, discussed with curiosity.
• Judge research by the decisions it improves. Start from the business decision, agree the action before the work, and weigh what an answer is worth against its cost.
• To earn a seat at the strategy table, think like the strategists, speak their language and answer their questions directly.
• Under budget pressure, keep tests short, defend one budget line hard, and give vendors a simple bar.
• Treat AI as a tool alongside people. Choose the tasks it takes, and help colleagues who run their own "research" do it well.
• Look for what your own data cannot see before trusting a conclusion.
• Hire for curiosity and business sense, keep people by showing how their work matters, and make past work easy to find.