Ethnography and the Power of the Pivot: Bringing Non-Researchers Into the Field and Adapting When In-Person Research Disappears

hello and welcome to our next talk in the march accelerant research virtual insights conference thank you all for continuing to join us hopefully you've been able to refill your coffee and get a snack one second let me flip my presentation here that should work am i here we go one second sorry guys let me get my screen shared here um and i'll be right with you okay all right this should be good so thank you all for joining us and just to reiterate some of our ground rules once again we're at the mercy of tech so please be patient please be respectful with all of us as people are logging in and logging out and also just use this opportunity to network engage interact with others it's been a long year of not being able to see our colleagues in person and kind of share ideas so take this opportunity to follow up with someone if you see some ideas that are interesting for you that you'd like to learn more about so we have a very exciting talk for you to hear today oh crap i'm having i'm having technical difficulties right now but i'm going to figure it out guys so we have really exciting talk for you today we're going to hear about ethnography and the power of the pivot and we're going to hear from heidi carrion who is at sure tape she's manager of insights and design and then also going to hear from jillian wells who's the ceo and founder of 3e which is employment engagement and experience so i'm going to hand it over to you guys really looking forward to it and i will be back at the top of the hour thank you maureen um it says i can't share my screen while you're still sharing okay hopefully now i can stop sharing and then let me make you the host bill do you need to make heidi or jillian the host i got it i think i got it now you got it now okay here we go can you see that okay thank you well thank you maureen and um thank you bill for inviting us to present here today appreciate appreciate i love events like this where we can hear what other people are working on so thanks for sharing that stemi research bill and i'm actually getting ready to use ai for the first time for qualitative research so appreciate the insights there a little scary huh so i'm heidi carrion and i'm really excited to present today with my long time friend jillian wells um to start with it's gonna tell a little about myself and had kind of a varied career path to get to where i am so i'm kind of like a lot of you out there i started my education and career in the life sciences i did a couple did a couple of internships during my biology degree i studied terrestrial snails for one summer and then another summer i spent at kennedy space center setting the ground controls for growing plants in space and they actually use something similar to this on the international space station now so i like to think that i contributed greatly to this as an intern so intuitively my next step in my career path was to learn everything that was to know about candles i was hired as an r d chemist in the candle sciences group of bath and body works and candle or science might be a little bit of a misnomer here very light science but it was a great job my first splash into the cpg world a lot of bench top work but also worked extensively with international candle vendors and guatemala and china but it was in this job where i first experienced my first focus group and from the beginning that's what i wanted to do like that's i was smitten from the beginning and wanted to figure out how to be part of that then took a little trip to my chemistry startup and this picture pretty much describes my career path there left there went and pursued an mba and then started my first job um in consumer research with a an ex an industrial design consultancy called nottingham spark i was there for a decade and with that this is really where i cut my teeth in consumer research we had a focus group facility in house and i was a moderator from day one so it was a lot of just learning everything on the job being thrown into situations learning a lot from our clients seeing something in one proposal that i'm like oh i'll try this next time so um very very very hands-on trial by fire for sure and a lot of the the the um sorry research work that i did was more about stimuli creation and giving the designers something to work with and finding those pain points for consume for um to meet consumer needs and with product design also do some quantitative research there but i'm largely a qual girl so now i work for sure tate technologies more commonly known as the duct tape company we have a couple other brands as well as you can see the bottom of the slide here frog tape and t-rex and i knew that i'm very proud of easy mounts look it up but with with the duct tape company i started out in r d so i was a consumer researcher placed with scientists a lot of interesting nuances there i'll be talking about that throughout my presentation i quickly saw a need to be using consumer research to answer questions early on in the development cycle before we spent way too much money and followed the wrong insights um so i i really wanted to use consumer research to reach out to our end users whether it's a stucco contractor or a you know a cat owner or so many different places where people use tape and different types of tape but it was kind of a hard sell at first not everyone was on board so let me talk about that so the level set i know most of you are researchers so you probably know what ethnography is but we i want to make sure that we're defining this so ethnography traditionally ethnography looked like this moving to the jungle living among the natives the indigenous people learning the language observing and as much as i would love for that to actually be my life let's see practical we're marketing researchers so when we say ethnography we mean more show me tell me walk me through in-situ research in context a lot of times it's happening in a dining room around the kitchen table on a couch or for me a lot of the work that i've done recently actually has been on farms so my message today actually is um a little bit different um anyone who has done ethnographic research or contextual interviewing understands the value the research value of doing this but what i wanted to amplify today is the ability to lead from where you are in an organization and i found that ethnographic research has been a really valuable tool for that so yes allowing the consumer to guide a collective journey so i'd like to hear from you for a minute has anyone out there had some specifically difficult categories to research maybe some difficult product categories or difficult um maybe end users to find and we heard from gary and his question to to bill about um a new to the world innovation and that's kind of the world that i used to use to live in that that can always be difficult yeah so copenhagen vaccines they're upon us have you how do you ever find research for something that happened 100 years ago so that's that's a really interesting one to research yeah so some interesting ones there um difficult populations for sure so for me one of the challenging things from the beginning was duct tape i mean it's our flagship product but how do you get into the mindset of someone getting ready to do a duct tape project unless you're doing something like this so crafting is a very specific segment for us um this is actually our stuck at prom winner last year we host this scholarship contest every year where college or high school age men and women can make a prom dress or a tuxedo and submit it into the contest and this was the the winner last year very topical dress a really beautiful creation but she spent 400 hours he's over 41 rolls of duct tape so you could say she planned her duct tape project this is actually going on now so feel free to check it out at sucka prom so peyton planned for sure but normally if you're using duct tape to cobble something together you're not doing much planning it was a low involvement purchase it's a junk drawer staple maybe it lives in your garage if you can find it at all it's it's a grudge use item usually um you're mad usually when you're using it whatever it is has broken or you're just having a bad day and it's always a substitute for what you really want you want the new part you want the new thing but we also hear very powerful stories of how duct tape has saved the day for people in so many different ways so many different uses so it seemed intuitive that doing in-home research for duct tape would be a great way to research the consumer mindset we might not really catch the consumer when they're getting ready to use it specifically but we can see you know where they keep it some things they have used it for to repair to patch to whatever they're doing secure um we've got we have like five different words we use to describe how duct tape is used but what are those things specifically they're securing repairing hanging and waterproofing so we hear so many stories about how it saves the day that we know it's powerful it's just a really unsung hero we thought we could do or i thought we could do in-home research to see where it's being stored and to see these things and just to understand the consumer mindset for when you have to fix something do you when would you grab glue when would you grab duct tape would you actually go for this brand over this brand for a certain reason so ethnography or doing research in homes seemed like a really good solution but as i mentioned before i was part of r d at the time and i worked with a really talented group of chemists very good at the craft almost all have phds in different fields of adhesive chemistry and rheology and big words like that they spend their days thinking about the nuances of adhesives whether it's a hot melt or an acrylic or a silicone and all the different properties the fuel the cash the shear what can they add to it to enhance these properties and largely a lot of cost savings how can we make more more efficiently for less money and for me i'm a consumer researcher you know i i get there's a lot there's a lot that goes into um tape and all the other products we work on but how do we talk about these and how can we make consumers understand that it's because of this attitude they don't have to know it's that additive but how do we translate these very physical properties to consumer benefits and even more importantly how or what will people pay more for so you know we didn't speak the same language really they didn't get me i didn't get them cultural backgrounds like in the r d department we had phd chemists from far-flung places like pittsburgh and turkey and india and china egypt so just just a lot of different um we also have two more locations to mention that um i was in cleveland ohio reporting into this group to pick for north carolina so just a lot of different um nuances that made it hard for us to understand each other so this is that's i think that's not unique though a lot of times as researchers we're kind of treated more like internal consultants in our businesses so what i want to talk about is your personal journey this is about the customer journey this is about you and how you can um you kind of grow your own business internally and gain credibility and build value for others so i convinced our vice president to us for us to do this in home research together and at first it had a really weird weirdness factor for everyone like for me i've done this kind of research for many years so i've kind of gotten over the weirdness of going to somebody's house and talking to them in depth about a topic for an hour and a half and then never ever ever seeing them again but to people that are new to this it was really weird they know they're like what do you mean we're going to houses this is a super super weird thing um and that's really what i want to talk about is giving advice for when you're bringing non-researchers into a research setting especially an in-home advice environment how you need to be very very intentional so this is about tactics not strategy at all but tactically there's things you can do the things that i found helpful to set the guidelines and have a more successful research experience trying to avoid the when s tours t happens moments so you need to set clear expectations obviously um for the researcher i found that making a guideline sheet was super super helpful and i printed this out and gave everyone a paper copy and that's in the next couple of slides i'm going to tell those guidelines for but make a guideline sheet anytime you're doing something new for the first time you want to hear from experts that have been there before and have done this already so it's helpful to know what to expect you need to set a schedule and schedule the people on your side on the client side for when they're supposed to arrive at each place you don't want to have more than four people inundating the interviewee so you need to be pretty strict about the schedule make sure you have an even spread of people from the client side if possible you should have it in a different city it's so so easy to get pulled away for you know line trial or the commitments you have in your day-to-day job and what you're asking for from your your colleagues is their time so to get them to invest the time you need the upfront commitment if you do in a different city that's really a great way to go and finally just get out of the way this isn't about you translating your impressions to your your co-workers and your colleagues this is about everyone being on this collective journey and them seeing things for themselves and them seeing the context and walking away with their own impressions they don't have to all be the same but allowing them to guide their own journey for themselves so as far as the guidelines this is actually what i what i gave them is five of these here but um first of all the roles we need eyes ears and a mouth the interviewer will be the mouth um and they'll be doing most of the question asking i'm sure most of you know me super uncomfortable in an interview setting and everyone's firing questions at the interviewee so it really works best to have the interviewer leading the discussion and she or he will give you time to ask questions in certain places but um hold your questions until you're asked but your job is to be the eyes and the ears so you're there to observe look for what people are saying maybe there's non-verbal cues taking lots of notes taking photos we'll have a video camera set up so um make sure that it's in the best position check it a few times make sure it hasn't stopped recording if there's an extension cord we have to manage that but eyes and ears is really the job of the the non-researchers second this is the most important one is that we are there to listen um the interviewee is the subject matter expert here it's their experience we're not there to educate or sell them about our products they'll have misconceptions and that's okay we need to better understand why they think that way what's confusing don't correct it allow them to explain to you why they think the way they do so super important there to let them be the expert number three be comfortable with the silence and as a moderator this is a skill you have to learn so probably a lot of you already know this this um this guideline but um for others that haven't done research before it can be uncomfortable when you let somebody finish a thought and then give them time to rethink about what they just said but that's when you get the good stuff so you really resist the urge to ask follow-up questions right away um let them think let let the room be silent for us for a few seconds if needed but be comfortable with that so number four um try to avoid the word why when you do get to ask questions especially when you're in an in-home setting the word why can make the interview be a little defensive sometimes so think about starting questions with tell me more about describe to me a time when and sometimes you can restate what they just said to you so they can maybe hear for themselves the inconsistency and that's much better it comes across a little bit more gently than to question somebody about why they're doing something so try to avoid the word why if possible and number five again being extremely tactical here not strategic but remember that we're guests don't ask to use the restroom after you take off your shoes don't overstay your welcome don't be too early or don't be too late don't hand out business cards we're not keeping in touch this is an hour and a half interaction it's transactional we care very much about what they're telling us the hour and a half but that's it we're not going to keep in touch and we don't really want to leave even our brand with them so try to make the interview we feel comfortable even though we really are intruding into their personal space so those are the five here they are all in one place the dues like assign roles um just interview skills here we're listening comfortable the silence how to phrase questions and remembering that we're guests the don'ts pretty simple don't correct them don't try to educate and sell don't ask questions throughout so how did it go i want to report that it went phenomenally this has probably been one of my most successful research experiences that i've had throughout my career i got lucky with recruiting honestly so the interview that my vice president joined in on was a complete emotional minefield the guy that we were interviewing had just gone through a divorce used to own a farm had a million ways he used to use duct tape on his farm he also talked about how he used to be really into dirt bike racing and use duct tape in all these ways i didn't know about i don't think anybody in our team really realized the interaction with mud we should be thinking about but you take your number on your shirt you um seal between your jeans and your boots to keep the mud out so we learned some really interesting things about just surprisingly duct tape was used we also learned a lot about consumer impressions like one thing that we've been under valuing is some tape has sticky edges want to take the roll wrap off of course but um where it's fuzz and hair can stick to it and we haven't really heard before that's an indicator of low quality so that makes us rethink how we're really cutting and slicing the table on the line so we learned some interesting things we actually have modified some of our test methods um from doing in-home interviews like this but for me for me it was more about full engagement and now the team and i were on the same team research was no longer just a step in the gantt chart but could actually be additive to their process so then they started reaching out to me with trying to pick my brain about how we should approach different things and how we can use research as a tool and research became really a tool in their toolbox and it democratized the whole idea of using consumer research to to answer questions so i think this worked and i would appreciate along for the journey now another part of qual research that's super important is objectivity and there's no better way to do that than to have a third party conducting interviews so at this point i'll introduce my co-presenter jillian who is the most skilled interviewer i know thank you so much for that heidi um just to give a little background about me and where that all came from to even get to the point of being a good interviewer um i actually started my career in television news at fox carolina i am a journalist by trade i then expanded into meteorology so i did both weather reporting and also news reporting um now everyone loves to talk about the weather and ask you questions about it um but those interviewing skills really came in on the journalist side of things when i'm trying to interview people get the details about a story so that i can put that information together to then present it obviously to the viewers so um journalism is in my blood and asking all those right questions is part of that um from television news i then moved into sales um in the ever glamorous uh toilet paper uh line of things so i sold toilet paper boxes janitorial supplies went from tv to tp if you will but at the same time as anyone may know in sales there's a lot of questioning that needs to be done you are constantly speaking with your customers even gaining new customers by asking those right questions finding the pains that are out there so that you can help provide solutions to solve the problems so having to ask those questions and having that constant communication is a key role now from there is actually recruited by one of my clients to become the director of their multi-million dollar fitness club so i then became managing over over 70 employees across seven different departments so i continue obviously asking questions of our customers and our members but my role then switched into interviewing and keeping that connection and those questions among my employees so that i had a pulse of what was happening while they were working um what was their experience out there were they engaged and keeping them engaged and that had to be part of obviously that interviewing and asking questions process from there i took on the most difficult job ever of being a stay-at-home mom which i of course then became the person who was being asked all the questions by two young little boys um but it was an awesome experience doing that i then got back into the corporate world as a recruiting and training manager where i then manage our nationwide remote team on that side i of course had to do the recruiting the interviewing the selection process uh onboarding bringing you people in and going through the training and then from that piece i was their engagement person again we had a remote team nationwide across three different time zones so being in constant communication asking all those right questions interviewing them on a daily basis to see the pulse of everything and how we could improve what we could do to improve their engagement altogether um so this slide looks like just a hot mess if you ask me which is why i then decided to start my own business of e3 which is employee engagement and experience and put all of that together um so that i can work with businesses um on that third-party level like heidi said and coming in and asking those questions and doing those interviews and allowing the employees to speak with me as a non-biased person um you know someone they can really open up and feel free to share exactly what they're thinking um so that we can then draft ways and come up with strategies to help improve experience overall and the culture if you will throughout the organization um now there are ways that a lot of people do this there's surveys we've already seen that and the role that that can play with bill's um presentation earlier and there are great times to use this strategy however i do strongly disagree when it comes to having to find that personal connection the reason why is that not every question can be answered fully with an agree or disagree answer especially when you're trying to get input feedback insight into something specific and on a personal level and that's where interviewing and taking time to really sit down and ask questions is going to be your best tactic if you will um so what are some of the best ways to do that uh well some of your best practices is first and foremost realizing it's not about you heidi touched on this a little bit ago by asking the question sitting back being quiet and listening the person you're talking to essentially becomes that expert at that point um so whatever you say it doesn't really matter if you're trying to listen and hear what they have to say and believe me it's not an easy thing there's actually a study in 2018 from the mayo clinic that they found when patients are first describing their main medical concerns to their physicians the physicians actually interrupt them within 11 seconds on average by the way the researchers also found that the patients need on average 29 seconds to fully explain what's going on so even the people who are having to listen and figure out what's going on what's wrong so they can prescribe something to fix you have trouble listening so again it's not something that's easy to do but it's something you can be cognizant of to remember um and listening well isn't just talking less it's actually asking and responding and taking the time to focus on what's being said instead of thinking of what's the next question i'm going to ask or what am i going to assume or interpret about the person that i'm talking to um looking and having more interest in that person's interests rather than judging them if you will or thinking about your own interests again basically just it's not about you that leads then to the next best practice practice is asking good questions what are you really trying to find out here um what is the end game what's the goal or that outcome that you're looking for and use that to craft your questions so you can find the true answers to what you're wanting to find but that also means don't just make questions to get someone and lead them into saying what you want them to say again they're the expert so ask those good questions which are open-ended questions allow the interviewee the opportunity to expound on their experience give their input on something listen like we just talked about um a lot of times you will hear more than what you expected when you let that person go like heidi said pause let them rethink what they have just said that usually opens them up to talk even more and suddenly you are hearing things that you didn't expect to hear you may find a new pain a new concern or other insight that's out there that you didn't even originally know about so that's when you can respond with the follow-up questions and dig in and get some more details there lastly you do want to make sure you are taking notes but not just on paper you really need to take note of not only the words being spoken but the non-verbal actions as well and again you may uncover more than what you expected when you were reading that person are they nervous about a certain topic are they aggravated when you mention something specific what are the emotional levels that come out in that conversation and in that interview and then of course taking those drafting more questions working around the information that you're getting um you can really gain some valuable insight and really get an idea of that level of engagement their experience or lack thereof so basically just being observant is another great tip when it comes to doing your interviews um and and why is this all so important active listening and interviewing isn't just for customers it's also for your employees and it's extremely beneficial when you take note of what's happening within your own organization to see how those employees are engaged and what their experience is like because studies show only 13 of employees are actually actively engaged what that means is that 87 are disengaged and when you put numbers on that it's actually 550 billion dollars in annual productivity loss that's huge so it is really important not just to listen to those customers but also to the people that are in your organization doing it um consider this in the beginning when you start that recruiting and interviewing process you spend countless hours and time looking through resumes finding the right people doing assessment tests sitting down interviewing asking those questions you want to find the very best person to fit that role and chances are that person you're interviewing is also interviewing you and others as well to find that perfect fit um it's really the day two plus that matters once you bring them on board you need to make sure that you're courting them if you will like you did when you were in the recruiting process kind of like the first three months like the next three months keep treating them in that way and showing them and doing all the things you promised in that recruiting process and that way you can not just bring them on board but keep them on board throughout the process and there's good reason for that you want to keep your employees engaged and have a positive work experience because it costs money and time according to a forbes magazine when employees engage with needs are not met there's a higher likelihood of turnover of course but what that looks like it actually costs one and a half times that person's original salary when you consider that actual cost plus the time spent re-recruiting interviewing hiring training again the job not being done while that person is gone or other employees having to assume additional roles um you really can't afford not to put emphasis on your employee engagement and not to mention that studies show that engaged teams obviously have lower turnover they also have 21 greater profitability 17 higher productivity and 10 percent higher customer ratings than disaged teams and this is where that effective interviewing can come into play especially when you have a third party person and sometimes it's hard to see the force of the trees and that third party person can come in ask those difficult questions and really gain that actual insight and feedback because we're a non-biased person it's a confidential setting um that person i speak with they don't have to worry about me firing them i have no say in their job but what i can do is take the information that they have and turn it over to the to the leadership team so that those ideas and suggestions may be implemented um but their pains are also heard and let me just say when someone and leadership brings in someone like myself and that third party to come in and hear what their people have to say right then and there you are engaging your employees you are showing them that you care that you want to hear what they have to say and that is the first steps sometimes it takes in making sure that your people are engaged and bottom line with that happy employees equal happy customers which is what we all want and it's really a win-win for everyone so now so now that we've spent the last 33 minutes talking about being face-to-face one-on-one with people plot twist 2020 happened and i'm sure a lot of you felt this way that a really critical tool that we used was taken away from us so for me at the end of 2019 we had a company reorg and we created an insights and innovation team so that was like november 2019. so four months in covet shut down we were trying to chart new waters anyways i'm trying to figure out how we fit together as a new team how it fit into the organization but our charge was to explore new categories and find new growth for the company outside of where we already had um product categories so we did a lot of um trend work and a lot of brainstorming and trying to share our own experience we really got to a point where we needed the consumer we needed an immersive experience to step outside of our own biases and experiences in our kitchen actually and see other people how they're dealing with things what their work and what rounds are so this was a great place where i would have normally gone to in-home interviewing but we didn't have we couldn't do that anymore so i reached out to some people in the industry and every time i reach out to people everyone is so helpful so i always appreciate that i reached out to people that were in similar roles to me and also in the industrial design world and learned a couple couple things that people have been doing and everyone's doing online bulletin boards that seems to be the obvious go-to to do a lot of asynchronous work um collect pictures and photos and those those are okay um one interesting suggestion that i heard was you might want to think about recruiting two people for household because with one person you're getting like this person talking into the phone and then you're also seeing their stuff but not the same time with a second person in the household that's part of the interview they can film me and my stuff i can point to things and talk about it much more contextually so that was a good good suggestion i thought i haven't done it yet i thought that was a really good suggestion but for me the key was how how do i drive engagement from the client side i had online pull to the boards before and everyone has logins but nobody really uses them who might you know check in for a few minutes explore just completely overwhelming honestly so never really got much engagement um from the client side everyone wanted to wait for the final report um so i worked actually with an outside agency and we came up with a methodology and just a set of things we did to really drive engagement so here are the five things that we did and i think this worked pretty well um like i said we were we're an innovation team we're heading into product developments this may not work for everyone but for us it was so incredible to for all of us have to have the stimuli and at the same time for us to have the ideas and build so the first thing we did on the front end um well just at the core this was an online bulletin board with some follow-up idi so really not earth shattering at all we had 25 people on the online bulletin board and then we did four idis at the end but for our team on the front end we had a framing workshop where we defined what is an insight like something that basic what is the insight and what are the goals what are we trying to do here um and then we assigned each person on my team three to four respondents to follow through the bulletin board and that was a really great way to kind of right-size the workload and to make it approachable so that i could log on and see what kara said today and what she said tomorrow and i can remember what her what her kitchen looks like and it made it much more approachable i think much more helpful and actionable for us we also had a worksheet from the beginning as part of the framing workshop actually going through the worksheet but to tangibly you write down what information we're looking for and that kind of helped it wasn't mandatory of course to do the worksheet i think it helped guide what steven do after the online bullet award was complete we had a workshop again um workshop is the answer to everything here but i think it is coming together and discussing what it is you saw and learned so we had this workshop to collect what we learn and to understand what we know and what we still want to learn from these people um kind of categorize that and that helped um craft the discussion guide that we used for the the idis and then we picked four of the respondents so um they weren't the most glamorous ones they weren't the ones with the most beautiful kitchens but they're the ones that we thought felt like we really wanted to continue to explore with they had some great workarounds we wanted to explore so we picked these four people and we all participated we all observed at least when the moderator did the in-depth interview with them so i think with these five things it was a very um it was an immersive experience it wasn't the same as being in a home but i think it was as close as we could get and we now have the information that we need to move into more tangible brainstorming and figuring out what we want to do in these product categories so it'll be interesting over the next year or you know three four five years to see what of this past year sticks and what continues to evolve so um it'll be interesting to hear from everyone else though like what what things have have you found that have been helpful um so for interviewing specifically jill what has changed for you well you know we go from the uh side of things where we're talking face to face like we just talked about that importance of engaging and being with everyone um to now go into that virtual connection um and you know of course as we move through this transition what does stick it doesn't stick one thing is for sure we still have to have communication and connection no matter what even if it does look a little different um so there are some cons um that come with that um what used to be that face-to-face interaction is not faced a computer screen um and sometimes it can look exactly like this picture um blank places flat screen no emotion naturally zero connection if you will um that's because we're all stuck behind a screen um a lot of times distractions are there things that we wouldn't normally have you know family members also in the home you may be working from home but you also have kids that are having to do their homework or you're trying to work around your spouse and do all that sort of stuff um and that can be challenging it can be hard to hear see connect if you don't have the proper equipment and technology i mean it can be super frustrating people then shut down and and just stop their interaction their connection all together um and and that can be hard to do people hide behind their screens if they will too um so you kind of miss on some of those non-verbal cues that you normally would have when you're in person um but we can always turn some of those cons into pros as well um so some pros is just that human factor we already saw that this morning when we had a presenter not be able to present and we have things like learning how to share our screen properly and again that technology side of things i'm muted i'm not muted what's going on um you know when the pandemic first started lita actually showed that the most words used were continuity flexibility resilience and adversity all words that kind of allude to a challenge but now the main words used are more human friend kindness connectivity and compassion and so the data shows now there's an increase in recognition and support among our peers and we can use that forgiveness factor if you will we're all in this together we're all human um we're gonna have mistakes there's that random family member that walks behind you not realizing your videos on hopefully they're clothed fully and that's okay there um you know interruptions that happen but again we kind of makes us into all being on the same team if you will we're all experiencing the same thing and we can be forgiving um and that being said you know i don't know if we can do a show of hands here or not but who actually has on pants that you know maybe match what you have on the top half of what we can see who's wearing pants be honest we're wearing something that you would normally wear um to a conference probably not everyone or most of you all are doing that um so we can take this opportunity and embrace it um and do things that you wouldn't normally do obviously be more comfortable in what you're wearing on some things not just wearing pants but having notes around writing down having specific things available to you that you wouldn't normally do if you are sitting face to face with someone um and so interviewing can be a little bit more challenging but also on this side of things again turning that khan into a pro while you may be behind a screen sometimes that screen does give the freedom to um bill's wearing gym shorts and sneakers i love it bill thank you i'm on yoga pants i'll be honest okay um but anyways you know there's that freedom sometimes with that screen in place it does allow people to maybe open up a little bit more they feel there is that buffer as opposed to sitting face to face with someone and sometimes it gives them a little bit of a barrier if you will to then open up um and that's really where that third party person can come in and help so that we can connect all of these pieces because it is a little bit different and it's a little bit harder with that connection but again when there's no bias there's nothing that's no consequences for opening up and doing all that um this third party can really come in and kind of fill those missing pieces if you will complete that connection so that you can make sure that your culture stays positive and strong um actually simon sinek had a quote in a live stream that he did in a weak culture people will hunker down and protect themselves in a strong culture people will show up and take risks and take care of each other and so you know as this pivot is happening it's not going anywhere the whole point of research is to learn new things it's to meant to challenge us and find new ways or solve problems and do new things so as we continue to research we need to accept that challenge and change our research strategies perhaps to adopt and adapt to this new world if you will but we also need to challenge ourselves um to do the same thank you again be happy to connect and talk further about any of these topics feel free to reach out to us personally and i did see a couple of questions come through let me see if i can find them yeah there's one person that said how do you record audio visual visual for the visits and you ever have clients listen and join live remotely so it's always so if it's a quick video of some someone like doing something then i might use my phone but usually i have a oh it feels like it's old-fashioned now but an actual video camera set up on a tripod in the corner to record the whole thing and that's because usually i'm i'm not recording um verbatims but i might want to come back and visit them later so but i will um also say an extension cord is the most one of the most important things you need to have so you never know where the outlets are going to be and so a video camera on a tripod until i've done it and no um i haven't had clients listen remotely um it's probably possible now with you could probably do a zoom call easily from somebody's house but i haven't done that yet but be interesting to try though and then the other question from jessica kane came in and said how big is your team do you have any tips for scaling among very small teams such as two persons how big is my research team um so there's two of us up until november we didn't have a formal research department within sharetape there's a lot of research happening kind of ad hoc kind of through our marketing communications group i was doing it through r d but also serving the marketing functions as well um usually our marketing teams would reach out to a consultant a lot of times or an agency just to run their own research so we didn't have a formal you know structured way to really um collect all of our research and there was some stuff that was happening it was overlapping or just redundant or just being missed so in november that's when we formalized the research department and we are on the innovation team it's an insight and innovation team so there's two of us and we're managing research for our entire business which is a consumer business it's an industrial business it's also international and also engineered solutions so it's a lot um our budget isn't huge right now i feel like it's actually the right size budget for two people to manage but there's just two of us so it's a small but mighty team we do have a really high level of engagement with with the marketing team i would say specifically as far as scaling i mean i don't know what the challenge would really be with i feel like if everyone is bringing um people on the on the ride and um and on the journey i think they'll be i i don't underscaling that but i'm having to talk further specifically yeah i think maybe with small teams you just have to find a person that can fit a lot of different roles but other than that yeah that's interesting so when you first came on you were not really doing qualitative research and then you kind of morphed into that role at your own direction is that right sort of yes um you know i mean we were we're a pretty scrappy company i mean research is always treated very scrappily uh duct tape you guys got to be scrappy exactly it really comes with territory yeah so it's fun um we do it ourselves so when i started i was hired in an innovation role um loosely defined um and also i was reporting into the why i sat with the consumer business in cleveland but i was reporting into the industrial business and hickory so it's kind of a little weird that way but there was attempts to do research attempts to do field work attempts to send samples out with field sales and get feedback and she never really got the good feedback so early on i had suggested to our vice president oh you know we could spend three to five thousand dollars and do a contractor study and i had to continue to ask you to ask the team to ask and finally we got that contractor study done and then we did we started doing in-home research with our weatherization category which is the drafts and um it's seals for windows and doors so it's the first time that um we it was me leaving this actually with our own consumer business so i feel like slowly it kind of grew and then we have an internal panel called team care that um it's like 100 people across the company that has opted in to be part of this panel that can try products anytime so i was um sort of running that as well and it just kind of grew from there so it was kind of organic growth i guess um it was back to the skills that i had learned the previous 10 years with the the design firm so but yeah i would say it kind of organically grew and it became 75 of my job at a certain point even though i was part of rmt and do you still outsource for most quantitative type research or do you not really do as much quantitative yes i mean i we do some in-house not not much especially now that it's just two of us um doing so much we have a real budget now so we do most of our research outsourced um we do have a company omnibus that we just started a couple months ago though so we do have a way for people to throw these random questions into to a survey in kind of a methodical way and that was something we had to kind of reel into because i was used to doing all those one-off research so now we have a way to submit questions on a quarterly basis so so we do some we do very little quant in-house do very little qual in house really anymore a lot of it we do our partner with different agencies gotcha so i'm just gonna chime in here um you know with a small team like that being very open with each other of who has what strengths and utilizing those someone may be very detailed and that's the person that you want to handle those finer points whereas someone may be more macrominded if you will and then utilize that so i like to call you everybody has a seat on the bus and be in your seat and own it and do it um but you have to have that first conversation of being very open and very honest with hey this is what i'm really good at and i enjoy doing versus you know i'll do it all don't get me wrong but this is where my strengths are so use those um because that can really play a big role in what whatever you're doing we're going to be research or any any role within the company yeah great all right any other we don't have any other questions that have come in you guys have any other comments you want to throw out there before we finish up no presentation from me would be a presentation without me without a few um book recommendations so i do want to recommend um these two books um first on the left switch is a great book for change management um the idea with this book is that um it's not about formally being in charge if you're a vice president you're a group director you may not really need this but you're welcome to read it but it's not about formal power structures it's more about leading from where you are and how you can influence change even when you're not the boss so i love this book it's kind of a little bit more like a manual and i've revisited a few times so always recommend that the second book here is actually a work of fiction um euphoria i i mentioned before that i would love to live in the jungle and learn and absorb so much from people and this um this book is actually loosely based on the work of margaret me back in the 1930s or 40s but it's a really great account a little love triangle but if you love the idea of doing real ethnographic anthropological research and also just love to read i recommend this book as well so nice that's always good for book reviews so yeah i would encourage one to reach out though feel free to to link with us and we're always happy to to chat through any any um challenge you're having all right well thank you so much for your time i really enjoyed it and everybody else stand by and we'll be back in a few minutes thank you thank you guys bye