The Role of Strategic Insights Consulting in Today’s Boardrooms
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Across the insights industry, a consensus is forming about the old model of collaboration between insights leaders and clients, where insights partners received their brief, conducted their research, and reported their findings. In short, it’s fading fast.
Insights agencies are shifting towards strategic insights consulting. Researchers must hold their own with C-level stakeholders and bring clients into the research process to guide the actions they take from their findings, owning their roles as insights leaders more than ever before.
This is less a dramatic transition than it may seem. Insights leaders actually have all the qualities that make a good leader in the boardroom.
"Leading through insights is about driving action, driving alignment, and ultimately, driving change,” says Brian Monschein, an independent qualitative research consultant, on a recent episode of the Insightful Inspiration podcast. “It's the stuff beyond just executing the research."
Sylvestre & Co. owner and Chief Insight Seeker Isabelle Landreville sat down with Monschein on the Insightful Inspiration podcast to explore how the essential skills of an insights leader — curious observation, deep listening, knowing when to ask versus when to tell, and asking probing questions — are of immense value to any boardroom. This article explores how.
The Missing Link Between Findings and Decisions
Insights teams have long been evaluated on the quality of their research. Credibility was built on strong methodology, sample design, and final presentations that clearly explain how they reached their conclusions.
These are all still core to insights work. But now more than ever, researchers must act as the link between their own findings and actions that their clients take in response.
“It’s not about being right and having all the answers,” says Isabelle. “It’s about saying, hey, this is what we found, so let’s keep that in mind; maybe we want to do this versus that.” She articulates this as a shift from “push strategies” to “pull strategies”: presenting findings as an outsider, pushing the organization to take action, versus acting as an insider, pulling stakeholders into your way of seeing things.
For example, early in his career, Brian Monschein worked on a consumer segmentation that introduced a fundamentally new way of thinking about consumers. Whereas the client had long been focused on demographics, Brian’s research pushed occasion segments as a more relevant view of their customer base.
This was an entirely new way of thinking for the marketing and product teams that were receiving the findings. As a result, the research was never adopted.
The missing piece was a leader who could shepherd the findings into action, and the resulting inaction was costly for both the researcher and the client. However, the traditional role for a qualitative research agency isn’t to shepherd, but to suggest: to push, not to pull.
Strategic insights consulting means staying in the room to guide how findings are received and spur action. Insights deliver findings; insights leaders play a key role in giving leaders clear choices, and the confidence to make a decision.
How Moderating Skills Help Boardrooms
Insights leaders need to be fluent in the language of the C-suite and capable of aligning all stakeholders from the jump. That alignment piece is something that they are uniquely qualified for, thanks to the very same skills that make them great researchers: probing, reading the room, adapting to the audience, and conveying warmth.
In a focus group, moderators use probing to close the gap between what participants say and what they mean. A participant’s first answer is rarely the real answer; effective moderators get to the deeper human truth by asking the right follow-up questions. They are also comfortable sitting in uncomfortable silence if necessary, allowing the participant to think or to sit with what they’ve said.
That same instinct is invaluable when a stakeholder is uncertain about a recommended direction but hasn't yet found the words to say so. That uncertainty might be voiced in an unexpected question, a criticism, an opaque comment. An experienced insights leader takes fuzzy commentary in stride and responds with a question that can clarify the stakeholder’s interpretation of the findings — both for the room, and for the stakeholder.
Reading the room is another key skill. Qualitative researchers track body language, seating dynamics, and patterns of participation as a matter of professional habit. In a stakeholder meeting, those same observations reveal who is disengaged, who is skeptical but silent, and who needs to be brought into the conversation before a decision can stick. The room is always communicating; insights leaders are trained to listen.
Who is in the room matters here, and a seasoned moderator can adapt to the audience. A CFO and a CMO may be looking at the same findings through entirely different lenses, and insights leaders can adapt based on either stakeholder’s communication style, level of familiarity with the subject, and what they need to feel heard.
Finally, there's warmth. The best moderators know that rapport precedes insight; people open up when they feel genuinely seen rather than studied. Insights leaders bring that same quality to stakeholder relationships, building the kind of trust that makes difficult conversations possible and good decisions more likely.
Dual Empathy: Closing the Space Between Boards and Consumers
It boils down to one word: empathy. Insights leaders are tasked with closing the space between the consumer and the board room, so they build a deep understanding of consumers on behalf of the client.
That deep understanding must extend to the client as well. That’s why an experienced insights leader will ask clients key questions ahead of the engagement. How do you like to learn? What do you care about?
Much is said about delivering bad news to clients with sensitivity. However, empathy is just as important when the insights leader discovers something that isn’t necessarily bad, but bigger than what the client asked for.
Consider a footwear brand that commissions research on fit quality for their signature line of shoes. The participants end up saying nothing negative about fit — once the shoes are on their feet. But the moderator senses that there’s something else the participants want to talk about: they're struggling to get the shoes on and off.
From the silhouette to the marketing, the shoe is positioned as light and breezy, something that helps consumers move through their lives with energy and grace. Yet putting it on is exhausting and graceless.
An experienced insights leader recognizes this as the real finding and knows how to bring it to a client who didn't ask for it. Having established the client’s preferred learning protocol and what it is they care about, the researcher can present the finding in a way that’s easy for them to understand and internalize, and effectively communicate how it connects to their priorities.
The unexpected finding becomes a gift rather than a detour, and the act of presenting it isn’t a correction, but the surfacing of a new opportunity. This is empathy that goes beyond listening: it’s empathy that acts.
What Fifty Years of Strategic Insights Consulting Looks Like
Consumers are the group with the most consequential voice, and yet they’re absent from the boardroom. Strategic insights consulting means doing double duty: speaking for these consumers, and making sure that key decision makers hear them properly.
The new expectations — shepherding findings to drive actions, acting as a part of the board room — are an evolution of what we’ve always done: utilize empathy to get to the heart of what people want, need, and feel.
When they can’t identify those for themselves, or when competing incentives muddy the waters, we use empathy to help them articulate what they’re looking for, see the reality on the ground, assess alignment between the two, and move forward with confidence.
