During a panel discussion reflecting on the Client Sight research published earlier in the year by MRS, Aura and the Insight Management Academy (IMA), James Wycherley, chief executive at the IMA, said insights professionals must embrace the skills needed to influence within organisations.

Wycherley said: “Skills like commercial awareness, influencing, communication skills, big picture knowledge development and knowledge stewardship started to come on to the agenda [years ago].

“The question for me is whether we can now, at this pivotal moment, understand that these are not the icing on the cake – they’re the absolute essence of insight, and if any of us want to develop our careers within insight, now is the time to embrace those skills and show that we are first and foremost insight people, here to make an impact, rather than researchers and analysts.”

Also speaking on the panel, Jane Frost, chief executive, MRS, said: “We need to be thinking about the outcomes not the outputs we want to do,” but cautioned: “We also need to stop doing down specialists, because without them we don’t have the accuracy of the data. But I do think one of the challenges is encouraging people to break out.”

Frost said: “One of the things that is seriously lacking at the moment is that young people are not feeling invested in to provide the skills that they need, and that is a significant problem, because if we’re not good at what we do, what good are we to anyone else?”

Frost also discussed the importance of insight professionals looking outwards and finding inspiration from elsewhere, saying: “We need to develop more imagination.”

Referencing the inclusion of artist David Shrigley in an MRS a conference a few years ago, Frost said: “You’ve got to go out and see these people – see how they influence, those are the people you will learn from on influencing, where you’re going to get creative ideas for how to shape your own argument.”

Frost also said she would like to see more people in the industry stepping forward to volunteer for Aura and MRS &more, adding: “There are so many networks out there that need leadership.”

Continuing the theme of creativity, Wycherley said insights professionals should see themselves as ‘engineers’ for their organisations. “The essence of insight is being a creative problem-solver for our organisations. We have to think of ourselves as engineers for the business, and if we can show where we are adding that value, we can get investment.”

Wycherley also said the role of knowledge stewardship will only grow with AI as the information landscape is growing hugely. “Joining the dots between these different information sources and being able to offer perspective is only going to become more important.”

Frost added that the advent of AI makes it more critical for insights professionals to assert their value. She said: “I’ve seen people say ‘we don’t need to talk to anybody anymore, agentic can do it for us’. You’ve got to speak more. You can’t let agentic AI do the work for you – it means more work; you’ve got to do more work to make yourselves relevant.”

Learning from others in your organisation is ‘vital’ to this, said Louise Sharpe, director at Aura and senior insight manager at BT – citing the example of the finance department teaching how to read a balance sheet. “It sounds a bit dry, but actually it’s really vital because you understand how to use the language that really matters, so when you’re in the room talking about customers and impact, you can translate it into commercial terms and the stories tend to land much better.”

The panel closed by sharing the hooks they would use to attract new graduates to the sector.

“Do you want a chance to make a real difference and impact within an organisation?,” said Sharpe. 

“Organisations will always make more money if they are customer-centric. Make yourself the expert in how customer and market knowledge can be applied to business decisions,” said Wycherley. 

“Are you curious? This is a career where curiosity is always going to be open to you and you don’t necessarily get the same challenge every day, every week,” said Frost.

James Sallows, head of marketing effectiveness, Lego Group, who moderated the session, said: “I would add: ‘Do you know what we really do?’ Because there’s always a misconception about what this function actually brings.”

• At the recent Agency Owners & Leaders conference, participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of AI and its impact on the role of agencies.
• A webinar on the Client Sight research results can be found on the MRS website.