Insights Unlocked
Why central repositories are key to scaling research with Kate Towsey
Mon, 09 Dec 2024
Episode web page: https://bit.ly/3Vlc2q8 ----------------------- Rate Insights Unlocked and write a review If you appreciate Insights Unlocked, please give it a rating and a review. Visit Apple Podcasts, pull up the Insights Unlocked show page and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Below the trailers, you'll find Ratings and Reviews. Click on a star rating. Scroll down past the highlighted review and click on "Write a Review." You'll make my day. ----------------------- Episode show notes In this episode of Insights Unlocked, host Lija Hogan speaks with Kate Towsey, a leading voice in research operations, author of Research That Scales, and founder of the Cha-Cha Club for research ops professionals. Kate takes us through her fascinating journey to becoming a trailblazer in research operations. Along the way, she highlights the transformative power of systems thinking and strategic scaling in the evolving field of research. What You’ll Learn in This Episode: The Evolution of Research Ops: How research operations has grown from an overlooked role to a critical component of organizational strategy. Why nuanced job descriptions and specialized roles are becoming the norm in research ops. Scaling Research with Systems Thinking: The importance of scalable systems that create value efficiently rather than simply expanding headcount. How strategic thinking can prioritize impactful research aligned with organizational goals. Building Trust and Embedding Culture: Why trust is foundational for research outcomes to be accepted and acted upon. The cultural impact of well-integrated research tools and practices on organizational learning. Knowledge Management in Research: The contrast between collaborative "campfires" of learning and structured libraries for long-term access and utility. Practical advice for implementing effective research knowledge management strategies. The Role of AI in Research: How AI can enhance research operations, provided organizations foster trust in these technologies.
Chapter 1: What is the focus of research operations?
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Senior Manager for Content Production at User Testing. And joining us today as host is User Testing's Leah Hogan, Principal for Experience Research Strategy. Welcome to the show, Leah. Thank you, Nathan. And our guest today is Kate Towsey. Kate is a research ops advisor, coach, and educator.
She's the author of Research That Scales and founder of the Cha-Cha Club, a members club for research ops professionals. Welcome to the show, Kate.
It's really great to be here. All right. Awesome. I am so thrilled to be having this conversation, Kate. And, you know, for a long time, I've been waiting for your book. So I was one of the first people to preorder it, and I've been sharing it with everyone. And I think really to start the conversation, I would love to hear about your journey, because
You didn't start as a research ops manager, but you're now I think one of the leading voices, if not the leading voice in the research ops space. And I'd love to just understand, like, what got you there?
I think like many people who work in insurance firm, I've heard people, my father is in insurance and he said, nobody chooses an insurance job or career. You just land there. And I think it's very similar with research operations. I hear from so many people who have started in hospitality, sometimes not even in the operations department of hospitality, but they've been
working at the front desk and learning how to engage with people, how to run systems, and then kind of working into other places within hospitality. And then they found their way through some strange circuitous journey into research operations. And then, of course, you get more direct routes, like researchers who actually realize one day, it's the systems that I really love.
In fact, I want to, you know, they start organizing their own systems, and they fall in love with that aspect. And then they They do more and more until they're actually doing no more research anymore. And then they get the research ops job title. So my journey was not dissimilar in that I have a background, in fact, in fine art, very much not related necessarily to research ops.
Although, and I argue this in the book, it's often mistaken that research operations is an administrative kind of purely logistical job, but it's really a design job. And so I get to express a lot of my creativity and ways in my life in research ops in the sense of designing systems, of designing culture, fine art, and certainly the type of fine art that I studied was conceptual art.
And the focus of that is all about how do you create a, the word I'm coming up with is a feelable, a tactile experience for people that shifts how they understand the world. What an amazing definition of what it is to design systems for research, systems for understanding and knowledge. From there, the whistle-stop tour is I worked in journalism.
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Chapter 2: How has research operations evolved over time?
Now, many people say that if I'd gotten into the loo paper industry, you know, toilet paper industry, I probably would have done it with as much kind of creativity and enthusiasm because that's just who I am. But I happened to get stuck in the research world.
Well, I think we're all the better for it. Thank you. Maybe it's the toilet paper world's loss, but I think a number of things that you said were really resonant for me. And I think the next question really builds on that first one a little bit, because obviously you bring an orientation to research operations of systems thinking.
And research operations has, I think, evolved a great deal, especially like over the last several years. And we see it a lot at user testing, right? Like lots of companies scaling, that sort of thing. I would...
like to ask you more about what are some of the key things that you've seen change, especially recently, and given AI and all the other changes in the tech world that we're seeing, are there some threads you can start to follow up on for the future too?
Yeah, a lot has changed. A couple of primary things is I'm seeing that people in, well, I'm a bit of a job description troll on LinkedIn. And over the years, I have used that as a way of marking where the research operations profession is in terms of how people understand it and the types of roles that are being offered.
And I've noticed in trolling job descriptions over the last few years that more and more they're really hitting on being more nuanced. So instead of just you still definitely get these out there, but instead of an endlessly long list of things that not one human being could possibly ever do. Not just because it's an extraordinary amount of work that is inhumanly impossible.
It is also because there's so much specialism in, you know, they're looking for someone who's a seasoned librarian, someone who understands how to wrangle data for participant recruitment. They're looking for someone who has a really good grasp of ethics and legal issues.
They're not just looking for someone to come in and be able to speak to these different parties within the organization and direct them in service of research, but they're looking for someone to do all of this work on their own.
And more and more, I'm starting to see those very long, impossible lists become refined in the job descriptions, which is a fantastic thing to see, where people are understanding I actually need to, as my first hire, not hire a mid or junior level research assistant, which is a very different job to operations. Many people misconstrue or conflate the two and they're very different jobs.
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Chapter 3: What role does trust play in research operations?
Yeah. And I think, well, there are, I think you answered the question by, you know, I think I want to expand on it a little bit more. So good relief. But, you know, it's interesting because one of the challenges that I think a lot of organizations are having is like, who is a researcher? Like who and what can they do
And, and this kind of relates to the next question that I wanted to cover with you, but it really is like, I think in some specific industries, we see research jobs play out a little bit different. We see design play out a little bit different. We see research and product. And you've had a lot of experience across a range of industries.
And I'm curious about whether or not you see how research ops plays out differently. And maybe again, I'm just really thinking through like, so which industries have been like hardest hit
in the in the rounds of layoffs and all the changes and i feel like it's kind of been a universal thing but like are there any principles that you think are consistent across all the industries or are you seeing any trends in specific industries around research offers
I'm not seeing any trends specific to industries. I will say that I'm always working such a broad line on research ops. I don't always get to dig in or see a lot of people in a specific industry to start to take insights from that. Obviously, AI is a really huge thing.
And so I am seeing a trend broadly, which is not surprising, where teams are being asked to deliver some AI innovation that's going to alleviate the need for as many headcount and deliver even more impact without hiring more people. That's certainly a trend. I know that people are struggling with that because the companies who have implemented AI, carefully done, not carefully done.
Of course, I know user testing you've implemented AI on your tools, there's still a lack of understanding with the researchers of how do I actually use this? And then again, that word trust comes up. It's a really big question around, can I trust it? I don't believe it's necessarily about, is it going to steal my job tomorrow, but is it going to do a good job and what parts do I want to keep onto?
And so hold on to.
And so I know there's a lot of research ops folk trying to figure out how do I deliver on the request that's been given to me to make research really efficient and effective and scalable and all those fancy words with this magic new technology and yet trying to understand where researchers really touch, you know, where the interaction with AI actually really works for researchers and for the wider organization.
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Chapter 4: How can systems thinking enhance research outcomes?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, that kind of speaks to, I think, a real understanding that, you bringing real intention to how you organize information in a way that aligns with stakeholders and people who are involved with a project or with the organization in an operational way is really critical. And
And actually, that connects well to my next question, which is around how leaders can really help to plan and create connection, like create that culture with you. Maybe co-create is the best way to say it. To make sure that what the team produces, researchers produce, aligns with business goals. And...
creates an atmosphere of support that's both financial, right, because you've got to get budget to do the work, but then I think also builds accountability and trust.
Yes, I'm passing the question in there. Can I relay it back to you to make sure that I've got it right? Yes. So we're talking about – yeah. So we're speaking about – actually, I'm going to pause there because there's something that I want to say in response to that. And we'll run with that. And you can let me know if I'm off question. One of the things I find intriguing is that any –
Anyone who sells something, it's not often, especially when you work internally, for an agency, if you work in an agency, then this would feel a lot more close to home because agencies do sell research. It can be a little more difficult when you work in-house to hold onto the idea that you are in fact selling your research to people all the time.
But for someone who creates a product, let's go for a bottle of apple juice is an example, or just bottles of juices, let's go for that. That's terrible. We'll go for the bottles of juice. They will be thinking immediately about, okay, I've got my product, I've got my various kinds of juice, and now I've got to sell it.
Immediately, they're going to be thinking about how they catalog the different types of juice, how they put it on the shelf so that it can be easily found within the supermarket, and and how it's branded and the fact that it all looks similar so that it's easy to recognize and find. And they would be thinking through all these product presentation type questions.
They might even hire someone to manage the stock and make sure that the shelves are well packed all the time so that someone walks in, they can just pick up what they want and they can walk out. And yet in research, we create a product and it is on a tangible level, it's a research report or a deck or some kind of physical asset of the research or digital asset.
You can argue and I do argue that the final product is actually that it's in someone's head and nervous system and they can at some point do something with it. Might not be immediate, but they might put together three or four different bits of information and then suddenly make an amazing decision about something a year down the line and your job is still done. Hard to measure, but done.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do researchers face with AI?
It's going to sit here and with the exact same resources I've got today, it's going to be able to look after 50 more people and therefore it's scalable. That's not necessarily the case. It's an understanding of what's needed in order to grow within a certain amount of quantity.
Yeah. That's, I really love that point. And it's an important one to really take to heart. It's not just numbers. Yeah. But yeah. And I think another related takeaway is about, I think what you call an RKM strategy. So research knowledge management, right? And, you know, maybe you can speak to why it's so crucial, why it's so important.
And what are some of the key approaches that you might use to implement it?
Um, so RKM or research knowledge management is something, a term I came up with because knowledge management is a huge field out there already. Um, I mean like a massive field and they're doing really interesting work trying to figure out how do organizations make the most of knowledge and not just research knowledge, but also knowledge to do with onboarding and learning and
When someone walks out the door, how do we retain all of the organizational knowledge they have? And so we're just focusing, not just, it's a massive thing. We're taking that, those long held, like thousands of years old librarianship skills and the more modern knowledge management skills and honing them towards the space of research.
Again, for the same reasons of knowledge is the primary asset of research. This is what researchers do all day. Unearth knowledge, share knowledge, hope knowledge is embedded into someone's brain and nervous system so that that knowledge forces them to act in it or encourages them to act in a different way at some point or make a different decision.
And so one of the big things that I speak about is there are interesting tools in the Many of them are sort of what I call like community of practice type tools. I call them campfires. They are fantastic. They're not a library and they're not a repository either very often, but they're a fantastic tool. If they're your only tool, you're in trouble if you expect it to do your library as well.
And that's often what happens. So a campfire is everybody's been around it. But it's a wonderful thing. You gather around a campfire. You maybe have snacks and drinks or whatever. You're telling stories and it's memorable and you're getting to know people. And over the evening, you develop in jokes and in words and you have a folksonomy of your stories by the end of the day.
And they are gathered in your mind and in your being. And hopefully you've had a note taker there in this particular research campfire who's also gathering this stuff into a tool. At some point, the campfire has to break down and everybody walks away and onto a new campfire, a new project.
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Chapter 6: How can organizations embed research into their culture?
Yeah, yeah. So final question, really. Thank you so much for the conversation again. But what, if anything, did we not talk about that you might want to share with the listeners today?
I always like these open questions. I think one of the things that I see more and more, I do coaching and sort of advisory work around strategy for research ops, which ultimately ends up being a conversation about the research strategy. Because without a research strategy, you don't really know what you want to operationalize. You will get so much more out of operations if you are specific.
A word that I've used several times about, let's say, participant recruitment. Sure, you can get an amazing tool in place that's just like a blob of participant recruitment of participants. Here's a blob of participants. Or it might be a panel that's slightly more oriented towards B2C or whatever.
But when you can get really particular about these are the areas that the business is focused on and therefore we're also focusing on, I'll use the example from earlier, the company is going to roll out into Canada. So we better get good at recruiting Canadians of a specific type. Suddenly you can bring real nuance to the types of recruitment operations you deliver.
And so with the limited resources you have, because no matter if you've got a team of 12 or 20 or 25 operations specialists, you will still need to prioritize. They will still have too much to do. It's that fast. Now you can put a team onto, this is an area that we want to get really, really great at. We're going to be able to pick up a Canadian B2C working in the airline industry.
Let's just go with that. In like a heartbeat because we've really, we've put effort into that. And so your operations suddenly have focus. So research strategy is huge if you want to make the most of operations. It's critical if you want to scale or make anything that is scalable, which means that then you can work a research operations strategy out of that.
One of the key things that strategy needs, and it's a repetition, it's a worthwhile repetition, is you need to think. You need space to think. Our organizations, all of them are set up with Slack or team or email. You've got personal WhatsApps. You've got LinkedIn messages, meetings all day long.
There's so much going on that if you don't create time in your calendar, like a fire stop to step back and give yourself space for a minimum of three days a quarter. I used to do a week a quarter.
You will never get to the place where you can have the clarity of mind without all interruptions and noise to actually think for yourself and try and see the wood for the trees and figure out what you're going to do next. It's the biggest investment that you can make for yourself is just to take that time out and find some kind of cadence that works for you.
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