Summary
Catherine's talk will cover what an advanced, mixed method team looks like when it covers a broad range of research disciplines (e.g. data, customer experience, market research, digital research etc.), as well as how to make this work for the business and keep pace with ever-changing consumer behaviors.
Key Insights
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Transforming from a siloed specialist model to a multi-disciplinary, task-based approach enables more strategic impact with limited resources.
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Allocating budgets by project objectives rather than by research methodology improves prioritization and capacity planning.
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A small team (9 people) can support a much larger organization (3000 staff) effectively by blending skills and working across disciplines.
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Shifting from reacting to stakeholder demands to proactive strategic planning unlocks team value and influence.
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Introducing transparent resource allocation and triage processes reduces internal concerns and improves responsiveness.
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Empowering junior and mid-level team members to lead projects cultivates leadership skills and enhances motivation.
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Virtual ‘go-to’ person roles help maintain stakeholder relationships and ensure expertise is accessible despite a flexible team structure.
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Change management requires continuous communication, framing the change as future-proofing and engaging staff to be the change.
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Cross-disciplinary work increases learning, innovation, and helps staff develop transferable skills, improving retention.
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Delivering high-quality outputs is the strongest proof-of-concept to win stakeholder trust and secure ongoing investment.
Notable Quotes
"We were spending 90% of our resource responding to tactical queries or performance reporting — essentially marking everyone's homework."
"I wanted to create a model that let us rapidly increase our value within the business."
"We threw out the team structure and started to commission work based on the multiple skills needed for each project."
"Budgets are allocated by project, not by specialism, so investment matches the scale of the question, not the methodology."
"Project leadership can be at any level; the right discipline leads, not necessarily the most senior person."
"Some managers felt undermined because they were part of the delivery team rather than just overseeing it."
"We created a decision tree to help junior staff decide which stakeholder requests to triage and which to respond to directly."
"We introduced 'go-to' people, like account managers, responsible for particular business areas to maintain relationships."
"The proof came from delivering the output — stakeholders stopped questioning the process once they saw the quality research."
"The team can now tell the World Service what to do, not just what the audience thinks."
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