How to Give the Business Answers, Not Homework with Nick Rich, Co-Founder at Growth Constructors

Foreign. Welcome to the Insightus Club Podcast brought to you by Stravito, the insight intelligence platform global brands trust to turn their existing knowledge into better commercial decisions. I'm your host, Ross Dempsey. Each episode we speak with insight leaders from across the industry to hear how they're turning insights into better business impact. Foreign and welcome back to the Insiders Club podcast. Now today we're lucky enough to be joined by Nick Rich. Nick is currently co founder and partner at Gross Constructus, which we'll, we'll dive into in due course. But I wanted to do Nick justice with this intro. So pardon me if this is a bit of a meaty one, that Nick is a fellow of the Mrs. And has vast experience in the insight industry, holding senior roles at Carlsberg Intercontinental Hotel Group and Nokia. But suffice to say, Nick is a very well known and trusted voice in the industry and actually previously a guest on the Insiders Club podcast, so a friend to us as well. Now, themes we'll be chewing over today include the reconstruction thesis. This is something I'm quite excited to talk about. Essentially Nick's view on why Insights is broken and how we might fix it. Also we'll be diving into growth theory and how that can be used as a hidden operating system. We'll speak to Nick about his personal experience around what he's learned making the leap from VP to founder. And we'll also talk about courage and the role of courage in the insight profession. Much more than that I'm sure we'll dive into. But first and foremost, Nick, welcome back. Thank you Ross. It's very good to be back. Always admired the team at Stravito and it's great to be talking about challenging topics, but hopefully worthy ones. We seem to be in a evolution period at the moment, so this is going to be a really good conversation, I hope. Indeed. Thanks and thanks for your kind words. So since we last spoke way back when you've co founded Growth Constructors, I think for the benefit of our listeners, maybe you could give us maybe a succinct overview of what's the problem that you've created this to solve. So Growth Constructors, Growth Insights for growth leaders. It's as simple as that. But I guess give it a little bit of definition. Growth Constructors was formed on the premise that there is a huge gap and opportunity for Insights to really be at the heart of business strategy. And Growth Constructors is all about exactly that. It's putting Insights at the heart of, of finding growth and taking businesses towards it and Realizing it. And so I always position us as filling the gap that Insights is often left open. I really like that listeners will know I love to be simplicity led. And that was a nice and simple definition. So always the fun of that. I think it'd be fair to say that most people who leave senior corporate roles, they tend to either go into consulting, maybe gradually, or make that move to another big company, another big brand. I noticed that you went straight from the big corporate role to building something new. What made you want to do that rather than kind of go down the pure consultancy advising from the sidelines route? I think my situation, I was last in a corporate role in another country, so that involved moving back from Denmark and Carlsberg back to the UK for the first time in my career, had a little bit of time to reflect, but also some time to build. And myself and my business partner, Cos Knighton, who founded Growth Constructors with, we knew we had something. We both shared a vision and a perspective on what was missing in Insights. And we both came together kind of with a shared vision of how we fix that. And so Growth Constructors was formed very squarely to address that gap and really put Insights upstream at the heart of strategy and really connect Insights to bottom line. And I thought this is a gap that needs filling and going to another role would have been probably safe, comforting. So this is a challenge, but it's one that feels the right time to take on and we think the business and the industry and the profession needs it. Interesting. And I think let's dive into that. We mentioned at the top, this is kind of built around a specific thesis, if you like, that the Insight profession needs reconstructing. And I'd like to dive into sort of where that conviction came from and how Growth Constructors wants to address that. But particularly I would bring in here, I was an avid reader of your. Your LinkedIn series on this, a kind of manifesto to the industry, if you like, was that. And maybe the additional question here is, was that written obviously to attract clients, to provoke the industry, perhaps, or was it a case? And I've been guilty of this on LinkedIn, getting it off your chest, I think at the baseline, Growth Constructors is built to identify and realize growth for companies and put insights and analytics at the heart of doing that very clearly, very explicitly aligning teams and then staying for the outcome as well. The thesis and the white paper that was written was a little bit of getting off the chest, but we wanted to address the fact that there's been for a long time A chat about Insights getting a seat at the table, being more strategically instrumental and important and recognized. But there's only been talk about the issue, there's only been talk about the problem, not really any talk about physically, what do you do next Monday morning about taking those steps? And so the white paper was really saying, okay, we recognize the problem. Here's the diagnosis of why this has happened, and now what do you do about it? And we think that was adding to the conversation, not just adding to a vague vision of what we think we need to be doing. This is exactly what you do need to do. And growth constructors lives that every day. And so we could bring to bear some case studies, some examples, mistakes and things we've had to reconfigure and rebuild. But how do you do this? And we were very keen to share. I mean, that's one thing about growth constructors. We don't hide behind black boxes or complex models, because that's not going to achieve the goal that we're here to solve, which is helping businesses align and being successful. Maybe if we touch on, if we go back a step, the problem. And your LinkedIn series opened with a bold and fairly damning premise, which was Insights is generating very little growth as a premise. And let's dive into that. I mean, why do you think that is? Obviously, there's a lot of industry talk about this, but how would you summarize that? Yeah, let me be clear. I think you mentioned that we kind of alluded to Insights being broken. I don't think it's broken, but I do think it's vulnerable. I think there's. There's very rational reasons why we find ourselves in this position. We talk about things like the commoditization of research, which we have focused for a generation on speed and cost because the business has asked us to do that. The mandates we've had around collection of knowledge, delivery of knowledge, it's largely being. It's ever increasingly being commoditized. And when you become excellent at doing that, that's fine. That's what the business needs. But we're now in a position where being successful at those mandates now makes us vulnerable, because technology is automating that even further and even faster. And so you have to ask yourself, what are the mandates? What are the needs that we are going to deliver against that actually make us irreplaceable? And that is the question I think a lot of teams are facing now because we're seeing downsizing, obviously, automation, reconfiguring of teams Even redundancies. So it's only logical you ask, is this the pathway we're on? Are we moving to extinction or is there something we can do about it? And there's just such an obvious mandate that we need to take hold of which is growth direction that's sitting right in front of us. And so for insights to be successful in the future, be irreplaceable, be recognized as a genuine strategic asset, we have to take a hold of that mandate because gatekeeping, the kind of in year research we do, or accountability driving the tracking we do, those things are being increasingly automated. So we do need to reflect on our value proposition. And we think growth constructors is at the heart of a mandate that will make us irreplaceable. I think that's really interesting and this is quite reflective of some conversations I've been having this week actually around, you know, essentially how you penetrate decision making earlier. And something occurs to me that will be a bit of a shift for the industry. And part of it is our language and how we talk about ourselves, the insight team, how we essentially deliver insight, its trajectory through the business. It always feels often like an us and them type approach rather than talking with kind of business acumen about the objective, the business outcome, the, the value for the business. And I think you're right around this kind of, this drift downstream, which again, not necessarily, nobody's doing anything wrong here. I, I think there's a series of things that have happened in the world and in the market that have accelerated this. And I notice you argue for kind of three fundamental shifts that downstream to upstream positioning. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about that and maybe talk a little bit about which of those is kind of to prioritize and which of those is kind of hard for insight teams to actually do. Yeah. So we talk about three steps you can take to position yourselves upstream and an upstream positioning is fundamentally the direction that we want insights to move in. What that means is you are involved. It's the thing we've always strived for. You are involved before the brief. You're involved in strategy construction. And we think that involves kind of three distinct behaviors and actions. One is constructive orientation. So we've had the belief and the observation and we've been part of this in our careers, is that insights can be archaeological. And we always talk about looking in the rearview mirror and the giving a picture of how the world exists today. Constructive orientation asks you to add in another step to that. So for example, if your research is observational, Take it to implication. If your research stops at implication, then take it to strategic tactical actions. Cost it. Where are the resources coming from? Align ownership. Who's responsible for the outcomes? If you start adding that to the research, what you're doing today, you're immediately taking the conversations further upstream. That's an action you can take right now. So constructive orientation we think is really important. The commercial integration, again, fundamentally vital to us moving upstream. So we've given examples in the paper of where we've observed research saying, okay, we have a awareness problem or a salience issue with a particular cohort of our customer base. Yes, okay, you've identified that there's a challenge. But just saying to the business, you need to address a salience issue. You're just giving somebody else in the business homework. And as well, you know, if you give other people homework, it either gets done late or it doesn't get done at all. So insights. Stop giving people homework. Give people solutions before you present the results. Talk to other teams about what it will take to invest x amount in a particular strategy, what the return will be, what the risk is. And then you're giving people a much clearer decision point to make. And so that commercial integration cost up the potential outcomes, allocate the resources. You're just moving the business far more forward in the process towards where growth will be realized. So, you know, those are two actions. And then we talk about that third piece, which I think is going to take a lot longer, which is really that upstream positioning. And I think if you can display the first two behaviors habitually, then your upstream positioning will become a natural consequence of that because people will be raising their bar of expectation of what research is there to do. But you will naturally get brought into conversations before the brief is written. You'll be naturally brought into more strategic discussions. And that is a natural consequence of you putting in place those early behaviors. I think that's really interesting and a kind of offshoot question here, again, something I've been speaking to insight teams about this week. And I think this falls into your kind of constructive section here, which is, and I'm interested in your perspective on this is something I'm going to say that's good on paper, maybe slightly harder to do in practice, which is, I've often found in conversation with insight teams there's a what are we missing mentality versus what do we have that we can tell the business and by extension reason judgment. We might have decision confidence of, I'm going to say 70% as a figure and often I, in my role, I've often acted as the jam in the sandwich, if you like, between decision makers and the insight teams. And it would seem to me often decision makers are sort of craving the reason, judgment and expertise of the insight team. But maybe the business reality and politics requires that bit more of analysis or the insight team to feel like that they're more 95% sure on something. What's your kind of viewpoint on this? Is there room for more recent judgment from insight teams that is clearly stated or is that harder in practice? Do insight teams actually have permission to do that? I think the permissions angle is the really important one here. I think we've been given permission forever to give our opinion. Every business is different, every culture is different. Your stakeholders are different, your reporting lines, they may have different expectations. And for sure some people will find themselves in a position where they are required to be a service provider. But in other places, other businesses where the culture is more open, I think the permission is already there and you, and you have to take that. And so having a viewpoint is absolutely vital either whether it's 60% supported, 95% supported, having an opinion is vital and then having the commercial acumen to know what are the consequences of having that opinion. Because whether it's your cmo, your brand leader, your cfo, cmo, they want decision support and your opinion is as important as any data. We strongly believe the permission has always been there. It's up to you to go and fulfill that. Ask and if the permission doesn't exist, then put yourself in a position where the permission can be granted. So you know there's that tension between the stakeholders that you're going to have. But put yourself in a position where they are beginning to give you that permission and that'll be evident through the questions they ask you. Is there anything else you want to add there around the kind of day to day examples of being kind of constructive versus evidentiary, if you like, in practice, what, what's the kind of concrete example for listeners for day to day? So constructive positioning, one of the things we always highlight and we always do in practice with our, our clients is really question, question, the brief. That's a starting point. We always ask what is your theory of growth and how is this action or this activity going to support that? And if we get into box ticking exercises, then perhaps that's not for us. Maybe other companies are better suited to doing that. But it's always a healthy question to ask, is, is that bulk ticking exercise actually going to get you to the growth you're trying to get to. So we always ask about a company's growth theories. What is the belief system that they are operating on now and does that match what the category behavior game that's being played in the category right now? And are those two things matching up? Because if they're not, then you're just investing money in something that actually isn't going to move the needle. So from an Insights point of view, be involved before the brief, be involved in creating the brief is where you to get to as a first step. Scoping around problems, not projects. Again, I have seen insight teams and I've been there where you get a brief and they just want the answer. There are times absolutely that is going to happen and sometimes you need to be there to support the business just taking a step forward. But when it comes to more kind of profound strategic questions, Insights really has to be be there and be scoping what that's going to do. Think about the business outcomes before you think about the methodologies is really our definitely. And I'm increasingly seeing and actually getting feedback on the podcast. It's become increasingly important. And of course as you say day to day. Traditionally insight teams were kind of pushed by the day to day questions, servicing the belt of the business if you like. But actually it does seem more and more in 2026 and going forward having your finger on the pulse of the business. And this might not always be the request stack that's coming through to the business. This might be the human relationships meeting those stakeholders, who they are, how they interact, what are they concentrated on. And certainly I saw this firsthand at sky and Burberry. It's those water cooler moments sometimes where you can unearth what the business is thinking about. But I want to move the conversation onto this idea around growth theory as a hidden operating system. And I'm going to read you a quote of your own here that I think sets this up nicely, which is many organizations operate on an implicit theory of growth that they've never articulated, examined or tested. These theories shape everything. Resource allocation, portfolio strategy, KPIs. Yet they're rarely explicit, frequently outdated and often wrong. Let's dive into that. So the idea of a hidden growth theory is, it's pretty striking. So when you've gone into organizations and surfaced this with them, what do you see? What do you actually find? What does an outdated or wrong growth theory look like from your perspective? Yeah, so it can take many forms, but often companies operate on a belief system about how growth is going to appear in their category and how they are going to then realize it and you see it, it manifests itself in many different ways. It could be a founding growth theory from the person that started the business or started the function. They have a belief. This is what made us great. And we've pursued that same growth theory ever since. You also see sometimes siloed growth theories. So sales will believe that the path to growth will be through distribution, promotion, that you think brand will feel it's through the brand, emotional connections, advertising, anything. And to a degree, they're all right at certain times. But growth is only going to be truly impactful when everybody recognizes the game that's being played in the category and they're all moving together and they're all playing their component parts in achieving that. We have seen in businesses, I've worked in businesses where those growth series tend to compete. What you're doing, you're asking a CFO to make a capital allocation decision and they'll give a certain amount of money to sales, they give a certain amount of money to marketing, to brand, to digital. But are they all moving in the same direction? So that's one of the first things we uncover. Have you got 18 growth theories? The second thing we ask is let's look at the category and see what growth game is being played. How are the category dynamics? How do the different brands and competitors overlay on that category? And so once you understand those dynamics, again you say, is your current growth theory fit for purpose? Is that going to work your market with your resources, with your competition right now or tomorrow? And you often find that you'll rarely find a perfect match. And if you do, that's great, then, then you're about keep it optimized. But if you find any gaps or misaligned strategies, then it becomes very, very telling. Immediately you can visualize where you're wasting money, immediately visualize where actually poured resources. Alignment is going to have a much bigger impact. I think we've also been through a period over the last 10, 20 years of companies following what we call marketing religions, and there's some obvious ones that I think we're all familiar with. We're not saying they're wrong, they're absolutely right strategies, but are they the right one? For now, I think one of the first questions we ask is, okay, is investing everything in distribution the right game to be playing right now? And if it is, fantastic. But if it's not, what's the alternative path? And, and what we do in some companies is that they have adopted A a marketing philosophy or religion and they apply that same method and approach to every brand in their portfolio. Well, that's, that's not necessarily going to be right. A same product might need to play a different game in one market to another. Yeah, I think that's really interesting and obviously in your kind of new role you've, you've given yourself space probably for things that you've thought about and observed over your career and to question it, but I think kind of flipping the mirror to the Insight function, how do you see typical Insight functions interacting with their resident company's growth theory? Do they validate it? Do they typically challenge it? Do they mostly ignore it? Potentially. And then maybe a follow on question to that is how do Insight teams kind of proactively service and surface and test growth theories? How does it change their relationship with the business? Because I'm conscious of you're in a unique position now to do that. It might be slightly harder for resident insight teams. I think we have an obligation, a duty in Insights to be measuring that growth theory that should be a fundamental pillar of what we deliver. So if distribution or emotional connection is the current theory of growth, just make sure that is delivering because by doing that then you can spot when you may be looking at points of depletion. So take distribution for example. You want to be in as many places to sell where your consumers are, but at some point the value of investing that isn't going to be have as high a return as investing in the next stage of growth. And that might be building stronger emotional connections, focusing on frequency of purchase rather than just being available. And so as an Insight team, you should be able to instruct the business when that growth theory is clear, close to exhausting its value and then assessing, okay, well what does that mean for how we shift and adjust? So Insights absolutely owns the data that will give you the answers to that. And then you've got, the Insights team has got to make sure that they've surfaced that unified across the business so everyone's pulling in that same direction. So I think Insights has a really important role and that immediately takes it to a more strategic positioning as well because you're not just talking about reactive actions, campaigns, etc. You're actually in control of the business's fundamental direction. Really interesting. A lot, a lot for our listeners to think on there. Thanks for that. I want to flip the track a little bit here to kind of your personal kind of growth and trajectory. So you've kind of moved from that corporate world that we Mentioned to consultant and obviously you've been inside too major global organizations, but you've advised a range of others. What do you think maybe for listeners as kind of tangible examples, what do companies that are genuinely good at growth Insights, what do they do differently from those that maybe think they are? And then I've got, let's go with that one first. And then I've got, I've got a follow up to that. Yeah, I think, I think if Insights has permission to inject the truth and accuracy of what's going on with consumers and markets, a business that can react to exposed weakness, you know, it will tell you how adaptable that business is and ready to change. So we, we have seen businesses that has been uncomfortable with the exposed weaknesses in their plans. And some people, their careers and their, their roles are dependent on those, those plans. Engaged businesses, progressive businesses get very much more comfortable with exposed weakness. You almost, you almost see them relax in terms of finally having the clarity but also having the clarity clarity of the gap that now exists and presents itself to them. We've seen businesses get very comfortable with the fact that for instance where they've been investing has basically reached its tipping point. They're not going to achieve growth that way. That could be alarming for some, but they take that with both hands and say okay, well what's the way out of this? Reinvest in new markets. We've worked with clients in commoditizing markets where brand has very little impact on consumer buying behavior and yet they've been investing in TV ads and what have you. That note has no, that has much less value. And so we've been working with them to commoditize market, be the last man standing and actually use the benefit, the benefit and the, and the returns you get from that position in your home market to reinvest in new markets. And so very tangibly Insights has a role there to expose any weaknesses but also any opportunities. And the companies, you see differences in reaction but the most progressive one, absolutely tailored with both hands because it's the first time they've had that level of clarity. And she's kind of maybe carrying this thread forward a little bit on, on perspective and learning and obviously you that shift in, in your role. I'm wondering, I mean we probably all look back at our previous jobs and careers and analyze and dissect them. But I'm wondering if we think about your time at Carlsberg in particular, a big global brand, is there anything that you would do differently now with the perspective that you've built since that role and with growth constructors and advising other companies, I don't know that differently, but probably harder. I think one of the things that excites me most about growth constructors and the potential for Insights is I think the times when we really enjoy work is when you uncover new growth and you, you realize that. And that's by instructing on a consumer need that is not being satisfied. And companies build products and constructing growth. We call growth constructors because we believe growth actually can be constructed. You know, I give examples in the paper like Airbnb didn't think about destinations. They talk about belonging and you staying in destinations and being part of the society and the community there and added very, another very different dimension to travel. But Colesberg, the whole alcohol industry for many years has been working out what to do with low and no alcohol. And at Carlsberg they had a really clear idea that this was a different drinking occasion, it was a different consumer need potentially about well, being even and being able to reconstruct categories, I think is, you know, one of the most exciting parts of being in Insights and being responsible and driving that that change is, is really powerful. So growth construction, not just directing to business to where they have risk and where they have opportunity, but then imagining what that future world might look like. It's not just explaining where we got to and where we've been constructing a world of, of and a vision of what this company could be going forward. That for us is really exciting. And we strongly believe that growth doesn't necessarily happen to you. You can actually create your own growth. There's a kind of recurring theme here, I think, and I know you've mentioned this previously, which is, you know, essentially one of thought leadership and being proactive and having ownership and that, that does feel like the right aspiration. But I'm wondering what are the barriers that have come up against you here? Like what's the hardest conversation you've had with clients? What's the thing that people most often don't want to hear? Yes, yeah, I think the possibly is if we can't see how this request is going to lead to growth, then we are quite happy to walk away if we can't engage and maybe reconstruct the ask in terms of being something more constructive and obviously having a better outcome. I think the hardest discussions to begin with is addressing companies growth theories. Really ask them to think, okay, how does this action then support that growth theory? What's going to be your kind of vision of an outcome here rather than just Accepting the brief as it stands and then building a solution around it, because that's not really where we are. You can make revenue doing that, but that's not where we are. That's not what we're about, and that's not the game that we want to play. And there's other companies that are better placed to perhaps take that on. So that can be a fairly uncomfortable conversation, but actually becomes an immediately very fruitful one if the client engages, because you always actually build something stronger. And there's something really interesting, I think, in that that leads me to my next thought, which part of your series. You talk a lot about courage and courage in the insights profession. And certainly for me, I just from an engagement perspective, you know, being a comms expert, former journalist, et cetera, I think I've forever been encouraging teams to be bold and ask for forgiveness and arguably move insight teams outside of their comfort zone in terms of how you push and promote and deliver insight or support decision making in a business. And actually you talk about five acts of courage and three humility, which I think is a very nice framing. But why courage? Why not skills or process or technology? Why is this standing out to you as something that the industry really needs to think about? Yeah. So I mean, just for your listeners, the five acts of courage we talk about are challenging the brief, making specific recommendations, and we give guidance about what specific actually means building commercial capabilities. So again, very specific actions about what that means for an insight person in having more effective business acumen, really understanding things that drive a business forward and augmenting your work with that understanding pricing and engaging for outcomes rather than just invoicing at project end and going on to the next thing. One of the things we talk about is staying for the outcome because what that actually means is insights then is involved in the planning of the response. We posit the idea also of agencies perhaps looking at their pricing models about what that means, because we found some of our clients have now have us on more of a retainer model because they want us to be there working through not just the implications and consequences, but actual actions and the resource allocation and the accountability right through to actually launching of whatever that might be a product or a campaign or what have you. And so we, we end up having conversations, engaging a different pricing model, which is also something fairly radical and new. And I talked to, I referenced earlier, but walking away from wrong work. So it takes courage to do all of that because you're essentially turning down revenue. But it's vitally important, we think because you get involved in the right projects and not the wrong ones. And then we talk about those three humilities. And one thing I really don't want Insights to do is blame anyone for the position they find themselves in. It goes back to our earlier reference. Insights got itself into a position of vulnerability for very rational reasons because we were servicing what the business wanted from us. It's just now we do find ourselves runnable. So the humility has come in three forms. One is operational excellence is great and you absolutely need that. We're not saying you stop doing all the platforms, the data interfaces, all those things, you need to do that, but you need to add the growth construction mandate as well. But being good at insight operations is good to keep you going, but it's not going to be sufficient for your future. And increasingly that makes us vulnerable if that's your main focus. The second humility is strategy without financial rigor is just ideas without meaning. And if you can't add that financial rigor and in fact help businesses to make allocation decisions in terms of their investment with risk attached with roi, then you're just giving them kind of open ended questions to answer. And the last piece is know when to partner. Right now a lot of Insight teams don't necessarily have all the skill sets they need in their team. So go out and work with other people that do and bring those people in. Over time we may rewrite the job descriptions of Insight people, but for now be humble enough to know that you don't know something and go and bring expertise in and it often exists in the company you're in in the first place. So bring these people in and work together and through osmosis and through experience, you'll learn some of those skills that you need. And so we talk about those humility. It's not to blame, it's just to accept that the position we find ourselves in is not optimum and these thinking and actions that you need to get, get ahead of that and find yourself irreplaceable. Yeah, I mean I'm definitely seeing that from my end, I think in my kind of time in the industry, probably getting on for 15 years now, is the role of the Insight professional is being asked to wear many masks. You know, it's no longer about being a good researcher, a good analyst, a good data scientist. It's are you a good communications person, are you a good storyteller, are you a good promoter, are you good at change management, are you good at intersecting with business, politics and a million other things as well as obviously keeping up with being technically proficient and actually I think a lot of this also comes back to all of those things. And then being an insight leader on top of this and intersecting with the decision making machine in a business that's a lot of work for anybody to manage on a day to day basis. It feels like it is a lot of work. That sounds like a very long to do list if you are judging Insights maybe by yesterday's rules. I think if you, if you look to position yourself upstream, the role absolutely changes and but what you're going to find is there are some obligations, there's some tasks and there's some deliverables that you might not need to be responsible for. So you know, to give you tangible examples, there are a couple of FMCG brands I think with very progressive leaders who absolutely understand the role of automation, technology, AI and the role it now plays. And then what does that free your insights team up to do now? And, and they then say that basically if we can automate the repeatable models that enables us, gives us the space, gives us the freedom and the permission to move ourselves upstream and be engaged in a much different way with the business and, and our paper and growth constructors. We recognize not, it's not completely broken. We just need adaptation in the face of disruption. Every profession and every brand category faces disruption at some point. This is ours again. And so why would we not find ways to make ourselves irreplaceable? And the most progressive leaders are already on that journey. Yeah, I think that's definitely true and I see that from my end. I mean my team within Stravito, you know, essentially we're helping with insight communications, insight curation, strategic advisory. But none of that is taking away from the profession. It's freeing up the individual in the team to push their reach and reputation, do the work they need to do. So I'm definitely seeing that from my end too. If you think intelligence, intelligence must be or must have competitive advantage to it, right? Companies invest an awful lot of money in intelligence. One assumes that they want to see some competitive advantage come out of that. If, if there's one observation it's that we've spent a generation probably focused on the operation operationalization of that intelligence base and now we need to get back to differentiated knowledge. Where is the competitive advantage in intelligence? And it doesn't necessarily apply just to insights. Right. Every function is, is looking for competitive advantage through the intelligence it has. And so I think Insights we have an obligation to put ourselves at the center of that conversation and how it's going to evolve. Definitely. And I think intelligence is kind of rightly a buzzword at the moment. It's something along with signals and foresight and that kind of branching out of terminology we're seeing. And I know last time you were on the podcast you talked about insight leaders that need to see themselves as business intelligence experts. So maybe you were ahead of the curve a little bit Nick on that one. And we've talked a little bit about putting finance front and center and understanding the tools that we need to use. But kind of taking all that together. There's clearly a deep link between what you're arguing for about upstream positioning and the idea of insight management, making it findable, usable, etc. But how do you think about the connection between these things? Because I think in any given insight team at the moment, there's a lot to think about. But how do you group these things together and how do you think about the connection between these different elements? Well, there's certainly not a disconnection. I mean they are all integral to us being successful. We maintain the foundational things we've been doing are not wrong. They are absolutely imperative to making us efficient, successful, cost effective. Now the question's being asked, what's the value proposition that we, we now stand to deliver? And so I think back, looking at Stravito and how your products and platforms have evolved, you've gone from collating your entire kind of intelligence base to extracting meaning from that intelligence base. And now your tools are extracting differentiated knowledge, things we would not have been able to uncover without the kind of technological support that's now enabled for that extraction. So you recognize that it's more about just managing a knowledge base. It's getting what differentiated value can you get out of that? And the insight as a practitioner has to follow that same pathway. So is there's total connections between all of those things. I think it's our balance of focus on what's now important. Before it was speed and cost. Speed and cost now is reaching the peak of its it's value proposition. So what do we now move on to? Where is there headroom for insights to, to bring value to any business that we find ourselves in? I think that's, that's spot on. And a colleague of mine said the other day that really stuck in my brain was we all need to be prepared for a world where everyone is connected to everything, that the trick will be that how do we make sense of it and how do we make that Actionable. So I think that definitely rings true. Whereas it's the key thing, I think, making sense of it. Yes, but it's got to go beyond that. Yeah. So, I mean, it's an old thing, but so what? So what? Yeah. What is actually going to happen? Who's responsible for the next action? How much money is it going to cost? What's the return going to be? What happens if it's not successful? Those are the questions. We've got to be adding to what we've done before and potentially replacing what we've done before. So I think this is a really exciting opportunity for us. I don't want anyone to think Insights is broken. We've just got this great, huge opportunity that no one else is going to fill in terms of growth direction, and we are sitting on the data that we need to do that right now. So Monday morning, we can take that first step and growth construction can help you, of course. And what does kind of. We've touched on lots of different topics here, but maybe tying this up in a bit of a bow. What would mission accomplish look like for you and growth constructors in five years, what would you like to see as the change that you want to achieve in the Insight profession? Yeah. So from the business's point of view, obviously, we want to see enjoyable work with really tangible, successful outcomes. I mean, that's. Cos and I both were brought together because we enjoy this work and we know there's a gap to fill and give us great satisfaction to. To. To achieve that. So in five years, I want to see really successful clients engaging with us, getting involved in all sorts of creative work. I mean, I couldn't have dreamed of the kind of variety of work that we have. Helping dairy produce manufacturers navigate commoditized categories, helping other service brands move from distribution focus to building kind of emotional engagement with their consumers. These are such rewarding business questions to be engaged on. But I also have a very kind of professionally focused passion, which is to see Insights irreplaceable. And having been in this industry for 25 years, we've been through curves and ups and downs over those. Over those years for. For many reasons, I want to see us irreplaceable. And one of my personal passions, and I do a lot of work with the industry and industry bodies, is helping open up conversation and even giving people guidance on exactly what they can do to make that happen. I would hate to think Insights is on a pathway to extinction and that we will be replaced by the machines. And so my personal Passion manifested commercially through growth constructors is making us irreplaceable and putting us at the heart of every good business everywhere. Absolutely. And I think from my end as well, I see, I think the people in the companies doing this well have realized technology. And let's group everything that everyone's thinking about within that has to be the infrastructure and the accelerator. And that's, you know, it's not a choice anymore. It's essential. But also it really has to amplify human expertise and judgment. That is still what people crave, decision makers, audiences. And that's the sweet spot, I think, to people doing this well. And maybe a final question that we like to ask and at the risk of repetition, but being a good comms person, I see the value in repetition. If every insight leader listening to this podcast had one thing to take away, what would you want it to be for this conversation? Yeah, the obvious one is call us, I think if you don't want to do that. I think think about your own behaviors. We've talked about the kind of commercial focus, a constructive attitude to the work you do. So giving solutions, not just observations. There are things you can do on Monday morning to just start taking that first step that will shift and reposition insights in a different place. And so as an insight leader, my, my ask of them will be don't be afraid and don't be scared. This is a huge opportunity and we can go at this many different ways. But be bold. Don't wait for permission because the permission's already there. Go and take it and have some successes, make some mistakes, but you will be in a better place at the end of it. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. This is just another in a long line of disruptions and times where we need to adapt in the face of disruption. So go for it. Amazing. Thank you, Nick. Lots of food for thought there. Really appreciate you coming back and we look forward to having you back on the podcast again sometime soon. Thank you very much and good luck to Stravito. You're a real trailblazer in all this. So, yeah, it's great to talk to you and I look forward to seeing great things from Strito in the future. Thanks, Nick. Thank you. The Insights Club podcast is brought to you by Stravito, the insight intelligence platform global brands trust to turn their existing knowledge into better commercial decisions. Just click follow to stay up to date with the latest episodes and to learn more about how Stravito helps leading brands make the most of their enterprise intelligence, just visit stravito.com click follow so you don't miss out on any future updates. And if you want even more insightful content, you can subscribe to the Insiders Club newsletter at the link in the show Notes. On behalf of the entire team here at Stravito, thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us again soon.