5 principles for high-risk, high-impact research 🎰

ways to center yourself and your work as you take on that next big research/analysis bet.

hello 👋 ! it’s been a long time since i’ve written. planning season as a team of 1 supporting 15+ teams is always an adventure 🎢 , so i pulled back on writing to focus on balancing work and life.

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a photo of me playing slot machines for 4 months hoping the research has impact.

for the past 4 months, i’ve spent a large chunk of my time partnering with VP+ leadership on company metric development research. it’s been a jouuuuurney with many twists, turns, and learnings. whenever i wrap-up these sorts of milestones, i feel it’s crucial to create the space to define principles that emerged from the work (even if they aren’t revolutionary or new!) that i want to continue experimenting with as i move forward.

after a few days of writing down the principles and toying with them, 5 emerged.

1. evangelize the story on how we got here and where we’re going. 🔮

2. attack the opportunity, not the problem. 🧠

3. 101 first, 301 later. 📈

4. create predictable frequent stakeholder communication. 💬

5. empower others to make decisions about your research. 👩‍⚖️

let’s dig in. bear with me: i’m going to use a hike metaphor throughout to keep things cheesy 🧀 .

🔮 evangelize the story on how we got here and where we’re going.

a group of people hiking down a path in the woods will be distracted by different sights in the forest; this means our perception of the path we’ve been on is inherently unique. (catch me looking for the unique flora 🌸 .)

one of the most exciting parts of high-risk and high-impact research projects is that they often come about due to a crossroads. this crossroads moment can be due to a change in company or product strategy, a reorganization of teams, external conditions that impact your company, etc.

no matter what the shift is, it’s crucial to understand the history that the led to the crossroads you and your stakeholders find yourself in today. your goal as a researcher is not just to understand the context that led you here, but to cultivate inspiration on where you as a group might go based on the work you’re about to execute.

ask yourself questions like:

• who were the leaders who led our company down the old path?

  • are they still here? what did they learn from that process? why did they choose that path in the first place? what path were they on before it? what is their level of attachment to the path? are they keyed into the crossroads moment we’re in? what assumptions were fundamental to that path being the “right one”?

• what’s changed?

  • are market conditions shifting? is your product or business reaching a new stage of maturity? is your company’s strategy evolving? have new leaders joined the company with strong opinions on the path we’ve been headed down? is there newly experienced misalignment across business units or product teams? does a new understanding of the assumptions that led to us going down the original path make us realize we need to go down a different one?

it’s not enough to sit and reflect on the above questions alone. your “users” are the folks who define the strategy based on your insights. so, go speak with them (try to find folks with different experiences of the path you’ve been on) to build a more holistic perspective.

once you’ve done this, synthesize those findings into a story and socialize it. this story becomes the inspirational call-to-action to own the beautiful path you’ve been on while also acknowledging the exciting opportunity to make a turn down a new one.

this makes “the work” not just about the research work, but about the movement forward and a shift in direction.

high-risk and high-impact projects are typically not quick deliverables, so this inspiration you’ve cultivated will help keep folks aligned on why we’re considering the new path in the first place; this is especially important in research work given the inherent linear nature to the work that is not experienced in all disciplines.

🧠 attack the opportunity, not the problem.

if you were deciding what path to go down next on a hike, you’d probably focus on what experience you want to have moving forward on the hike than sit and complain about what you didn’t see thus far.

this one is huge. it is very easy when doing this type of research to start by orienting the work around the problems with the current path (e.g., the metric lacks rigor.) this approach can be a natural tendency of an analyst or research persona. we’re comfortable with this type of critique and its inherent to the work we do — we know objects like a metric are never perfect.

that’s likely not the case for all of your stakeholders if you’re working on a high-risk and high-impact research project. they might operate from a place of: “your work could make my current strategy look bad” or “your work could make me have to do more work to bring corral my team or department down a new path.”

i personally fell into this trap many times; i’d focus on how our status quo was lacking rigor or how it was not clear or actionable. it felt so clear to me that the path we were on was no longer the right one. but, by taking this approach, i was going down a new path alone rather than bringing them along with me.

what does this all boil down to? you don’t have a solution yet that your stakeholders can react to or orient their strategy around, so don’t focus on the problem.

focus on the crossroads moment you defined and how that creates opportunity to understand the path you might head down. once you’re focused and have others inspired, attack that opportunity to see what you can learn. this not only helps remove your work from the change management that might ensue should it be successful, but it also ensures your work is a separate vehicle.

if your research has compelling findings, you’ll likely do a direct problem versus solution comparison later.

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📈 101 first, 301 later.

if you were deciding what path to turn down on a hike, you would probably start by looking at the milage. that same principle applies to choosing a new strategic path: start with the simple foundation before increasing variables that add to the cognitive load of making a decision.

now you are focused on the work to be done. chances are that if you’re doing this work, there are an array of methods you could deploy. given the work is high-risk, you may also be thinking, “i should optimize for high accuracy so that my insights are bulletproof.” you might feel the urge to go all out and do that 301 analysis (think: predictive models, causal inference research, etc.) to protect your reputation and the work.

i’ve learned to push against this tendency as much as possible¹. instead, what happens when you try to make the initial stages of the work as 101 as possible?

by starting 101, you optimize for quickly returned deliverables and generalist learnings. by answering the most basic questions and sharing how those insights will influence your work as early as possible with your key stakeholders you help folks understand why that 301 work is a requirement.

by doing this, you ensure they feel included in the journey and evaluation of the paths you might go down. early inclusion builds trust and helps maintain excitement around the work. trust is a building block to any change.

as you share those 101 insights, make the assumptions that must remain as assumptions unless 301 analysis is done highly visible. this brings your stakeholders along for the ride and helps them build intuition on research and why long periods of heads down research without rapid insights share-backs are necessary. it also will aid in moving any apprehensive stakeholders to a more curious or excited state, which is crucial to longterm impact.

💬 create predictable frequent stakeholder communication.

if you’re the one planning the hike, you’re probably way more excited about the paths you can go down next than the rest of the folks on the hike with you; you have context on the upcoming potential sights to see that the folks who didn’t plan the hike won’t have. if anything, they might be anxious of what’s to come.

i always remind myself that i over-index on how much i care about my work relative to my stakeholders, no matter how much inspiration and curiosity i cultivate. that’s natural.

why? well, by the time i got to the point in my career where i was leading high-impact and high-risk research projects, i had a deep sense of what can come from the result of my work. i had seen strategies shift based on insights and how that led to a better experience for users and customers. before i even start defining my analysis, i feel a sense of excitement.

not everyone in your stakeholder group has that same level of intuitive excitement, nor should they. but being an accountable or even informed stakeholder without that intuition means that this type of work can lead to feeling anxious.

from another perspective, you’re the one doing “the work” and everyone else around you is also doing “the work” in whatever way it materializes for them. they’re busy, and likely don’t care as much as you do about what you’re doing.

whether its helping combat anxiety or bringing along the distracted stakeholder, its crucial to set predictable channels of communication whenever these projects kick-off. this could look like any combination of the following:

• bi-weekly emails.

• monthly live check-ins.

• an evergreen 1:1 topic.

• a slack channel.

ensure that you align with your stakeholder group on what channel(s) of communication will be used for the project and at what frequency. also breakdown the goal of each channel, e.g.:

• bi-weekly emails: goal is to share status updates and make stakeholders aware of any changes to project timelines; expect a bulleted list of complete, in-progress, upcoming, and at-risk items.

• monthly live check-ins: goal is to share insights and receive feedback on project direction; expect a deck and healthy discourse.

• an evergreen 1:1 topic: without formal announcement, check-in casually with how highly invested stakeholders are feeling about the project’s direction and its implications on their day-to-day experience.

i suggest always ensuring there is a balance of written status updates/feedback and live discourse. you must proactively adapt to different styles of communication if you want to ensure alignment across stakeholders (and impact of your final work product.)

👩‍⚖️ empower others to make decisions about your research.

if you plan the entire hike and there were several options along the way, you might create resentment. even if you did the planning, make it about the group who is hiking and what you want together, not just about your experience since you did “the work.”

this is quite simple: along the research journey, actively seek out opportunities to present options that stakeholders can make the decision on. this makes them part of the work, which will only drive adoption and longer-term ownership.

remember: if you’re the one doing the research, you’re likely not the one who is going to then trickle it down into several departments’ strategies.

What principles do you live by when you’re doing high-risk and high-impact research?

1. i should note that my general philosophy is that we often over-bias towards hyper-accuracy in work that might outweigh the impact that work will have on the business. i want to do as little work as possible and have just enough fidelity of insight that we can inform a strategic decision — this expands our influence and impact and helps counteract analysis paralysis.