This is the third of my short series on the challenges and opportunities for in-house research teams.
The research is done, the report is in, the mud has flown over the wording, the presentation and who gets to see it.
Now What? And indeed So What?
The So What is the most important question of all and where the in-house team has (possibly) untapped potential to add value. Let’s imagine you’ve done a service review and found that service users are unhappy, service delivery staff are unhappy but the results look OK financially.
So what? It takes a long time to embed enough trust and confidence but this is where being in-house is a real advantage. Act like an informed, alert management consultancy function. You understand your organisation in a way that no external person can. Don't lie there waiting.
Advise and support
Work closely with the report commissioners or whatever group of people is responsible for the various aspects of the findings and/or those who can decide where this service fits in with the strategy, plans and the needs of the service users/customers.
Be confident and make it personal. Support them to think through the issues the research has raised and how they can be addressed. In the past I’ve done this with a combination of one-to-one meetings, addressing a group, writing a “challenge paper”, making recommendations in the report, running workshops. You'll find a way.
Ideally your initial research would have started by understanding the theory of change or ambition for the service. In practice my experience mostly hasn’t had that ideal start. It’s not until the findings are in and you are talking about helping measure the impact of any changes the service providers will be making that it becomes clear to them how useful it would be.
Working out a theory of change – or call it what you will: impact mapping for example, can be a hugely exciting undertaking, motivating teams and working groups to really get under the skin of why they are there and what they want to achieve. I love to run a workshop for service teams on this – any excuse will do!
You are adding value
The So What? becomes And This is How and Why We’re Going to Make the Service More Fit for Purpose. Good job research team – alert and effective.