Slowing down, to speed up

As you would expect, there are a number of different excellent 2021 predictions pieces and focus suggestions ‘flying’ around at the moment as we wrestle with the start of 2021. I want to draw your attention to a couple of them and after introducing them, ask you a question:

1. “Customer experience, along with data and digital transformation, is a mega trend that has been playing out for years already and will endure for years to come. But it seems increasingly clear that for experiences to be successful they either need to speed up and become real-time or consciously slow down to be more immersive and considered.” ( Ashley Friedlein’s digital & marketing trends 2021)

29% of brands don’t use modelling for isolating the impact of marketing investment (WARC’s 2021 Marketing Toolkit)

I’m calling out these two specifically as I think there is a link which not many organisations address, but when they do, the reward is high; the best and most well-known example would be Diageo’s Catalyst platform.

There are a number of different reasons I have come across for why measurement models don’t get introduced and by no means is this an exhaustive list:

1. The business is not ready: still in high investment launch phase so not yet set up for modelling or ready to listen to the results
2. The ‘feel’ for the business and having structured guidelines to operate in; meaning less requirement or discretion to be guided by data
3. Business being driven by product innovation resulting in significant and consistent market share growth
4. It’s been unsuccessfully tried before and the organisation is burnt

When I have seen the experience of insight delivery (and I include marketing investment modelling within this) done well, it does two things. It provides the right intelligence at the right time to service the quick-fire information needs and decision making. This in turn means that there is then space to have the more discursive moments to really delve into the depth of an issue and an insight.

To achieve this, you need:

1. An effectiveness intelligence ecosystem where each part has clear purpose
2. Each part of the ecosystem is clearly communicated in what it will deliver and when
3. The right decision makers have access to the relevant parts of the ecosystem allowing the fast experience
4. Clear and structured planning processes which allow for the discursive moments (the slow experience)

All of this takes time and the right preparation, which often means diverting resource from elsewhere to deliver. Or in other words, slowing down to speed up.

So, my questions: How often do you think about the experience of delivering fast and slow experiences within an organisation, and is now the right time to slow down to speed up? If so, what would you slow down to speed up?