BOSH! How to activate insight in 4 steps

You know exactly what peeves your customers/your client’s customers. So how can you get leadership to act? Follow the BOSH plan...

1.     Burning platform

Sometimes the same customer pain points come up again and again in research, but they aren’t acted on – this is especially true for companies experiencing high growth, where complacency can creep in.

If your insights are being heard but not heeded, you need to find and communicate a ‘burning platform’ that conveys a sense of impending crisis if action is not taken, for example in terms of lost sales or increased churn.

Your crisis predictions need to be time-bound in order to create urgency to act.

Not everything deserves burning platform status though - try not to be Peter and the Wolf!

2.     Opportunity

Quantify, ideally financially, the opportunity available by taking action X or avoiding action Y. 

3.     Senior support

You may need someone to advance your cause and take it on as their own. Hopefully, you have the ear of an influential leader who trusts your assessment of the burning platform to worry most about.

4.     Handholding

So you’ve freaked everyone out enough that they believe the company is going to sink unless something is done: it’s time to get into handholding mode. At the very least this involves providing solutions-orientated insight and consoling/inspiring your client with a positive vision of the future. It’s also possible to go further than this and become a champion for the change you believe is necessary by supporting with implementation.