Rethinking Insights Impact with Nadine van Rooyen of WEX

What if an insight doesn’t lead to action? Does that mean it failed? In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, Karen Lynch speaks with Nadine van Rooyen, Senior Effectiveness Manager at WEX, about challenging one of the insights industry’s most persistent assumptions: that value is defined by actionability. Nadine explains why insights can create meaningful business impact even when recommendations aren’t implemented, and how decision quality, prioritization, and organizational trade-offs offer a more complete picture of success.

They also explore the importance of understanding internal stakeholders, tailoring insights to different audiences, and using AI to strengthen communication without losing the human relationships that make insights influential. For research and insights professionals, it’s a compelling case for measuring value across the entire decision-making process.

Key Discussion Points

• Moving beyond actionability as the ultimate measure of success: Why a recommendation that isn’t implemented can still improve understanding, prioritization, and decision-making.
• Measuring insights across a value chain: Nadine explains how trust, context, prioritization, trade-offs, and decision quality all contribute to the impact of research.
• Why better decisions matter more than perfect outcomes: Business decisions rarely happen with complete information, making insights an essential piece of a much larger organizational puzzle.
• Treating internal stakeholders like distinct audiences: How tailoring insights for finance, sales, customer service, leadership, and other teams can increase relevance and influence.
• The future of insights in an AI-powered organization: Why AI can help researchers better understand stakeholders and communicate effectively, while human relationships remain irreplaceable.

Resources & Links

• WEX
• IIEX Events

You can reach out to **Nadine van Rooyen** on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Nadine van Rooyen for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

[Karen] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I am hosting today. I am Karen Lynch. You know me. I'm so happy to be hosting another episode with somebody who I'm so happy to have met at IIEX Europe this year. She took to the stage after an invitation from me. I'm talking to Nadine van Rooyen. She works for a company called WEX, which we'll get into and explain in just a moment. Her title is Senior Effectiveness Manager. I want to tell you a whole lot about WEX and a whole lot about her title and what she does there. For those of you who do not know, she'll explain. They have a headquarters in Portland, Maine, which was really kismet for us because one of our employees lives up in Portland, Maine, and yet she lives in the Netherlands. That's why we brought her to IIEX Europe. Before we get too far into that, I just want to say, Nadine, what a pleasure to have you here. Welcome to the Greenbook Podcast.

[Nadine] Thank you, Karen. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

[Karen] Likewise, likewise. And, you know, every time I speak to you, it just makes me smile. So I have the feeling this will be one of those conversations where I will be smiling almost the entire time. So for those of you who are audio only, I'm so sorry you will not see the ear to ear grin that I have because, Nadine, it's such a pleasure. Let's start with the company, because, again, I had never heard of WEX. And then when I talked to Dana Stanley, like I said, who lives in Portland, Maine, he said, oh, yeah, WEX, they're headquartered in Portland, Maine. And I kept saying to myself, that is so interesting. So please give our listeners a little context on WEX, what the company does, who it serves, you know, take it from there.

[Nadine] Perfect. So I think you are right. Probably not a lot of people have heard about WEX, and that's probably because we are a B2B company. So we are a commerce platform and we operate in areas like mobility and corporate payments. And so our main type of customer would be people within other businesses. So if you're not in the corporate payment space or if you haven't got a fleet that you run, then most likely you haven't heard about what it is that we actually do. But we are a global company. And so our headquarters, as you say, is in Portland, Maine. That's a really big part of who we are. And it's also where WEX started. But we do operate in EMEA. And that's why I sit in the Netherlands. And we operate in APAC. And we've got multiple lines of businesses and multiple regions and multiple offices, that is.

[Karen] Yeah. And tell me a bit about your role, you know, Senior Effectiveness Manager, and then how it connects to the insights function, which is, again, of the utmost importance to our industry.

[Nadine] Yes, for sure. So I think that, you know, insights can obviously be really big. And with WEX being such a data driven company, as you can imagine, you know, with corporate payments, there's probably a lot of insights that goes around. But my area that I focus on is really on marketing. And so I would say a majority of the insights that I deal with is customer insights. So bringing that voice of a customer through to the rest of the business. And I agree with you. My title is maybe a bit of a mouthful for some people. And most, I mean, even my mom doesn't know exactly what I do. But what it means is basically in the marketing department, I would look at how we make our investments and what we're getting in return for those investments. So what is the effectiveness of the areas that we are deciding to spend our time and our energy and our money? And are we getting the right type of return for that investment that we're making?

[Karen] And is it investment? Is it marketing spent specifically then?

[Nadine] This is this is for marketing spend specifically. Yes. And I think we'll probably get there a little bit later. But that is how this whole question came up. How do we then substantiate the fact that we need insights and that we need people to work on insights to help the rest of the business? But we'll get there, I'm sure.

[Karen] Yeah, we'll get there. So tell us a little bit about kind of your, if you don't mind, and again, this is kind of like just leading you there. What led you to this type of role? A little bit about your background that brought you to this type of position.

[Nadine] Yeah, very, I would say very interesting, maybe not the most normal path that I've taken. I actually did study marketing at university and I got my master's and then I went and I worked for a data agency. So we worked customer insights. It's basically looking at all of the transaction data that, you know, if you go to the supermarket and then understanding how customer behavior happens there. And then I came into this role with WEX. They were looking for a data analyst within marketing and somehow that role just kind of evolved into, OK, but, you know, yes, we need a data analyst to give us insights on what what is happening within the data. But more importantly, we actually need to make sure that we have a measurement framework for all the pieces of marketing that we do. And that is how the role evolved. And that is how I got to this position.

[Karen] Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you share that because that to me seems to be the important background piece for a role like yours would be the proficiency in that data analytics. You would almost have to have it at a company like yours, the ability to see—

[Nadine] 100 percent.

[Karen] —See the information or the intelligence in the data to be able to then assess the ROI and then, you know, answer some of those, you know, kind of strategic questions, which, again, yes, we will get into. But what are the, you know, kind of beyond just proof of ROI, are there other types of business questions that your work is supporting beyond just marketing ROI for campaigns or what have you?

[Nadine] Well, I mean, I think this is an ongoing discussion that we're having, like marketing ROI, that is obviously a really important piece. But I think that marketing as a function goes so much further and the value that we bring as a department is so much more and goes beyond just like an ROI number. And I know some maybe the finance people listening will be, oh, my goodness, did she just say that? But I think that there are connections that we have with other parts of the business and there's value that you bring to other parts of the business that's not only like revenue related. And so, majority of my work, I will admit majority of my work is finance related. And so I speak to the finance department very often and we make sure that we are aligned. But I also speak to other departments and, you know, sometimes like our Senior Director needs to make a decision. And I think that's where the real value comes in, is bringing in all these bits and pieces that you know about the company and about the business and different departments and how they operate, bringing that together and then enabling people to make better decisions. And I think that is it is like a big part of it is the numbers and the ROMI. But it's not only the numbers. I think it's actually more complex than that.

[Karen] Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably our good segue to your talk, right? Having sat in on your talk. So for those of you who were not able to be at IIEX Europe, and I'm so sorry because it was a great event this year. I mean, I think I say that after every event and I think I say that every year after every event. But Nadine's talk, she spoke with a co-worker of hers and it was titled From Insights to Impact, Rethinking What Success Looks Like. So let's kind of go back in time to you coming up with that talk. Talk to us about kind of what prompted it, what brought you to the idea, the concept for the talk. And then we'll kind of dig into, you know, what what the conversation entailed.

[Nadine]I think like many talks, it probably came from a point of pain, a pain that we had felt for maybe a number of years of, you know, constantly going back and forth. And this concept of, you know, trying to show a ROMI impact and really substantiating why it is that we need an insights department. In our case, the colleague that I was doing the presentation with, she is our Insights and Research Manager. And so we work really closely together to try and understand, you know, what impact are we delivering? And we were so focused on the outcome of the impact or the outcome of the insights that we kept just bumping our head against the same thing. And every year we'd be like, OK, what was the impact of all of our insights? And that was, you know, coming round and round that circle over and over again and not having a good clear answer. That was really what forced us to kind of stop and rethink where we were and where we were going and how we were going to approach this.

[Karen] Yeah. So why do you think, you know, kind of when we get there at this point in time, this became kind of a critical conversation to have, not just at your organization, but I'm talking now across the industry, right? Because it was very well received, that particular talk. I was in the audience. I can kind of feel it. And it's not just that you had, you know, fascinating takeaways, which, again, we'll get to momentarily. But why do you think now that this sort of resonated with a lot of people, not just within your organization?

[Nadine] I'm going to propose something and maybe, you know, people out there are listening. They can come back and they can tell us what they think about it. But I think that our whole industry is maturing and has matured quite a lot. If I look at, you know, the last 20 years, you know, where we've come from to where we are now. And I think, you know, if we think about like actionable outcomes or actionable insights, that was the one of the main drivers of our industry and what we wanted to go for. That makes a lot of sense to me why that would be a key outcome, but I almost feel like we are maturing beyond that and we're starting to take a little bit of a step back and realize that that is not the only measure of success of where we are and the value that we're driving within the business. There's this whole chain of events that happens before that, that actually drives value and that enables people to make better and more informed and clearer decisions. And so I think that is why this is maybe becoming such a key topic is just, you know, we are evolving and we are moving with the times and there's a lot of changes happening in the world. I'm sure, I know you are aware of it because I've seen all the topics at the events. And I think all of that just starts showing a little bit of the complexity of how, you know, when insights comes closer to the business, because that is the context we're talking about, that we really start, need to start looking a little bit more closely at that complexity and not just skim over it.

[Karen] So let's get to, you know, kind of the big takeaways. So what were the takeaways that you wanted people to have walking away from your talk?

[Nadine] I think the first thing was just to evaluate, are they really looking at and understanding the true impact that their insights are having? And I think maybe for some of the people that already felt the pain that we had felt for those years, that maybe we could help them accelerate their path to expanding and maybe exploring a new way of understanding and showing the value of the insights that they're producing. So they don't have to go through all of the pain, but, you know, just realize there are other people just like me. We thought we couldn't possibly be the only ones who are having this pain. So maybe there are others just like me having the same challenge and let's work on it together. Here's one way we've thought of, but maybe you've got some other good ideas we can add.

[Karen] Yeah, yeah. I think that there was one of the charts — and we'll get into kind of the meat of the story that I wanted to talk to you about — one of the charts you had was sort of this laddered step by step process of walking people through a project. And there was a pinnacle point at the end, nearing the end of the project, where you challenged the status quo of a project, for example, which was not every idea needs to spur an action, or not every project needs to result in a recommended action item. And that hit me at my core as somebody who has been, you know, been reinforced, was taught and then has reinforced every research project I had done for 30 years. There were resulting recommendations and action items and everything had to be, every report had actions attached to it and recommendations. And if findings weren't actionable, then it was deemed a failure. You know, I mean, and if I weren’t, if I wasn't persuasive in my delivery of everything that didn't spur on action and my definition of an insight was an unexpected human truth that you can act upon and everything was pushing us towards actionability.

[Nadine] Yes.

[Karen] You had this moment in your presentation, which was not every insight, right, needs to be actionable. And you do not need to take action. And some things can literally just go sit on a shelf. And you put that out there. And the audience was so silent. Did you feel that on stage as well? There was sort of this, you know, there was just this moment of, well, that challenged the status quo, you know, and it wasn't as provocative. I'm being very dramatic as I say that. But we all felt that moment of so much of what we do is that action had become the primary measure of value. And you challenged all of us in a single moment in that. Anyway, I just would love for you to unpack that a bit for all of us. And here's where you please expand, because it was both poignant and significant and timely all at the same in that same moment on that stage. And it is really why I wanted to follow up with you for a broader audience.

[Nadine] Absolutely. And like I said, I didn't mean to be provocative. I don't want to, you know, but the reality is, I think that even if our insights on, let me take a step back. I think that there is still a truth in having actionability in our insights and having recommendations based on our insights. But I don't think that the success of that insight should be measured on whether that recommendation gets implemented or not. Because I think that the complexity of the reality of business, you know, like just what everybody has to go through all the different pieces of the puzzle that has to come together for that recommendation to really make it all the way to become actionable. I think that there is so much value that gets added. So you mentioned that I see it almost like a value chain, like at every step of the value chain, the insight that you've provided adds a little bit of value. So, you know, first, it's we started off with it being trusted. So that's really about did the research, was the research done in a really solid and good way? Can we trust the insight that has come from this? And I know that's what the researchers love. They, you know, they love, have we reduced the bias? Have we done this consistently? Do we have the right audience? Have we asked the right questions? Are we not, you know, leading the the answers or anything like that? So that's the like critical foundation, like really the starting point. But that's not the only part. And I think that we have brought that together with business and we've kind of connected it directly to okay, so you've got really good research, and you've got a really good recommendation, we want you to do this based on insights from this research, maybe a specific question that you've asked. And then nothing happens, you know, nobody actually goes and implements, but there are so many reasons why that insight might not be implemented.

There are countless reasons why and I don't know if we're still going to get to this, but I kind of see it as like a piece of a puzzle. So if you think about every department within your business, they, when you have a business question that you want to answer a decision that needs to be made, every department has their own pieces of the puzzle that needs to be put together. I like to think that the marketing insights, the voice of the customer is probably the most important pieces, maybe some of the corner pieces. And if it's a face, maybe it's the eyepiece that really shows you what this picture is going to be and what the outcome is going to be. But if you if you bring in all of those different pieces, you might see something that makes you go in a completely different direction to what you originally thought would be the right area or the right direction to go. And maybe I can give you an example at this stage. I mean, I'm going to keep it quite vague, I would say, but, you know, just imagine if a lot of a lot of insights or a lot of these business questions would come from research that was done. And we find from the customers that they are not very happy with an app. So, you know, they're using this app, they're not very happy with it. They want some additional features to be added to the app.

So we make the recommendation based on that insight, we need to have these features added to this app. But then once you start putting those puzzle pieces into the bigger puzzle that's being built within the business, and you find out from the tech team that they are busy working on more important projects, or they're busy working on other customer requests for features to the app. And, you know, their line, you know, their backlog is so big that this new recommendation is not going to make it to the top of that line. You know, things like that, that is just the reality of operating in our business. And there are ways to, to get around that. And you know, you can investigate, but at the end of the day, it's all going to, you know, come back together, and you're going to have to make decisions. And that's where prioritization was one of those steps, you're gonna have to make decisions, you're going to have to make prioritization calls. I was listening to an economist this week, I don't know if I say his name correctly, Thomas Sowell, and he was saying, there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. And I think that is 100% correct. And I think that is exactly what happens. And when we only focus on that insight that results in action, we completely miss the chain of trade-offs that's happening in the middle. And, you know, at the end of the day, that's disheartening for the insights agents. And maybe it has nothing to do with the way that you delivered the recommendation. I mean, sometimes the recommendations are 100% correct, and they should be done. But in context of the rest of the business, they just don't have the same priority that you would want them to have.

[Karen] And I just think that, again, the reason why this landed with me, and I believe why it landed with so many others in that room, who are perhaps on the supplier side, let me be particularly clear about that. You know, there's a little segue, little sidebar here, there's a bit of a dopamine rush when you are a supplier, and you deliver recommendations, and then you see something on the shelf, for example, that you worked on. And you're like, yes, I recommended that direction for that package design because I heard the consumers say they preferred it. And they went in that direction. And I'm so glad. And you feel like you are a part of something, right, that ultimately, and it's like, it does not happen. It does not happen all that often. But you feel like you are a part of something big, right? And it feels so gratifying. And you just feel like you were so successful on that project. But there are, you know, for every one of those, there are dozens where you're like, I don't know if anything ever happened there.

[Nadine] Exactly.

[Karen] So that's, you know, you have this disheartened feeling often where you're like, I don't think they ever did anything with that. Or maybe you're really close to the team. And you know they didn't really do anything with that, because you heard back from legal or you heard back from your clients that legal shot it down, or R&D shot it down, or who knows.

[Nadine] Exactly.

[Karen] So I think that does happen a lot. And I think the feeling is that perhaps you should have known what all those complications are, or, you know, perhaps you should have thought of that, you know, and there's no way you could possibly know all the complexities and the nuances on the client side, you can't possibly.

[Nadine] Exactly.

[Karen] So I feel like there was something in the way you presented it all that felt like a bit of a sigh of relief. It explained and demystified something happening within, you know, within the client corporate organization that made so much sense.

[Nadine] Yeah. And you know, Karen, I think maybe this will help because what happened was we went around this corner of life or this circle every time, okay, what impact have we had? Nothing measurable. What impact have we had, but we've done all this hard work. And eventually, it kind of got to a point where we said, okay, let’s just stop. Let's be real. If we took this function away today, what would the impact be? And when we did that, that was when the value of the insights really revealed itself. Because that was when we realized it's not only about seeing the products on the shelf, which I agree with you, that is such a good feeling. It really, really is. But I think if we only measure ourselves by that feeling, and that feeling of success, then I would argue sometimes 80% of the work that we do, day in and day out, I think we are just completely missing the positive feedback that we could be getting from the value that we are actually creating. Try and tell your GM that you're going to be taking the customer, the voice of the customer out of all of the pictures or all of the decisions. And you very, very quickly start realizing, you know, even if they don't go anywhere, there is value that is added.

[Karen] So let's talk a little bit about that. Because you did talk about decision, you know, kind of the quality of the decisions, right? Decision quality also. So let's talk about that. Because if we reframe our thinking and, or reframe our thinking of success, and what success looks like to be the quality of the decisions we make, based on the insights that we provide, if we can get to that place, tell me what that looks like. Tell me what that, tell me how that reframing can look for all of us.

[Nadine] So I think maybe I'm going to answer your question by talking a little bit about what a quality decision looks like. And I think one of the best ways that I can maybe bring this across is, if you're thinking about, let's say you're thinking about buying a car, and you go out and you want to buy a car. So you go to your closest car dealer, and you say, I want to buy a car. And they hand you a set of keys, they give you a car, you pay them, and off you go. Okay, you've got a car, but have you got the right car? Have you, you know, there's so many things around that car, maybe they give you a moped, and you can't drive a moped in, you know, in a city, or, you know, maybe you have to drive long distances, you have to have a few bits more of information to really make sure that you're getting the right car for the purpose that you're using.

So a good car dealer would ask you, okay, Karen, what are you going to use the car for? Are there any features? What is your budget? You know, is it a long distance car? Is it a city driving car? There's a lot of these aspects of purchasing a car that needs to be understood before you can make the right decision. And then obviously, once you have that information, that's when the trade-offs happen. So that's when you start deciding, I'm willing to give up this, but I'm not willing to give up that. I can do this, but I won't do that. And it's the same thing in business when we are making decisions. So we all have to, in business, you have to be comfortable with making decisions without having all the information, right? But there are key pieces of information, bits of that puzzle that I was talking about, that you have to have, at least as a framework, to know that you are going in the right direction. Can you make the decision and not know, you know, what the framework is? Absolutely. But you'll most likely end up with any old car. You don't know, is it brand, model, what it is. And so that is what insights does. And that is what I think how those come together. The more insights that you have, the better your picture is, and the better you can actually make a good decision on which direction to go.

[Karen] And the analogy used of the puzzle, you at least have to have the borders, right? The edge, you at least need to have the edges done. And then you have as many pieces of the puzzle on the inside done as possible. But you perhaps don't need all of them to see what it's going to look like.

[Nadine] We’ll never have all of them. I mean, you have to learn to make decisions without seeing everything. But I think like, you know, in my world anyway, and with Irina, who did the project with me, like voice of the customer, that is really, really important. So you also have to decide which of those pieces is really important. And are you willing to invest in to make sure that you're making the right decisions?

[Karen] You know, one of one of the takeaways that, you know, you had kind of promised in the talk, and then you did get to was that sometimes the journey is a little bit messy, and it's not necessarily a linear path. And, again, I just got back from a vacation, I took this vacation, we did a lot of puzzles. So the puzzle analogy is staying in my head. And I'm thinking about there's not one way to put together a puzzle, that's for sure. You know, sometimes that's a pretty messy journey. And sometimes it comes together in many different ways, you know, and so I'm picturing putting together puzzles, like sometimes it doesn't come together in… anyway. You know, you might always start with the border, but you know, the way it comes together is missing some pieces. So anyway, this idea that it's sometimes kind of messy, and it's not always a straight line. So talk to me a little bit about why that's important for insights professionals to kind of at least acknowledge and the mindset that they should have around that.

[Nadine] I think why that's important is because from insights and from research, you know, we like to work things in a very linear fashion. There’s a certain order that things need to happen in to get to a good end product. But as soon as you have produced that insight, it doesn't work like that anymore. Because you've got so many different stakeholders within business, you've got so many different aspects, the complexity is just, you know, exponentially bigger than what you would face within the actual running of a research project. And so, you know, I think, maybe in a textbook, things would look really, really pretty and really clear. And you'd be like, oh, we get an insight, and then we go to this person, and then we have that, then we have a decision, and then it becomes an outcome. But in reality, we have to face the fact that there are so many different aspects that's happening.

And I think once we embrace that, and really, like draw into it, and not try and shy away from it, that's when the insights and the business, almost like partnership just becomes stronger, and you start working closer together. And it builds trust, and it builds those connections. And that also means that eventually, you can have more of an impact and more of an influence, because you really do understand and show you understand the complexity that happens.

[Karen] Well, that's good. That's a great segue to kind of this last area that I want to talk to you about, which is kind of treating your stakeholders as audience. You know, now, of course, you serve marketing. So it's even more critical when part of your stakeholder group is marketing, but you have to win them over, right? Now, we talk a lot in the insights industry about storytelling, and how we have to package insights as a story to share with our audience. But you kind of packaged it a little differently, you kind of packaged it as, you know, kind of winning them over, you know, and you just used the word just now is kind of influencing them, which is actually a bit more like marketing language.

So I find that very interesting. You didn't use the word storytelling, you didn't use the words that the insights industry traditionally uses, you use marketing talk. So I'd love to learn from you a little bit about how you think about your internal stakeholders and what it looks like in practice to you to work with them.

[Nadine] So let me just maybe be very clear. I think storytelling is great. And I think it's a really, really key part. I almost assume that it's a given, to be honest. So I think that storytelling is really important for, you know, for presenting the insights to the team. But I think that what's often missed, and maybe this is where those two functions just need to come together a little bit closer, is that each of your stakeholders within the business, and yes, I'm in the marketing team, but most of the stakeholders that we would be influencing is not within the marketing team, they would be the sales team, or the customer service team, or the GM, or the finance team, or account managers. And each of them have a different interest in whatever insight it is that we are generating. And so what we've tried to do, and I think what Irena has done a really good job in, is every kind of insight or area that we want to influence, you have a bit of a stakeholder map, either you've created it, or you are very aware of who your stakeholders are. And you adjust the message based on who those stakeholders are. And you know that, you know, customer service will be interested in how they need to speak to the customer. But, you know, finance would be interested in what that's going to mean for the bottom line, for example.

And every story that we tell has an aspect of all of those things. And so it's just about making sure that you tailor the story to what you know that stakeholder is really going to be interested in. And Karen, another thing, I mean, with AI, we really have no excuse not to understand those stakeholders, because it's so easy. You just go and you ask, from a finance perspective, what would you think about this? Or how would this land with you? Would this message come across? And so it's become a lot easier for us to tailor that message to the stakeholders. And it's just, you know, I find that there's so much more acceptance when they feel like they have been understood, rather than you coming in with this beautiful story that makes so much sense in the insights world. But in their world, it's, you know, on the periphery. And they're like, we don't know what to do with this.

[Karen] It makes so much more sense. It’s taking storytelling to the next level to make it, you know, a story that resonates that is actually, you know, kind of winning them over and influencing them to something else, to the next level.

[Nadine] Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

[Karen] Well said, Nadine. Well said. You know, here it is, I've told you that we would be, you know, wrapping up by the top of the hour. And I've told you once again, what my timing is. So here we are. We could go on forever. So let me turn around and say, what do you wish that I had gotten to that I haven't quite gotten to yet, before we wrap up? Is there a question that you wish I had asked that I hadn't gotten to?

[Nadine] You know, I think that there is maybe one question, but I'm maybe a little bit glad that you didn't ask it. But I think that it's something to be put out there. And maybe a bit of a challenge as well, is, okay, so if we're saying that we want to measure value at each of these levels, like, what does that actually look like? Do you know what I mean? Like on a slide? What does that actually look like in practice? And, of course, I have my ideas, and we have gone down that route. And we have got an approach for that. But I think that that's something that people should be thinking about and figuring out for themselves, how am I going to show this to my stakeholders? And in a way, and then again, think about who your stakeholders are and what they would be interested in, in a way that's going to make them re-evaluate the way that your insights are influencing the way that decisions are being made within the business.

[Karen] And it's almost like speaking of AI, you know, it's almost like, you know, in advance of a project, I would almost want to go in there and say, you know, I'm about to embark on this project, what would stakeholder X want to get out of this project before I even begin? What would stakeholder Y want to get out of this project before I even begin? Like, here's what I'm taking to the field. This is the business question I'm answering, what are the nuances I should go after for these different stakeholder groups, knowing the constraints of the project, right? This is what I'm doing for stakeholder Y, but I know I'm going to be responsible for stakeholders, you know, Q, Y, or Q, Z and T as well.

[Nadine] Exactly.

[Karen]Because even though I'm doing this for this stakeholder, the other ones are listening as well. So there's lots of things we can do with kind of AI in our back pocket to to get ahead of some of that. And I always, you know, one of Stephen Covey's habits, seven habits of highly successful people is always begin with the end in mind. And I have adopted that one of always beginning with the end in mind. And I would probably do some of that thinking in advance.

[Nadine] 100%. That's my favorite one of his habits.

[Karen] Of course it is. This is why you and I are—

[Nadine] Yes.

[Karen] We go there first, friends go there first. So yeah, exactly. Begin with the end in mind and get ahead of those stakeholder interests so that you can meet their needs up front. So, ah, Nadine, such a pleasure. Well, then my last question is, you know, the Greenbook tagline and everything we often think about when we do programming, and when we embark on events or podcasts is, you know, we talk about the future of insights. In your opinion, what do you think the future of insights is all about for professionals in our space?

[Nadine]Well, I mean, I think that this topic that we've just discussed, I think that it’s almost like maybe a leading indicator into to where we will be going where insights and business just start integrating a lot closer. Unfortunately, I can't answer this without mentioning AI. Like, I think that AI is just really changing the landscape and changing the way that insights is being performed, the way that it's being delivered. And like we've just been talking about the way that the value to the business is being shown. But I think that with those changes, the key thing that we can bring as insights managers or insights professionals, is there's an aspect that AI will never be able to cover. And that's the human touch, the relationship, there's just, there's an aspect that it will never be able to replicate. And I think that is where we are headed, where we're facing this, you know, this messiness that we've spoken about with the business, and then the clean insights coming into this messy, messy business and working with AI to overcome some of those complexities. But making sure that we stay on top of and keep the real humanness that cannot be replicated.

[Karen] I agree with you 100%. Not a surprise to me. What a pleasure to have you on the show today. I am so glad you joined me.

[Nadine] Thank you so much for having me. This was such a lovely conversation. Thank you, Karen.

[Karen] Oh, you're very, very welcome. I appreciate you. And I wish you a great rest of your day today.

[Nadine] Thank you, you too. Till next time.

[Karen] Until next time. And thank you to our producer, Emma, thank you so much. And to our editor, Big Bad Audio, thank you for doing all you do. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in week after week. We really appreciate you for showing up for us. And because you do that, we will keep showing up for you. So that's it for now. Bye bye, everybody. Take care.