What Your Research Team Should Be Telling You But Probably Is Not

Research teams know where the bodies are buried. They do not tell you because the incentives do not reward it.

"Most of our findings do not change anything"

The team produces high-quality research. And then nothing happens. There is no mechanism that connects findings to decisions with accountability.

What to do: Ask for a decision log alongside the study log.

"We cannot find our own past work"

Findings are stored across slide decks, shared drives, Notion pages, Dovetail projects, and individual researcher files.

What to do: Ask a researcher who has been on the team less than six months to find all studies related to a specific product area.

"A lot of our research is commissioned to validate, not to learn"

Stakeholders often approach research with an answer already in mind.

What to do: Ask the team to categorise the last quarter's studies as "exploratory" or "validation."

"Our knowledge leaves every time someone resigns"

Most of the programme's accumulated understanding lives in individual researchers' heads.

What to do: Ask the team to estimate what percentage of the programme's total knowledge is accessible to someone who joined this week.

"We do not know if our research is aligned to strategy"

The connection between research and strategy exists as a mental model, not as structured data.

What to do: Ask the team to produce, within one hour, a list of every study connected to your top three business objectives.

"Our biggest risk is not methodological"

The programme's actual biggest risk is usually political.

What to do: Ask the team privately: "Has there been a time in the last six months when research findings were clear but the organisation did something different anyway?"

Why This Matters

Every answer that takes too long or comes back incomplete points at the same issue. The programme is doing good work on top of infrastructure that was never designed to make that work visible, findable, or connected to decisions.