What Happens Between Insights and Strategy?
What being more strategic asks of people and organisations.
This essay was developed through original research and analysis with AI assistance in the research, drafting and editorial process.
You’re asked to be more strategic. Perhaps you are expected to make a recommendation where you have been delivering findings. Perhaps you are meant to question the problem before researching it. Or to build support for a direction someone has already chosen. Before responding, it helps to understand what work you are being asked to take on.
Understanding a problem already involves making choices: what deserves attention, which differences matter and which explanation seems plausible. By the time a recommendation appears, some of the choices shaping it have already been made. Someone who helped build that understanding can explain the reasoning behind it and what remains unresolved. That knowledge deserves to be part of the discussion about what to do.
I work in Insights, and that proximity shapes how I hear the phrase. A professional discussion about its relationship with strategy brought me back to the request. I am interested in when it expands someone’s contribution and when it adds obligations without giving them time or influence. And in how we can help shape a direction while remaining free to question it.
Having a point of view
The request can be reasonable. Someone delivers accurate findings but leaves their relevance unexplored. Or knows consumers well but understands little about the business problem they are being asked about. They may need to work out what matters now, anticipate consequences or recommend a direction among alternatives. In those circumstances, being asked to contribute more strategically can broaden their work and help them develop.
Something more uncomfortable can also happen. Someone is invited to exercise their own judgement, but their contribution is valued for how well it supports an answer already chosen. Making a case for that answer may be part of the job. The difficulty comes when this is presented as an open invitation to think. Disagreement can then look like a failure to be strategic.
To me, contributing strategically means helping to shape choices that matter to the direction of the business, explaining the reasons behind them and their implications. It can mean changing which problem takes priority or showing why an option should be ruled out. The judgement involved in research takes on that significance when it affects those choices. Not every good interpretation needs to do so.
At Unilever, the expectation of having a point of view captures something of this demand. In a 2021 interview, Stan Sthanunathan described the work of Insights through “what, so what, now what” and advocated integration with business teams.[1] I read this as an invitation to stay with knowledge as we work through its implications. A point of view lets others see what we think the evidence means and what we suggest considering as a result.
Between what we observe and what we should do lie objectives, constraints and alternatives. Evidence can support several responses and rule out others. It may even require us to revisit the original problem. A point of view makes it possible to discuss how we moved from an observation to a recommendation, and what would have to be true for it to work.
Suppose a brand has the budget for one initiative. Research finds interest in a more convenient format, alongside doubts about how well the current product works. Understanding both does not settle the choice. Recommending that trust should take priority means explaining why, which opportunity we would forgo and what consequences we expect. The researcher can contribute to that argument without deciding where the money goes.
During home visits to develop Swiffer PowerMop, P&G found that some people still regarded the bucket and mop as the benchmark for good cleaning. Making the task more convenient was not enough. According to the company’s account, this understanding steered development towards superior cleaning, with consequences for the product and its communication.[2] Research had changed the criterion used to develop the response.
This is the company’s own account, without access to the full process, and it does not establish that one organisational structure is better than another. It does raise a question about what happens when responsibilities change hands. If the person developing the strategy receives only a settled conclusion, they have fewer opportunities to examine it. They need to be able to revisit its reasoning and the choices it still requires.
Understanding needs other perspectives
Someone who developed an interpretation knows the arguments behind it and the alternatives that were considered and discarded. That is a reason to involve them in discussing its implications. It would be too much to turn this into a rule that they always interpret better or should own the whole process.
Closeness can also create attachments. The person who led the research may have favoured certain questions or given too much weight to a memorable moment. A thoughtful division of responsibilities allows people to specialise and lets someone less attached to the initial explanation examine it. It may even protect the ability to question a recommendation others already want to pursue. First-hand experience deserves both participation and scrutiny.
Job descriptions show different ways of organising that contribution. A global Strategic Insights & Analytics role at Danone includes setting the learning agenda for brand and communication and influencing brand decisions.[3] A Corporate Strategy role at Nike analyses opportunities and develops recommendations in collaboration with Insights & Analytics.[4] These descriptions do not tell us how those relationships work in practice. They show different responsibilities, without settling how best to connect them.
We can divide responsibilities and still make room to interpret together. Someone who did the fieldwork brings context; another person may spot an inconsistency; someone from the business may explain a constraint the research did not consider. We need to keep the reasoning behind an interpretation accessible, along with its limits and the alternatives we discarded. The organisation should be able to revisit it even after its author has left.
This is why I would be careful about saying that Insights and strategy are exactly the same thing. They are connected, but developing a strategy involves commitments that research cannot settle on its own. How much to invest, which capability to build or which opportunity to pass up requires additional considerations. That distinction makes the participation of someone who understands the problem more valuable, and the conversation with people who understand its other dimensions more necessary.
That conversation also needs to revisit earlier decisions and explore what might change. Hindsight lets us look back at what happened and learn from it. An insight can change how we understand a situation, including one in the past. Foresight explores plausible futures and their implications for decisions today, as the OECD proposes.[5] Revisiting an experience may reveal an assumption we carry into the future; exploring a different future may change what we need to investigate now.
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Knowing the outcome can make events seem more predictable than they were when the decision was made.[6] A convincing interpretation is no guarantee that it will remain valid as the context changes. A strategic point of view can therefore include the conditions under which it would no longer hold. Learning from the past and anticipating possibilities helps us revisit those conditions, while still having to choose in the present.
What creativity gives back to strategy
Advertising and account planning make this relationship especially visible. A creative idea can make a direction tangible and reveal that it is uninteresting, too generic or hard to believe. In trying to express it, we discover something its abstract formulation did not reveal. Developing a response can improve our understanding of the problem.
BetterBriefs warns against using the creative process to resolve a client’s lack of strategic clarity. It acknowledges that creativity can sharpen a clear strategy, but argues that direction should precede the development of ideas.[7] The warning makes sense. Successive proposals can end up absorbing internal disagreements that no one takes responsibility for resolving.
Sometimes an idea prompts us to reconsider the problem itself, as well as how to express a response. We should be able to explain what we discovered and why we would change direction. That revision needs someone to take responsibility for its consequences. When a lack of clarity goes unacknowledged, each round of feedback can change the criteria and force the work to begin again.
Something similar happens in Insights. Contributing strategically can mean committing to a direction while remaining attentive to what calls it into question. A reasonable choice can be made while disagreements persist; supporting it does not require pretending they have disappeared. It also matters to distinguish between a personal preference that did not prevail and evidence that justifies reopening the decision. Questioning needs to coexist with action. Having a point of view should include being able to recognise when our own argument no longer holds.
What the business needs to decide
The Xbox Adaptive Controller presents an additional difficulty. Microsoft describes consultations with players and disability organisations, alongside internal obstacles to making the case for the project. The discussion included how to assess its return beyond direct revenue and how to connect it with the company’s mission.[8] The account does not let us attribute approval to a single argument. It does show a problem that understanding consumers cannot resolve on its own: how much value to place on meeting a need.
Deciding meant bringing together the experience of players, design possibilities and business criteria. No single perspective held the answer. My reading is that contributing strategically can also mean bringing an overlooked criterion into the discussion, or questioning how an opportunity is being evaluated. That contribution can be decisive without giving the person making it final authority.
This brings us back to working conditions. Asking for a strategic contribution means considering which tasks will stop to make time for it, what information will be available and which decisions the person can help shape. If every hour is taken up with deliverables and the conversation starts when there is little left to influence, the expectation will be difficult to meet. Final authority may sit elsewhere, but the argument needs a way to be considered before the decision is settled.
In a 2024 interview, Stephan Gans described the transformation of Insights at PepsiCo as a change requiring training, tools and new ways of working. It also involved freeing time spent on project execution for other contributions.[9] His account does not provide an independent evaluation of the results. It does acknowledge that developing this capability requires changing how work is organised, as well as asking people to make an effort.
There is an individual responsibility too. Learning more about the business, listening to constraints and making recommendations others can examine takes effort. The request can be a valuable opportunity. To assess it, we need to be specific about the capability someone is expected to develop and the support available. Otherwise, any disagreement or limitation can end up being read as a failure to think strategically.
The business needs that exchange to lead to a choice it can put into practice with the resources available. Keeping understanding and strategy in contact can improve that choice and help us recognise when it no longer makes sense. The connection matters after the decision, too.
The next time we ask someone to be more strategic, we could be clearer about which choice we expect them to help shape and what room they will have to do so. Their point of view may support a direction or give reasons to reconsider it. Asking for a point of view means accepting that it may challenge the direction we prefer.
Sources
These references distinguish organisational accounts and professional positions from the interpretations developed in this essay.
[1] Greenbook. Achieving Insights Success at Unilever · Interview with Stan Sthanunathan · 10 June 2021
[2] P&G. 100 Years of P&G Analytics and Insights · Swiffer PowerMop account · 13 December 2024
[3] Danone. Global Head of Strategic Insights & Analytics Protein · Job description · 18 August 2026
[4] Nike. Lead Strategy Manager Corporate · Job description R-94827 · Accessed 5 October 2026
[5] OECD. Strategic Foresight · Accessed 5 October 2026
[6] Baruch Fischhoff. Hindsight is not equal to foresight · Journal of Experimental Psychology · 1975
[7] BetterBriefs. Stop Using the Creative Process to Define Your Strategy · 12 January 2026
[8] Microsoft. Xbox Adaptive Controller · Development account · 2018
[9] strategy+business. Reimagining consumer insights at PepsiCo · Interview with Stephan Gans · 25 March 2024
