The Hard Calls: What it Takes to Lead Insights

In a function that was once fueled by technical excellence alone, success as a Consumer Insights leader leans heavily on holistic business knowledge, a keen strategic sense that blends data with intuition, and an ability to influence up, down, and sideways across an organisation. Technical skills are the cost of entry — connecting the dots to influence the right people with the right insights is quickly becoming the differentiator that enables success.

Insights leaders need to go well beyond generating insights and forming strategic opinions. They need to drive decisions, ensuring that business plans are grounded in the needs and desires of consumers. They need to speak the language of the people making the final calls: commercial, direct, financially and performance-motivated, and clear enough that the CFO doesn't need a translator. The tools to do this faster and with more confidence exist. The harder question is whether teams are actually built to use them that way.

Two senior insights leaders — Risa Duesing from Kraft Heinz and Marie Dupré Slioussarenko from Pernod Ricard — get honest about how they're making that shift, and the hard — sometimes unpopular — calls they've had to make to get there. How they're retooling and coaching their teams to think commercially, not just analytically, and how they are truly driving organisational impact. Then the conversation opens up to the room — because you're navigating the same calls, and we want to know where you stand.

• What's the hardest internal call you’ve made in the last two years – and would you make the same call again?
• Has technology made your insights team faster and more confident – or just faster?
• What do the insights leaders navigating this well actually do differently?