PT Toronto #26: Mitchell Gillespie (Director of Product Management at Wave HQ) shares his talk “Qualitative Intelligence: The art of qualitative data turned powerful insight."
Intelligence is defined as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge." When it comes to leveraging qualitative insight the difficult and consistent fallacy of any person acting as the Voice of the Customer is a struggle to successfully "acquire" and "apply" without hours of tedious, painful, and isolated effort. Every audience member will leave the talk understanding how to assess/score their organization's ability to acquire and apply qualitative insight by reflecting on 4 critical dimensions (with recommended approaches):
1. People & Teams
Is your cross-functional organization participating in building qualitative insight?
2. Strategic Frameworks
Is your cross-functional organization using appropriate strategic frames of thinking to parse and isolate qualitative insight?
3. Automation & Facilitation
Is your cross-functional organization facilitating people's ability to easily capture, analyze, and share insight?
4. Tooling
Is your cross-functional organization using the appropriate tools to empower everyone in the company? (e.g. NomNom Insights)
Throughout this discussion Mitch will highlight his ideological belief in the power of qualitative insight, some hypotheses being experimented at Wave, and some examples of success he's experienced. Also, if you haven't caught on already, you'll also leave with the appreciation of how building qualitative intelligence is a team sport. Product departments alone (incl. product design) could never achieve optimal results without the participation of many other cross-functional peers.
Mitch is inspired by engaging with people who are passionate about making an impact in any shape or form. He believes internal optimism, grit, and resilience is critical to succeed in today's digital product industry. Currently, as the Director of Product Management at Wave, Mitch is responsible for supporting & sharpening the organization’s ability to deeply empathize and collectively solve the needs of the brave small business owner. As the number of competitive entrants grows Wave (and the product group specifically) is acutely focused on optimizing the strengths and motivations of every employee as a competitive advantage. Mitch has taught numerous 10-week cohorts at BrainStation in product management because he thoroughly enjoys every light bulb moment observed. When Mitch is not raving about Wave, customer’s pains, or the role of product managers you will likely find him lost in the backcountry of Algonquin Park or some beautiful mountain range.
3. About Me
4 years @
Wave HQ
2 years @
Street Contxt
2 years @
BrainStation
Present @
Wave HQ
Product Manager
Head of Product
Lead Educator
Product Management
Director of Product
Management
WaveHQ is hiring!
Contact me on LinkedIn
14. Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic
approach to its subject matter. It is an attempt to make sense of, or interpret,
phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them.
Denzin and Lincoln (1994, p. 14)
Denzin, N., & Lincoln. Y.(1994). Handbook of Qualitative Research.Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications Inc.
22. Challenge #1: Wave has lots of qualitative data;
isn’t always the data worth interpreting
23. Chat & support ticketsCustomer Interviews Community Forum
In-app chat In-app surveys & NPS Long-form surveys
Challenge #1: Wave has lots of qualitative data;
isn’t always the data worth interpreting
24. Challenge #1: Wave has lots of qualitative data;
isn’t always the data worth interpreting
33. Agent of Change
Leverage your cross-functional peers to
streamline & analyze your data
How?
Focus on their desired
outcome, not yours!
People &
Teams
47. Agent of Change
Facilitate the necessary cross-functional sessions
to incentivize participation in qualitative analysis
How?
Be a product manager!
Facilitation
48.
49. Agent of Change
Discover and remove every tedious manual effort
holding people back from achieving their desired
outcome
How?
Sketch a customer journey map!
Automation
50. PM sends email to
target customers
Customer clicks link
Customer fills in survey
Customer signs up for
interview slot
PM picks customers to
follow-up with via email
& Calendly link
PM & Customer meet
PM sends email to
target customers
Customer clicks link
Customer fills in survey
Customer auto-signs
up for interview slot
Right
customer?
PM & Customer meet
vs.
60. Auto-send drip email to
customers who lightly
churn without adopting
(with contest)
Customer fills in survey
via SurveyMonkey
Zapier picks up new
survey response via
webhook
Zapier pushes new
response into EnjoyHQ
Enjoy HQ utilizes rules
to automatically expose
changing themes over
time
AND
Assigns to PM
I share monthly with the
appropriate stakeholders
Select specific cases to
expose as new insight