Understanding Knowledge Cultures: What the relationship between “research” and “strategy” says about an organization
One of the curious things about being research consultants lies in the perspective we have of the entire corporate world. Because we work with a number of different clients within, and across, industries, we see many different kinds of knowledge cultures, strategic approaches, and business practices. We see successes and failures and the circumstances leading to both outcomes. Eventually, we begin to see patterns. As researchers and ethnographers, we have turned those patterns into a decade's worth of insights. These insights—based as they are in an accidental longitudinal study—are tested over and over again as we continue to help our clients. They are essentially the fruits of our experience as consultants and as ethnographic researchers participating in a set of practices.
One of these insights is built on observations of how many companies, government departments, and NGOs divide up the work of research and strategy. This is a tricky issue because ‘strategy’ is supposed to be one of the fundamental activities of any business. People are trained to do strategy. They have the term in their job titles. It is the work of senior management. It is a basic component in innovation and the basic management of brands, teams, departments, products and services. But it is often divorced from the kinds of knowledge, insights, and data needed to ground these activities in reality.
Many companies rely only on thin market research yielding quantitative data, or have a very minimal understanding of the changes in the world and how they will impact both their customers and their business. They end up seeing the world through the lens of average customers, mega trends, and collated market data. All of these are abstractions providing insights grounded in statistical portraits and artificial portraits of people rather than in empirical experience. This means the knowledge grounding their strategy is based on an abstracted “average” and not on the realities of human activity. They rely on theoretical models of human behaviour rather than just talking to them directly.
Ultimately, this means their strategy is based on very thin research which never engages with real humans living their lives. This is a major risk because their research is essentially a swirl of assumptions and factoids rather than rigorous thinking. However, if research and strategy are part of a single process where careful research provides a foundation for clear-eyed, realism in strategy, then these risks are mitigated, if not eliminated altogether. Good things happen when research is seen as an essential part of strategy.
“Ways of Seeing” and a Culture of Knowledge
The relationship between research and strategy is a key feature in the culture of a business. The way it manifests is in what anthropologists and sociologists call ‘ways of seeing,’ an idea from John Berger. Because it is so central to the way the organization thinks, this “way of seeing,” becomes part of the culture defining how that business operates. These ways of seeing have various sources. They come from the training of the employees, from business schools and engineering programs, and they come from the daily activities in meetings, working sessions, and even casual conversations.
These ways of seeing outline a particular philosophy or set of “truths” that everyone believes to be correct. They are ideas about the world and the way it works. They are ideologies, beliefs, and methods of interpretation concerning many things from how people behave as customers to the way economies work. Examples here include the belief in rational economic activity taught in US business schools, the idea that phenomena in the world are entirely, and only, knowable and definable through science (also known as materialist positivism) common to how engineers are trained. But it can be more granular than that. A fundamental in many companies’ knowledge culture is the separation of research and strategy into two areas of activity, with their own teams and completely separate domains. The belief here holds, to one degree or another, that strategy is the supreme activity in business and that research is not as important, valuable, or even unrelated. The degree to which this belief holds sway within the organization is inversely proportional to how much they invest in research and directly proportional to how often they fail. More simply, if a business believes that strategy is independent from research, they tend to make a lot of errors in product or service development and in brand or business planning because they are blind to the realities of the world outside their front doors. It also means if they believe in this division totally, then they do not invest in research, which then means they often rely on intuition rather than evidence.
I argue, it is important to see a particular company as a sub-culture unique from the others within its industry and within the world of incorporated businesses. Each of these subcultures have a way of speaking (think about all the acronyms you use, and all of the new ones you have to learn when you move to a new job). They have a way of working. They have a way of thinking. And they have a way of talking and sharing this knowledge with each other. Together these are the company’s knowledge culture. A knowledge culture can be understood as a cultural model, a mindset shared by everyone acting as a filter for how knowledge is generated, what it is for, how it is shared, and how it is evaluated. It is the source of the biasing elements in thought and action which will ultimately lead to problems. This means it is important to “know” your knowledge culture and make sure it is what you want it to be. If you do not, you will simply let it grow wild. It is there, shaping how you work, whether you take an interest in it or not. Ignoring a culture of knowledge means choosing to not be in control of how your organization operates at the most basic levels. Strangely, developing a knowledge culture is not often a focus of business leaderships.
Knowledge Cultures and their Impact
Companies in similar industries often share features of a basic knowledge culture. Technology companies tend to think about the world outside of their front doors as a cluster of data points yielding a technical problem to parse, solve, and solution against—borrowing from how engineers are trained to think. Banks and insurance companies see the world through the lens of the movement of capital—rendering everything else as an uncomfortable distraction. Pharmaceutical companies experience a continuing dread of human beings’ unwillingness to follow doctor’s orders, and spend a lot of time worrying about how to convince them to do so. Globalized companies worry a lot about how people are different between countries because they have to address these differences in their attempt to gain market share in each market. Locally-oriented companies are more likely to focus on the similarities of the people in their area so they can cater to the middle. All of this—and more—make the view of the world from these companies' windows quite different from the others.
A knowledge culture provides the context for the meaning of key terms and concepts too. Terms like innovation, customer, sustainability, etc. are not settled issues. They change and have different manifestations. What one business means when they say the term innovation is totally different from their immediate neighbors. This is the impact of culture. The word ‘strategy’ does not mean the same thing in these different contexts either. For a tech company, strategy is grounded in the inexorable and inevitable advancement of technology. For a financial services company, it is about connecting CX to the movement of capital while avoiding risk at all costs. And the others have their own definitions. This means even the concept of strategy has no fixed definition. It’s as much a cultural construct as anything else. It can change and shift very easily.
For many of these knowledge cultures, strategy is an activity done by the leaders. Research is an activity done by people who do not lead. Research, then, is simply an input into strategy rather than the fundamental grounding for it. There is a part missing: the idea that the most rigorous research possible is the best underpinning of good strategy is largely absent. The major markers of these knowledge cultures can be found in their tendency to describe themselves as “conservative,” they have a mania for simplicity, they show a tendency to overemphasize quantitative data, and more frequently, display a worrying acceptance of AI derived insights. They also tend to have a small insights team mostly involved in servicing other departments with the results of quant projects run by outside vendors. These markers show that these organizations prefer to have research be a reduced input to other activities within the organization.
An organization with a strong knowledge culture has clearly made an investment in research and the use of insights of all kinds in the basic workings of every level of the organization. They often have many different kinds of researchers, all of whom have a seat at the table when decisions are being made. They value primary qualitative and quantitative research. They do not depend on quantitative data alone, but welcome more human-centric inputs into their thinking. They also often incorporate foresight into their work. They have many innovation teams and a centralized insights group serving as a hub for knowledge generation and sharing for the entire organization. They also have learning and development as a key element of going to work. Everyone from executives to workers are encouraged to be curious about the world around them.
Organizations of this kind have come to understand how research is the first step in good strategy. They see the necessity in a solid knowledge culture capable of interpreting many forms of insights and inputs. They make grounded decisions in product and service design, brand management, and strategic growth and transformation based in the knowledge they have about the world around them. They do not deal in assumptions or abstractions built from thin quant or market research. They learn about the world of their customers, embed this understanding into everything they do, and respond appropriately. For them, good research leads to good strategy.
Organizing a Knowledge Culture to Ground Strategy within Research
Making sure research takes its rightful place as the first step in good strategic thinking is no easy task. It involves taking control of a company's knowledge culture and developing better ways of knowing, talking, and working. It also involves establishing clear boundaries apart from the noise of other, competing knowledge cultures. At a macro level, this is a leadership and HR issue. Leaders need to set the tone in the same way that other major initiatives are communicated to the company. People need to be trained and upskilled in this new way of thinking in the same way they need to learn how to operate in a company’s workflow and internal vision. HR needs to be instructed to hire people who are able and willing to work in the company’s knowledge culture while contributing to a healthy sharing of information. There needs to be an emphasis on curiosity, productive debate, and rigorous application of knowledge. It also means people in strategic roles need to be accomplished researchers—or at least interpreters of quality research—themselves so they can make the most of the deep, thoughtful inputs they receive. Finally, it means the company must invest in many kinds of research and accept no shortcuts like AI insights. There must be teams of researchers empowered with a wider remit to cultivate knowledge rather than generate data. They must be qualitative researchers, clever quantitative practitioners, foresight strategists (not futurists), and come from a wide variety of research backgrounds. If you rely on social psychologists alone, your knowledge culture will be biased to one way of seeing. There is strength in a plurality of perspectives. And finally, these research teams must be embedded in down-stream processes so they can teach, coach, and disseminate the insights they have developed.
At a more granular level, closer to where work is done, managing a knowledge culture requires promoting research as a reference point for all decisions. Grounding everything in insights, data, and knowledge means ensuring that every choice, decision, and conversation incorporates this knowledge. It also means changing how the organization incorporates work from outside vendors, all of whom bring their own knowledge culture. The first step here is to wean the organization from market research and using quantitative inputs exclusively. It also means developing a workflow in design, innovation, and strategy processes focusing on doing work and making decisions rather than just talking about making decisions. Much of this relies on providing a way for everyone to have a steady diet of quality insights and then promoting the productive dialogue arising from sharing and debate. This is not easy work because not everyone who works in an organization wants to do this. And that is fine. But those involved in strategy, whether it is brand, innovation, or product oriented strategy, should be prepared to immerse themselves in research and become participants in this discourse.
Once a culture of knowledge is understood and deliberately and thoughtfully organized, research and strategy become a single process—where strategy becomes a practice in responding to the deep realities of customers’ lives, market dynamics, and the goals of the organization. With this done, it is finally possible to see how they are two parts of the same process, and the damaging division between strategy and research can be dropped.
Research consultants are not exempt from this either because we participate in these knowledge cultures. We know that the clients who make the most of our presence are able to receive, digest, and debate the results of our work. But we have to always be acknowledge that we are an extension of a company’s knowledge culture and strategic process. We do not deliver insights as commodities to be passed around within our client’s organization. We provide inputs, ideas, ideologies, and concepts for the organization to digest and respond to. We must respect the impact our work will have on the way they think and make decisions. This means we have to consider the rigour and rhetorical impact of our work. We need to make sure we know our client’s knowledge culture before we introduce new concepts and issues that might affect it. We must also work within the understanding that good research is good strategy, and we have to help our clients benefit from that fact. What we provide is not really research at all, it is the first step in a robust strategy. Helping our clients benefit from this is our purpose, and so we often have to show them the connection and help them grow.