Jason (00:00)
Hi Elizabeth. How are you?

Elizabeth Oates (00:01)
I'm great, Jason. How are you?

Jason (00:02)
I'm doing great as well. Thank you for joining me on this week's Wise in Five I'm thrilled to have you. Can't wait to dive into the questions. Before we dive in, would you mind just giving a little bit of your background and experience so the listeners and viewers know just all the success that you've had to date?

Elizabeth Oates (00:20)
Jason, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here on the Wise in Five. You've had some incredible guests and I am just thrilled to be one of them and among that great group. About me, I've spent the past two decades in the consumer insight space and through that time I've had the opportunity to work

in CPG, financial services, retail and beauty. And throughout that time, I've been lucky enough to have the chance to build consumer centric centers of excellence and drive consumer centricity throughout organizations. And as part of that, I speak on behalf of the consumer so that a business can succeed based on consumer insights. And so I'm happy to be here and happy to share some of my thoughts on how more companies can do that going forward.

Jason (01:06)
Thank you for sharing that. I can't wait to dive in. So why don't we go to the first question, which is, where do you find inspiration just in daily life? What do you read? Where do you go? What do you listen to? Where do you find the inspiration and the ideas that you come up with?

Elizabeth Oates (01:21)
Yeah, in daily life, running for me is where I get all my thinking done. I'm listening to books, can I say on tape, books recorded, ebooks, podcasts, I'm listening to all sorts of things as I run and I bounce back and forth between music.

Jason (01:29)
Hahaha

Elizabeth Oates (01:36)
inspiration, podcasts, self-development, all of that because that's a moment for me where I can just focus and also be distracted from what I'm doing to be honest a little bit. But when it comes to where, my work and what I do, I get a heck of a lot of inspiration from the folks around me and watching them trying to work through the challenges that they're solving. And I'm most inspired

when I see a leader or a team who really genuinely wants to make their business better. Better being more consumer centric, more effective, more impactful. And when they ask big questions and wrestle with complex decisions, I really get excited because that's where me and insights can make a big difference. inspiration is true, insights shape strategy, they influence decisions, they elevate organizations.

And seeing all of that come to life in a way that solves for business challenges is really inspiring for me. And it's also for me, the heart of why I wrote my book More Than Just Interesting, because being interesting is fun. Okay, I'll admit it, it's fun. But you know, it's even more fun than that being impactful. And so, that's inspiring for me to help

colleagues to help businesses really leverage insights to create real impact.

Jason (02:54)
That is fantastic. You know what? I'm going to drink a cup of wisdom to that.

you for sharing all of that. And I love the running piece. Running, being outside, working out, because there's that whole idea of being in the zone or being in the flow. Where I think when your mind starts to settle, all of a sudden, things that may have been unattainable before, all of sudden they enter your head and you're like, oh my God, why didn't I think of that before?

Elizabeth Oates (03:09)
Yes.

Absolutely. And I'm doing running a lot. So I'm running about 1500 miles a year. So there's plenty of time for that to happen. But you know, that's where that's where my best

Jason (03:26)
my goodness.

My next question, you've been in research and insight space for over 20 years. You've been a transformative leader using those insights in a differentiated way at some of these huge retail and CPG companies like Ulta and Kohls and General Mills. I'm guessing that you've had some key learnings and patterns that you've seen that cross over some of those businesses and also companies that you've been working with.

recently. So I'm curious what are some of those key learnings and patterns if you could just call out a couple that you've seen over the past two decades.

Elizabeth Oates (04:02)
You got it. And there really are some pull through insights that I've seen across industries, across business sizes. But the first and foremost biggest one when it comes to insights is that no matter what organization I was in or what industry I was working on, the insights really only matter.

when they lead to action. And so at each of these companies, I saw that success came when insights were built into business processes and not bolted on as an afterthought. And that's one of the key concepts that I talk about every day with clients and in my book is really about aligning on the action to take.

before you even ask a consumer question. It's about what are you trying to do? And that goes across industries, across business sizes. So that's the first and foremost insight that I've seen across all of them. But I really noticed that there is a consistent pattern.

And for insights professionals, this most successful people and the most successful teams are the ones who have stopped chasing data and really started leading with purpose. They're asking the right questions. They're clarifying their business goals. They're proactive in driving strategy and they're putting the customer at the beginning of the process. And in my experiences, whether I was

relaunching a billion dollar brand or navigating the complexities of the pandemic, really the best outcomes have always come from anchoring my work and insights in real decisions and never just interesting trivia.

Jason (05:45)
Well, that makes a ton of sense. And I guess it begs the question, you must have seen it where that wasn't the case. And you had to adjust. So what happened when there was not that foresight or that planning in terms of what are we trying to accomplish here and what is our purpose? ⁓ Did things just kind of go off the rails at that point?

Elizabeth Oates (05:51)
Yes.

Yeah.

Well, okay, here's the true story, Jason. All right, busted. ⁓ I was giving this what I thought was an incredible presentation, big, at the end of the work, here it is, big showcase presentation. And I'm like, this is just so great. And on the way out of the room, Jason, one of my stakeholders stopped me and said, Elizabeth, well, that was really interesting.

And I went, I'm sorry, what?

Because I'm not here to be interesting. I am here to push this business forward. And for me, that was this pivot moment of I need to show up differently. I need to act differently. I need to work differently. And I need to help my team do the same. So I started writing out, what are the nine core skills for success in this function? What are the things that we have to do every day? And how do I show up and help enable my team to show up?

in new ways so so that I never get that that was interesting ever again the result of it was that I wasted time I wasted budget I wasted energy on things and so when I can say what are we gonna do first I know that all of those things will never be wasted

Jason (07:17)
Exactly. And I would think then it changed the types of conversations that you were being brought into as well, because you were showing the direct impact.

Elizabeth Oates (07:24)
Yes.

I sometimes laugh because, as we think about aligning ourselves to a business, at one point when I first got into retail, my team, we were all kind of like rush, rush, rush. How are we going to figure out what we need to do for holiday? I was like, wait a minute, doesn't December 25th happen on December 25th, like every year? Shouldn't we have known this was coming? And so it's true, like we have to.

Jason (07:45)
Maybe a little planning

Elizabeth Oates (07:46)
Right? can anticipate, we can be proactive. I mean, that's real and true but funny. But there's so many of those moments for businesses, whether it's your planning you're working on a project, innovation timelines, you can understand and see when those are coming. And so we have to be proactive and allow ourselves to jump in early and say, all right, let's ask those questions upfront and to make sure that we are.

using all of our resources, whether it's time, money, or energy, in the most effective way possible.

Jason (08:16)
that makes a ton of sense and it's why you've been so successful and why you're in demand with companies that you work with. I'm gonna move to the next question, which at The Wisory, we've been so fortunate and I'm so grateful to have these amazing, strong, smart women as part of our network. Obviously you are a key part of that. And

as a woman leader at the highest levels for some of these incredibly large complex organizations, where did you go for guidance through your journey as you were growing? then I guess once you hit it, there's still questions and you're probably helping other people as they were going along their journey.

Elizabeth Oates (08:54)
I love this because throughout my journey, I have been fortunate to have some incredible mentors, both male and female, but and both formal and informal, right? And some of my most impactful female mentors were those who were generous with their time.

and their wisdom. And these were the mentors who offered me places and spaces to succeed and gave me the confidence to do so. And so that's something that I am repaying forward and I try to repay forward every day in every way because I have the opportunity now to be that mentor and to really be a champion for others, especially women leaders.

When doing so I try to be that person that I needed, early in my career someone who helps you find clarity To build confidence and to lead with purpose in a way that lets you show up authentically with the way you are and who you are. So for me really being a mentor is about being a springboard I believe that what I'm

doing it well when the others around me are succeeding. if you can provide a place or a space to succeed, along with the confidence to do it, you too can be a springboard. And it's the best thing you can do for someone's career. Because, Jason, I think that success is not a zero sum game, and that we all rise higher when we lift one another up.

Jason (10:26)
I love that, I live that. I mean, it's really part of why The Wisory exists. you especially, it's people that are involved are head and heart, So it's as much about the give back, and the learning and being able to be open to helping the next generation of leaders that's why I'm so thrilled to have you.

Elizabeth Oates (10:36)
Thank you.

one of the greatest mentors that I had was a mentor who was kind of always in my corner. And you know, you have a great mentor who is in your corner when they challenge you to be your best and are yet always still pushing you. They're kind of behind your back as well. So they've got your back.

And they're challenging to be your best. That's the approach I try and take every way. I call it the champion challenger. Be a champion and also challenge the person at the same time. That's the kind of mentor that will push you really far.

Jason (11:13)
I agree, absolutely. So you've been very successful, as we just talked about, in terms of building and applying research and insights to grow businesses and brands. How do you see this evolving in the world of AI? And I should call out that you and two of your colleagues, Priti Mehra from Google and from Spotify and Pinterest and P&G,

are going to be part of a roundtable next week. So we're thrilled to have you do that. But can you just tease out a little bit in terms of how you see AI affecting the research and insights practice that you're so familiar with?

Elizabeth Oates (11:51)
AI is absolutely changing the game. And it should. And in this place, in space, the goal isn't to replace human judgment. No, it's really about amplifying it. So the real evolution is that insights professionals can now spend more time driving strategic impact.

I don't want to prove myself wrong here, Jason. But in the past, I might have said that you can only get two of the following three things better, faster or cheaper, and which can only have two. Well, hold on me. Maybe AI might just be enabling insights to get to all three of those today. So, in my workshops in my writing, and what we're going to talk about in this upcoming roundtable is really about emphasizing how

AI can reward professionals who think critically, who can help us ask better questions, and it can really help us focus on the so what in order to act smarter and faster. And so I'll shamelessly plug the round table with Priti and Yogesh, and we're gonna be talking through this exact topic, including examples, like how to use AI to do things.

more quickly and more effectively. For example, SKU rationalization or scenario planning in a world of uncertainty. And we'll be bringing up these examples because, no matter what you use AI for, like insights, it has to be tied to a business objective. So we'll talk through what's your objective and then how might you use AI to help you reach that objective and measure your success. So

You can probably tell I'm kind of passionate about this and preparing insights leaders and businesses, not to just use AI tools, but to use them to push their businesses forward into the future. And not just keep up with what's happening, but step up into the future.

Jason (13:43)
I love that. And I would think also with AI, as you said, those three things that it could be affected when we're looking at midsize businesses, midsize business leaders and the C suite and other folks within the organization who may not have deep research and insights teams behind them, AI gives them an opportunity to have access to the data and potentially use it in a different

way if they don't have a huge team behind them.

Elizabeth Oates (14:11)
Absolutely. One of the biggest differences from the past is that in the past, resources that were only available at large companies were only there. Now, they're available to even relatively smaller organizations. Mid-sized companies now have the benefit of getting these resources while still maintaining the benefits of speed and flexibility that some of the larger organizations struggle with.

Decisions can move faster and insights can be embedded more quickly into action. In a world where data access is now available to more and the ability to use that data are changing, the playing field is really getting leveled. And so that's really exciting for small and mid-sized businesses. And when it comes to insights specifically, the challenge, has often been structure. So these large organizations

organizations have had very well established insights functions and processes, and mid-size businesses may still be figuring that out, and that's why I would encourage these organizations to really lean in and to treat their insights functions like a business, to define the value, to invest intentionally, and to build capabilities that align with their strategy, and AI can help enable that process. So,

If you're doing all of those things, the investment in time and money that you make will pay for itself and will push your organization faster. So all in, I think that with the right intent and focused action, mid-sized businesses have a real opportunity to leapfrog those large, slow competitors by being laser focused on consumer needs.

and using insights to really drive smarter, faster decisions.

Jason (16:01)
Fully agree with that and you use the the word that I don't think is used enough which is investment and so Thinking about this as a business where i'm investing versus it's a cost Because to going into the earlier part of the conversation if you do a good job planning around your purpose And the outcome that you're looking for Then it's much more an investment into driving

Elizabeth Oates (16:14)
Yes, absolutely.

Yes.

Jason (16:27)
those results versus it's just a cost center and how do I feel about those people versus the outcomes that are being driven.

Elizabeth Oates (16:34)
Absolutely, it's an investment in your own future.

Jason (16:36)
Exactly. We have actually covered all five questions, Elizabeth, in almost record time, but not a surprise. Given you're logging 1,500 miles a year, right? You ran through it. But I do have one last question. It's my bonus question. So being an amazing advisor on The Wisory, what questions would you suggest

that folks who are coming to The Wisory and they see you and your amazing background, what questions do you feel you're best positioned to answer for them?

Elizabeth Oates (17:07)
You got it. So through my experience at multiple Fortune 500 companies and now working with businesses of all sizes, I really help leaders shift from using insights as a support function to making insights the heartbeat.

of the organization. And it means embedding consumer understanding into how decisions are made, how priorities are set, and how strategies come to life. I can help answer questions like, how do we build a culture where decisions start with the consumer, and not just end with one? Or, how do we equip our teams to ask better questions and act on what they learn? Or

How do we align functions like marketing, operations, and finance all around the same consumer truth? So those are the kinds of questions where you're not just doing research or collecting insights or data, but it's about maximizing insights to make them a driver of growth. And I know how to do that because I've done it inside complex organizations, and now I'm coaching others to do the same. So whether you're launching a product, refining a brand, or navigating change,

Jason (18:12)
think that's great.

Elizabeth Oates (18:15)
Consumer centricity isn't a nice to have. It's your competitive edge. So my role is to help you unlock that.

Jason (18:21)
I love that. And I would also think for mid-sized businesses where they may not have the big teams, some of it is just a challenge of where do I start with so many different tools, so many different forms of data coming from all different places. Like, where do I begin?

Elizabeth Oates (18:30)
Absolutely.

opportunity abounds.

Jason (18:36)
Elizabeth Thank you so much for making the time for being an amazing advisor and being part of the Wise in Five this week My pleasure great seeing you

Elizabeth Oates (18:44)
Thanks for having me, Jason.