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B.U.I.L.D.®: DEVELOP: Sustaining momentum for long-term growth

B.U.I.L.D.® framework: Develop

In our last article, Learn, we explored how reflection and realignment help create clarity and awareness to make smart, timely decisions, and to foster a culture of purposeful reflection to support performance. But sustainable growth requires more than periodic check-ins, it demands a commitment to continuous evolution.

That’s where the final stage of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework comes in: Develop.

This phase focuses on future-proofing progress by strengthening leadership, refreshing strategy, and embedding a culture of learning, innovation, and adaptability.

Why Develop Matters

Most change initiatives run out of steam because they were designed to end.

In the Develop phase, we help you continue a conscious shift from “project mode” to continuous growth mode where learning loops, leadership evolution, and strategic thinking become part of the day-to-day DNA.

This isn’t about adding more complexity. It’s about keeping your attitude, systems, and people fit for the future.

“We didn’t want to fall into the trap of business as usual. With this phase, we finally had the space to future-proof what we’d started.”

What Development Looks Like in Practice

At this stage of B.U.I.L.D.®, we help leaders and teams promote a mindset and operational model that fuels long-term success:

🧭 Ongoing Leadership Development
We provide on-going 1:1 and group coaching to reinforce positive mindset shifts, reduce conflict spirals, strengthen strategic decision-making, and elevate leadership presence over time.

📦 Product & Proposition Development Workshops
We facilitate innovation sessions to bring new creativity that help teams apply their enhanced mindset to product strategy and market positioning

📈 Strategic Growth Planning & Mentoring
We work with leadership teams to shape the next phase of growth. This includes advisory support and mentoring around recruitment, team structures, and external positioning.

🔁 Re-establishing the Baseline
The end of the B.U.I.L.D.® cycle is also the beginning of the next. With each iteration, a return to the Baseline with deeper awareness, more data, and a stronger foundation for even bolder progress, encourages progress and adaptability.

Develop in Action: Future-Proofing a Leadership Team

One client’s leadership team had just come off the back of a high-growth year. But with growth came new challenges: burnout risk, role confusion, and an unclear path forward.

Over six months, through quarterly coaching, mindset refreshers, and facilitated planning, we helped them:

  • Build a “Mind the Gap” 2-year roadmap
  • Define a new set of shared values
  • Rework their internal comms and decision-making structure
  • Embrace courageous conversations with greater ease

“We were so used to firefighting. Now we make better decisions, faster—and we actually enjoy working together again.”

The biggest shift? Less fear. More foresight. And a renewed sense of identity and purpose.

For Individuals: Becoming the Leader You’re Meant to Be

Personal development doesn’t end with insight, it accelerates with action. At this stage, we help professionals: ✔ Stay aligned with their long-term goals ✔ Strengthen habits that support confidence, clarity, and impact for themselves and colleagues ✔ Build thought leadership, influence, or new career chapters

“I stopped just ‘managing the day’ and started designing my career.”

For Teams: Growth That’s Cultural, Not Just Tactical

High-performing teams that invest in ongoing development report higher levels of:

  • Psychological safety
  • Cross-functional collaboration
  • Creativity and innovation
  • Employee engagement and retention

Because when growth becomes a way of being, not a one-off event, organisational change is no longer a struggle. It becomes a shared ambition.

B.U.I.L.D.® in Full Circle

Develop is the phase where transformation becomes self-sustaining. And just like that, the cycle restarts, stronger, deeper, and more intentional.

That’s the power of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework: A repeatable, human-centred approach to mindset-driven growth, at the personal, team, and organisational level.

“We didn’t need another strategy. We needed a system to keep growing. That’s what this gave us.”

Ready to evolve?

Whether you’re coming to the end of a growth initiative or just starting to think bigger, the Develop phase is where leaders step up and businesses scale wisely.

Download our B.U.I.L.D. ® info pack or book a call here

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B.U.I.L.D.®: Learn – An under-utilised step for progression

B.U.I.L.D.® LEARN

In our last article, Implement, Lara and I explored how to move from insight to action by embedding new mindsets and behaviours into everyday practices and the development of successful customer value propositions.   But behaviour change, and maintaining a positive, growth mindset, is not a one-off exercise.
Without continued learning, even the most successful initiatives can lose momentum. Habits fade. Motivation dips. Results plateau.

That’s why the Learn stage of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework is so important.
It’s not a full stop. It’s a specific and deliberate pause to take stock and further build on what’s already in motion.

Why Learn Matters

Many organisations launch change programmes with energy and optimism, but sometimes, a few months later, we are told again and again that they find themselves wondering: “Why aren’t we seeing the impact we expected?”
And then, we identify it’s because they didn’t take enough time to stand back to LEARN and take a measured view, really asking

  • What is, and isn’t, working?
  • What needs to change?
  • Where could we go from here?

Learning isn’t just about reflection. It’s about realignment. It helps create the clarity and awareness needed to make smart, timely decisions, moving from activity to genuine, additive, progress.

What Learning Looks Like in Practice

At this point in B.U.I.L.D.®, we work with individuals and teams to review progress, surface insights, and adjust strategies. This might include:

  • Progress Tracking
    One client began with a Positive Intelligence (PQ) score of 52, meaning she responded positively about half the time. It was a coin toss whether a difficult email or meeting would trigger self-doubt or calm resilience. Through weekly micro-practices that helped rewire her thinking, she increased her score to 75, the recognised tipping point for sustained wellbeing and performance. She became the steady voice in meetings, and a leader who supported growth in others too. She could feel the difference her efforts had made, but quantifying her progress helped her celebrate her growth and continue to apply what she had learned.
  • Regular Reviews and Reports We helped one team formalise a rhythm of regular commercial check-ins and individual reflection sessions to focus on learning and growth. By reviewing progress with direct questions like:

On the commercial side

  • How has our understanding of our customers and prospects improved?
  • Are we still certain about our proof points? And our key North Star?
  • How are we doing on the KPIs in our marketing funnel?
  • What are our current challenges and next immediate actions?

On the individual side

  • How do you feel your operating rhythm, and that of the team, has been?
  • Have you moved from good intentions to regular positive small steps each week?
  • Are you now spending more time on high impact areas?

…these foster a culture of purposeful reflection and shift a team’s focus from activity to impact, supporting performance without compromising wellbeing.

  • Employee Engagement
    The marketing and sales teams in a lead country for one client were working in silos, mainly as the marketing team focussed on multi-country global campaigns and the sales team mainly on home country tactical activations. When the company decided to pivot to a new strategic direction, the leaders of each team recognised the potential benefits of closer collaboration, to learn from each other. To identify the key tasks ahead, we moderated a 2hr interactive online workshop with 4 targeted questions around wishes, reasons why customers would want the new services, information needed for decisions emerging and what success would look like next year. A simple exercise, sparking improved communication and clear goals.

“We found a great set of actions to progress from listening and learning from everyone. This workshop helped us set a clear course and gave us the confidence to move forward together”,

For Individuals: Insight for Intentional Growth

Learning isn’t just about actions, metrics and targets, it’s also about self-awareness. We help individuals reflect on:

  • How do I respond to pressure now?
  • What patterns have shifted?
  • What kind of leader am I becoming?

Using tools like PQ scores, 360 feedback, and self-reflection exercises, clients uncover what’s working and where to focus next.

A typical feedback:
“I went from feeling completely stuck and overwhelmed to discovering both an inner resolve and the value of being more open to the ideas and views of others. It wasn’t just about changing my, or our, circumstances overnight, but about changing how I showed up every day and experiencing how the reflection process had reduced conflict between colleagues.”

For Teams: Making Success Repeatable

The Learn stage helps teams pause, reflect, and understand what’s really happening so they can make informed adjustments.

We support this by:
✔ Listening actively with surveys and engagement tools to capture shifting sentiment
✔ Reviewing trends through structured reflections and quarterly reports
✔ Spotting what’s working and identifying issues early, before they escalate
✔  Tracking progress through updated assessments and revisiting initial goals

As one team put it:
 “We used to just react to everything. Now we reflect first, then respond with purpose.”

What Comes Next?

Once learning becomes part of the rhythm, the way forward becomes clearer. That’s when we move into Develop: sustaining progress, scaling success, and building for the long term.

📩 Ready to make space to learn from your recent progress?
Download our B.U.I.L.D. ® info pack or book a call here

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B.U.I.L.D.®: Implement – Turning Insight into Action

Sourced from Canva

In our last article, Upskill, we looked at how individuals and teams can develop the mental and emotional capacity for meaningful change. Strengthening resilience, collaboration, and confidence creates the conditions for growth, but it still leaves one big question: How do you make it stick?

That’s where the next stage of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework comes in: Implement.

Why implement matters

Many organisations invest time and money in training and strategy, only to find that when it comes to putting new ways of thinking into practice, people default to old habits. Busy schedules take over, confidence wavers, and positive intentions slowly get sidelined.

It’s not about a lack of intelligence or ambition. It’s about the lack of structure and support to help people consistently follow through.

The Implement phase of B.U.I.L.D.® exists to bridge that gap. It helps individuals and teams move from ideas and insight to clear actions that align with their goals and values.

This is where change becomes part of the everyday.

What implementation looks like in practice

In this stage of B.U.I.L.D.®, we work with clients to put mindset into motion. This includes a range of coaching, facilitation and planning tools designed to create alignment, accountability and meaningful progress.

There are a number of ways we can help support implementation:

🧭 Vision Crystallisation Sessions Clarifying what success looks like for an individual, team or organisation. These sessions help ensure everyone is working towards the same goal, with shared language and purpose.

🗂 Action Planning Workshops Bringing people together to translate strategy into steps. We break down big ambitions into manageable, visible actions that can be tracked and reviewed.

🔄 Change Management Support Providing tools and coaching to help people lead themselves and others through change with confidence and care.

📆 Productivity Planning Helping individuals and teams rethink how they spend their time and energy. The aim is to reduce friction and create more space for work that matters.

🧠 Leadership Coaching and Development Ensuring new mindsets and behaviours are not a one-off, but become embedded in how leaders operate.

Workshops in action: How implementation comes to life

💡 The 10% Positive Approach – Idea Box Workshop In this session, team members are encouraged to share ideas without pressure for perfection. Instead of critiquing, the group looks for the 10% of value in every suggestion, to build upon.

“One of our strongest campaign ideas came from something that started out as a throwaway comment. Our old culture would have dismissed it, but this time we stayed curious and built on it.”

🛍️ Retail Safari – Out ‘n’ About Rather than sitting in a meeting room, we took a client team out in a customer immersion exercise to see how their product was actually being experienced in the market.

“We saw things we’d never considered: packaging issues, price confusion, how it sat next to competitors. It completely changed our priorities for the next quarter.”

Implementation doesn’t always start with a plan. Sometimes it starts with seeing things differently.

🎭 Brand Obituary Exercise In another session, a senior team was invited to write the obituary for their own brand, imagining why, when, where, and what had caused it to fail.

“It felt uncomfortable, but incredibly clarifying. It showed us where we were avoiding key decisions. When Jeff asked us to then flip and write the obituary for our competitor, the shift in energy and perspective gave us the courage to act.”

Facing what’s uncomfortable often unlocks what’s possible.

Implementation at a Human Level

For Individuals: We help leaders bring their learning into day-to-day actions. That might be how they manage their priorities, make decisions, or hold conversations.

“Before, I had good intentions, but no follow-through. I was prevaricating. Now I know exactly what small steps I’m taking each week – and I’m actually doing them.”

For Teams: We help teams build consistency, accountability and momentum, moving from idea-sharing to coordinated action.

“Our meetings used to end with lots of nodding and no action. Now, as a minimum we end with three clear tasks and an owner for each.”

What Comes Next?

Once new behaviours are in place and showing results, the next phase is Learn, where we review progress, make adjustments, and ensure development continues.

Would you like to explore how Implement could support your team, function or career?

Download our B.U.I.L.D. ® info pack or book a call here

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B.U.I.L.D.®: Upskill – Strengthen the Mindset Muscles That Drive Sustainable Success

In our last article, Baseline, we explored how to uncover the invisible barriers that hold individuals and teams back, from self-sabotage and outdated beliefs to systemic blockers that quietly drain performance and wellbeing.

Once you know what is getting in the way, the next step is clear: build the capacity to move beyond it. This is where Upskill comes in.

Why Upskill Matters

In today’s complex working environment, where AI disruption, hybrid teams, a challenging business environment and tougher expectations combine, it is not just technical skills that determine success.

What matters just as much is the ability to stay clear-headed, confident, and creative in high-pressure moments. But without the mental muscles to adapt, collaborate and lead through uncertainty, change doesn’t stick.

You cannot delegate self-awareness. You can’t innovate or easily be creative if your saboteurs restrict you from taking positive steps. And you certainly cannot collaborate effectively if your team is stuck in defence mode, afraid to fail, quick to blame, slow to trust and unable to work through these fears and pressures to find positive solutions.

That is why we focus on teaching these skills as part of the Upskill stage in our B.U.I.L.D.® framework.

How we help you and your teams to Upskill

In this stage of B.U.I.L.D.® we use the Positive Intelligence (PQ) approach. This is a science-backed method that helps individuals and teams shift from reactivity and self-sabotage to greater clarity, resilience, and creativity.

Individual participants build the mental muscles to:

  • Interrupt unhelpful habits such as perfectionism, overworking, or people-pleasing
  • Respond to challenges with empathy, curiosity, and confidence
  • Show up consistently with more calm, clarity and courage

Teams learn to

  • Collaborate more effectively and creatively
  • Hold one another accountable for standards / actions
  • Work together under a unifying team purpose and vision
  • Engage in healthy conflict resulting in win-win resolutions

What Does Upskilling Look Like in Practice?

There are a number of ways we can support you or your team in the Upskill stage

The full PQ training programme
Runs over six weeks via a simple app, with short daily practices, weekly reflection, and coaching support. Taking just 15 minutes of activity per day and supported by weekly 1:1 or group sessions with Lara, a certified PQ Coach

Leadership Coaching and Development
 Personalised coaching to build self-awareness, shift mindset, and strengthen leadership impact – either 1:1 or for Teams

Mindset Talks and Workshops
 For larger teams we can offer interactive talks and workshops to generate fresh thinking, motivate teams, and create lasting mindset shifts

For Individuals: Building Confidence and Self-Mastery

“Before this, I thought I had to be in control all the time. But I realised that urgency and control were my saboteurs—and they were exhausting me and my team.”

This senior leader learned to recognise these patterns, pause, and respond differently. The result was stronger team relationships, more balanced decision-making, and increased energy for strategic priorities.

For Teams: Breaking Through Cultural Stagnation

An insights agency team was experiencing poor collaboration following years of structural change. Saboteurs were fuelling negative behaviours – one team member was micromanaging everything as a result of their ‘Controller’ saboteur – which activated another team members ‘Pleaser’ saboteur that said “yes” to every little change or request posed. Neither was happy and in fact they often were both dismayed by the others requests and way of working – it was having a detrimental impact on the rest of the team….

Through the introduction of shared language and PQ mindset tools, the team began to rebuild psychological safety and creative flow. Conversations became more open, feedback more honest, and ideas more frequent and braver. The result was not only improved client delivery, but greater engagement and cohesion.

What Comes Next?

Once individuals and teams strengthen their mindset muscles, we move to Implement—the next stage of the B.U.I.L.D.® framework. This is where learning becomes embedded in daily routines, and insights translate into sustainable action.

Would you like to explore how Upskill could support your team, function or career?

Download our B.U.I.L.D. ® info pack or book a call here

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Problem Definition: never more important to get it right

A leap of faith or a planned jump?

Introduction
Is the man in this opening image going to land safely? Did he prepare properly and make an informed decision to jump in this failing light after checking the hazard out fully, or did he just go ahead in a rush at that time, as it seemed the only choice?
Like the man in the opening image is about to, corporate initiatives can fall short without proper preparation and information; and as a result, incur cost and time to rectify. Which could have been better spent on meeting/realising objectives. One wonders how the man in this image felt when the better option of a nearby footbridge was visible in the morning light.

The last 2-3 years have already seen customer behaviour becoming more fragmented and Covid-19 has added another layer of complexity into business decisions. Whether you are working client or agency-side, commercial success ultimately requires everyone to find mutual ground and to make the best decisions possible. But how can you achieve this?

This short post shares our observations and experiences over the last 2 decades about successful problem-definition and how insight engineers can help you to harmonise your commercial objectives to achieve in-market success.
There is a link to download a full PDF of this paper below.

  1. Why Do Problems Need Definition?

Before starting to work immediately on the apparent solution, most successful organisations have learnt to stand back first and invest time and effort to improve their understanding of their problem and associated objectives. As Einstein once said, “A well-defined problem is 90% solved”. But, do you sometimes find you are on a completely different wavelength to the other people you work with? Agreeing on a clear problem definition with colleagues can be extremely challenging – different people, in different disciplines and positions of responsibility, with different motivations and pain-points, will often focus their thinking on disparate solutions.

Research evidence helps everyone get on the same wavelength, neutrally. Carefully curated insights can create a strong narrative on the feelings and inclinations of your target market in management level discussions, bringing stakeholders together within a common language. And especially when this information & insights are part of a structured problem definition process. This framework helps clients to avoid relying on the past, gut feel & intuition or the strongest opinion, and helps plot the best course of action, especially in times of business pressures.

When the world has just fundamentally changed, it is logical that a fresh attitude and new input is needed to make decisions for solutions in the post Covid-19 situation. The importance of harmonising your objectives and defining your problem with the right questions has never been more important to get right.

  1. What Questions Should You Be Asking on the Client-Side?

A good client-side project manager will constantly look to improve their understanding of a problem and more importantly which decisions need to be made and what information is needed to assist in these decisions. The inputs that start this necessary comprehension stage relate to the familiar 5Ws – Who, What, Where, When and Why. Here are the initial 10 questions, logically ordered, that our clients start asking of themselves: –

You can download these 10 questions and the rest of the full article <here>

Wrap up
Whether you are client-side or working at another agency, the value of a systematic approach to defining your problem and the routes ahead, will help you make the best customer-centric decisions in alignment with the end objectives. Ultimately, success then requires the right core team working towards the shared vision and the identified success factors to drive sales. And to revisit the 5Ws as you progress; changing your plans if conditions change.

insight engineers are used to being part of such initiatives for future pipeline and sales. We work regularly, internationally, on understanding customer behaviour and response to concepts, ideas and propositions. Your tricky B2B and B2C questions are our calls to action. Beyond quality, speed and value, our role is to be a strong partner in the team, helping you to deliver on your objectives. We find a problem definition process, such as the one in this paper, always enhances the chances of success. Working well together, a project team will normally ask the right questions and turn resulting information into profitable wisdom. Wouldn’t it be great to be in such a team in the future saying “Without us, X would not have existed”?

To people who have not worked with us before, let’s talk. Nobody loses from opening a dialogue.

Jeff Deighton
(e) jeff.deighton@insight-engineers.com
(ddi) +44 1753 916 908

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Season’s Greetings

Insight Engineers would like to thank all our clients, partners and friends for their custom and support in 2019.

With best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and successful 2020.

Wir danken Ihnen herzlich für Ihr Vertrauen und die gute Zusammenarbeit im alten Jahr und wünschen Ihnen ein frohes Weihnachtsfest sowie ein schönes, gesundes und erfolgreiches Neues Jahr 2020.

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