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A Project Debrief Strategy Is A Critical Tool For Thought Leadership
A Project Debrief Strategy Is A Critical Tool For Thought Leadership

Forbes

time20-05-2025

  • Business
  • Forbes

A Project Debrief Strategy Is A Critical Tool For Thought Leadership

Here are five powerful opportunities you may be overlooking—and how to catch them next time. Every client engagement generates new observations. Some are about the industry. Some are about your client's blind spots. Some are about how your methodology actually performs in the field. But unless someone's asking the right questions—and documenting the answers—those patterns disappear. What you're really losing: the early threads of your next thought-leadership story. Maybe it's the third client this year that stumbled over the same internal friction point. Maybe it's a trend emerging in the behavior of their customers. These patterns, when tracked and named, often become the seed for a signature insight—one that separates your voice from the crowd. Fail to capture them, and your best thinking stays invisible. Clients have their own way of talking about pain points—and they're not using your marketing copy. During engagements, they drop phrases in meetings, feedback loops, and emails. They use metaphors. They name tensions. They give you raw, authentic language that tells you what really matters. Most teams let this language slip away. And when it's gone, so is your chance to mirror the market in your writing. What you're really losing: language that could drive your next article, presentation, or sales conversation. Capture it, and you gain not only insight, but empathy. Your audience feels seen. Your writing becomes sharp and relevant. And you start to sound like someone who gets it—because you do. Every project has a before/during/after arc. There's a challenge. A decision. A pivot. A surprise. A result. If you zoom in on any single moment of that arc, you likely have the makings of a compelling story. But most debriefs don't look for story. They look for summary. So the stories stay buried in bullet points—or worse, forgotten. What you're really losing: authentic, emotional, specific stories that could become your best marketing assets. When you debrief with storytelling in mind, you start to collect examples that do more than prove your value. They reveal how you think, how you work, and what kind of partner you are. Even if a client won't go on record, you can anonymize the insight. Tell the story. Protect the source. And still show the world how you solve problems that matter. Most teams make critical adaptations mid-project. They adjust a framework. They invent a workaround. They prototype a solution. It works. Everyone nods. And then it's gone. Unless someone names it, documents it, and folds it back into your process and methodology, that new idea vanishes into the archive. What you're really losing: future IP. If you consistently adapt your approach in smart, creative ways, those adaptations are your intellectual property. They are how you work. And they're likely what makes you different. But they only become part of your market identity if you capture and codify them. Otherwise, you're innovating for free—and leaving no trail. This is the one that stings. You solve a hard problem in a novel way. You have the evidence. The insight. The story. But because you didn't write it down—didn't publish it, share it, name it—someone else will. And they'll look like the innovator. Not you. What you're really losing: your place in the market conversation. Thought leadership isn't about being loud. It's about being early and clear. If you're not turning project insights into external IP, your competitors will. And the market will forget who did it first. Rethink your debrief strategy. Shift its purpose from operational reflection to insight capture. Start by embedding a few key prompts: Better yet, have a dedicated facilitator or strategist attend your debriefs with the express goal of mining for IP. Because the insight is already there. You lived it. You earned it. With the right project debrief strategy, you'll be able to turn that insight into something that lasts.

The age of answers: Why dashboards are no longer enough
The age of answers: Why dashboards are no longer enough

Fast Company

time12-05-2025

  • Business
  • Fast Company

The age of answers: Why dashboards are no longer enough

The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Data is everywhere, but insights are rare. I know this firsthand from years working agency-side in digital marketing and analytics for global brands—optimizing billions in media spend, tracking behaviors across platforms, and measuring every available data point across the customer journey. We operated inside complex martech platforms, developed and owned by big tech companies, designed to automate and optimize a massive online ecosystem of messaging and signals. Managing these systems required deep expertise and continual training. Entire agency teams were dedicated to client accounts, structured by campaign and channel. Being 'data-driven' was tablestakes. We continually optimized ad copy, inventory sources, channel mix, tactics, spend rates—you name it. We endlessly reviewed ad exposure reports and conversion models, aiming to give clients a clear view of campaign performance. Yet, year after year, many media plans looked remarkably similar, and many of the dashboards and reports we built went largely unused. It wasn't for lack of effort or interest—it was because the sheer volume of information (and competing priorities) made it difficult to extract clear, actionable insights. Clients didn't need more information; they needed more direction. Here's the truth: Most dashboards are dense, nuanced, and missing the context or causality needed to drive strategic change. Clients aren't looking for more charts. They're looking for clear answers. Our brains are wired for clarity, not clutter A recent Caltech study found that while our sensory systems can intake up to 1 billion bits of information per second, our conscious minds can process only about 10 to 60 bits per second. This staggering gap highlights the brain's limited capacity to consciously manage the flood of incoming data. Our sensory systems—optimized for speed and pattern recognition—operate largely automatically and unconsciously. In contrast, higher-order cognitive functions like decision making and reasoning, managed by the prefrontal cortex, are slow, effortful, and resource-intensive. Dashboards often overload our fast, automatic brain systems without effectively supporting the slower, more deliberate systems we rely on to make meaningful decisions. The real competitive edge: Turning data into insight Over the past few years, I've combined my background in architectural design, marketing, and cloud technology to create solutions that bring new visibility into built environments. Brands today are seeking tools to power and measure their in-person spaces and many existing platforms fall short. They often fail to integrate critical variables like behavioral patterns, emotional sentiment, geography, time of day, affect heuristics, and even weather. By weaving deeper, real-time context into physical spaces, brands can create more responsive, more personalized, and ultimately more valuable experiences. We're entering a new phase where platforms must go beyond tracking—they must deliver strategic, insight-rich functionality. They must act like trusted confidants: capable of processing vast amounts of data behind the scenes and surfacing simple, powerful next steps. In this new era, decision making should feel more intuitive and more informed at the same time. W elcome to the age of answers The online dashboard era is ending. We're entering what I call 'the age of answers'—where the next generation of tools, especially in the real world, will surface context, causality, and clear actions. These tools will make us feel smarter, faster—unlocking new forms of value, new competitive edges, and a better relationship with the flood of data surrounding us.

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