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Everyone's a Strategist Now

Running great research used to be the job. Now it's the starting point.

3 minute read

For a long time, being great in insights meant running great research. A tight questionnaire, clean fieldwork, a deck delivered on time. Those skills still matter. But in nearly every search we work on now, hiring managers are asking for something more. They want someone who can tell them what to do with it.
The job has quietly moved from executing research to shaping decisions. That’s why so many titles have “strategy” in them now.

Why the shift happened

Execution got faster. Survey platforms, automation, and AI can now draft a questionnaire, code open-ends, and build a topline in an afternoon. What they can’t do is decide which question is worth asking, or what the answer means for the business.

Insights earned the seat. Research teams spent years asking to be in the room where decisions get made. Now they’re in it, and the room expects them to speak.

Teams got leaner. There are fewer layers between the researcher and the person making the call. The handoff where someone else turned findings into a plan often isn’t there anymore.

Execution vs. strategy

A quick way to see the difference:

  • Execution answers the question it was given. Strategy checks whether it’s the right question first.
  • Execution delivers findings. Strategy delivers a recommendation.
  • Execution says “the data shows.” Strategy says “here’s what I’d do.”
  • Execution builds a 60-slide deck. Strategy builds a six-slide deck with an appendix.
  • Execution measures success by delivering on time. Strategy measures it by whether something changed.

The good news

Execution skills aren’t the thing you leave behind. They’re the foundation. The best strategists we know understand methodology inside and out, which is exactly why their recommendations hold up when someone in the room pushes back. If you’ve spent years running studies, you’re closer to this than you might think.

How to make the move

  • Start with the decision, not the method. Before anything gets fielded, ask what this research is meant to inform. Then design backward from there.
  • End everything with a recommendation. Even when nobody asked for one. Especially then.
  • Learn how the business makes money. The more you understand what your stakeholders are measured on, the more useful your point of view becomes.
  • Lead with the “so what.” Put the answer on slide one. The supporting detail can live in the back.
  • Get comfortable being challenged. A recommendation invites debate. A list of findings doesn’t, which is often why nothing happens next.
  • Talk about impact. On your résumé and in interviews, “shaped the pricing for a product launch” lands better than “managed 40 studies.”

What we’re seeing in hiring

More and more, technical skill is the baseline. What separates candidates is whether they can turn research into a point of view and bring a room along with them. Hiring managers ask us about it in almost every search, usually some version of “Can this person hold their own with a C-level Exec?”

ONE LAST THING

Nobody is asking researchers to stop being researchers. They’re asking them to finish the sentence. The data says this, so we should do that. The second half is the job now.
If you’re working on making that move, or hiring someone who already has, let’s talk.

— Pluckd

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