Introduction

This 11th Edition of the Discovering Why newsletter is inspired by Merrill Dubrow, CEO at M/A/R/C Research, who continues to provide next-level leadership and inspiration for our insights sector.

I recently attended his Quirk’s Media Event presentation/chat in Dallas, where he interviewed two Texas Rangers executives, Travis Dillon and Scott Biggers, about the road to World Series victory, navigating success, and getting to design a championship ring…

Sports has a funny way of clarifying life.

Every year, teams train harder, prepare better, get smarter, and convince themselves that this is the year. The chemistry is right. The roster is deeper. The lessons from last season have finally sunk in. They win more games. They look sharper. They become more disciplined, more resilient, more complete.

And then they lose.

Maybe not in the championship game. Maybe not even in the semifinals. Maybe they miss the final altogether. And when the season ends, all that progress gets filtered through one brutal question: Did you win it all?

If the answer is no, the season gets labeled a disappointment.

Never mind that they improved. Never mind that they played with heart, elevated one another, entertained us, and gave their fans something to believe in. Never mind that growth actually happened. If they did not reach the final destination, it can feel like failure.

What does any of this have to do with me?

That tension has been on my mind lately because it feels a lot like what is happening in our beloved insights industry.

I am certain that there are so many thoughtful, hardworking practitioners in our business who take their craft seriously. Analysts. Storytellers. Consultants. Methodologists. Strategists. People who know how to hear what others miss and say what others avoid. People who can turn noise into signal and signal into action. People who, on their best days, can help organizations make better decisions and maybe even improve human lives in the process.

And still, a lot of them feel like they are losing these days.

Not because they are doing poor work. Quite the opposite. Many are doing some of their best work. But they feel shut out of the room where decisions get made. They feel technology racing toward them faster than they can interpret it. They feel the sting of another budget cycle, another reorg, another conversation where insights is praised in principle and sidelined in practice.

That is a strange kind of defeat. To be excellent and still feel excluded. To know your work matters, yet wonder whether anyone with power actually agrees.

The last two years have only intensified that feeling.

Disruption is no longer visiting our industry. It has moved in, rearranged the furniture, and is now critiquing our floor plan.

AI, automation, synthetic data, passive measurement, new platforms, tighter budgets, more pressure for speed, more pressure for certainty, and less tolerance for process that looks expensive or slow. For some, that feels energizing. For others, it feels like standing on the sideline watching the game change while someone quietly updates the rules.

And fear has entered the chat.

Not everywhere, of course. But enough to notice.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

There is a segment of the insights world that never really had to worry about automation before. If you were the analyst, the storyteller, the consultant, you could reasonably assume your value was protected by the nuance of your thinking. And to be fair, for the longest run, that was true. The work required synthesis, informed judgment, and narrative ability that could not easily be replicated.

Then along came technology that did not ask permission before becoming surprisingly capable.

That has created anxiety, and not without reason. Anxiety about relevance. Anxiety about margins. Anxiety about whether clients will choose faster over better, cheaper over wiser, synthetic over human. Anxiety about what happens when tools begin to mimic parts of what once felt ours uniquely.

When people get anxious, they rarely become poets. They become tribal.

First comes denial. “This is overhyped.” – “It will never work.” – “Clients will come back to their senses.”

Then comes hurried curiosity. “Fine, maybe I should learn this thing.”

Then, when the fog still does not lift, comes finger-pointing. “The platforms are ruining it.” “The clients do not get it.” – “The investors are impatient.” – “The young people do not respect the craft.” – “The old people are blocking progress.” Everybody becomes somebody else’s problem.

This is not unique to insights, by the way. It is one of the more reliable patterns in human behavior. We say we want change right up until change shows up wearing work boots.

History tells a different story than fear does

Every meaningful technological advancement has disrupted jobs, workflows, and business models. It has also, over time, created new value, new capabilities, and often entirely new categories of work. The printing press did not eliminate thinking. Spreadsheets did not end finance. Search engines did not destroy expertise. And yes, online did not eliminate telephone surveys or face-to-face qualitative. It transformed them into more exclusive and higher-value services.

The data, if we are honest, usually tells us that advancement lifts the ceiling even as it shakes the floor.

That does not mean the transition is painless. It rarely is. But it does mean that fear is often a poor forecaster.

Which brings me… back to sports.

Sometimes a team loses because it is not good enough. But often, a team loses because it is in the messy middle of becoming something better. The talent is there. The discipline is coming. The culture is strengthening. The pieces have not fully clicked yet, but you can feel the shape of future success forming.

That is where I think much of the insights industry is right now.

We are not watching the death of our profession. Just our value proposition, as we have known it. Thus, we are watching the awkward conditioning phase of its next era.

And to be honest, winning this next era may be harder than simply mourning the old one.

Losing is clean. Losing lets you preserve the myth that the world was fair until it changed. Losing gives you permission to become nostalgic, indignant, or passive.

Winning is harder.

Winning asks you to evolve before you feel ready.

Winning asks you to separate the parts of your work that are truly valuable from the parts you merely got comfortable performing.

Winning asks analysts to become architects of judgment, not just builders of tables.

Winning asks storytellers to go beyond polish and become translators of consequence.

Winning asks consultants to stop guarding the process (witness the growing conversation around governance) and start magnifying impact.

Winning asks leaders to stop selling research as an activity and start proving it as an outcome.

That is not loss. That is pressure. And the discomfort of pressure, while deeply annoying, is exactly where growth lives.

I also think there is a more personal question here. Do people fear success more than they accept failure?

Maybe.

Because success, real success, changes your identity. It requires reinvention. It removes excuses. It asks more of you tomorrow than it asked of you yesterday.

Failure, in a strange way, can be familiar. It can become a story we know how to tell. The market changed. Budgets tightened. Technology moved too fast. Leadership did not listen. All of that may be true. But if we stay there too long, failure becomes less of an event and more of a home address.

I do not believe that is where this industry belongs.