GreenBook Future List Honoree Manuela Isliker on the Power of Empathy

GRIT Future List honoree, Manuela Isliker, tells the three things she looks for when hiring for an insights role.

\ \ by Greenbook Team

What’s a fun fact about yourself that would surprise people to know?

Based on a delicious family recipe, I created with my mother a homemade pie business called “MenuManu,” which I’m really proud of. It was a pleasurable activity; I would actively make the pies together with her during the night and also would take care of the business matters such as branding & customer service – my husband was our right hand on financial controls and customer management sheets.

Our business – @menudamanu on Instagram, lasted about 4 years, and it was a happy piece of my life that ended in 2018. With my maternity moment coming and career ascendence, I needed to choose between expanding it or following my career, and that’s where we chose by closing – or at least giving a long, long break and stayed with the delicious pies on our weekends at home!

Since starting your career in MRX, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

I believe I’m living one of the best moments of my career. I’m playing a key role in how we are transforming our R&D Insights team to accelerate innovation. Acting as the Insights voice on several Innovation and Business related projects, I’ve been leading the development of a new, unique combination of consumer science, entrepreneurial methods, Agile & UX research. We have been applying this new blend of Insight generation to our Innovation programs. I have brought a significant impact by creating an innovation process & full tool kit for R&D, Insights, & Business Innovation at Colgate.

When did you know you wanted to enter a career in insights, and what inspired you?

I like to say I was distracted when Insights got me on the curve! It wasn’t a plan I did, but the right thing happened when I was still in college, looking for my first job. Once I was in and understood I could dive into human behavior and actually be the voice of people into companies; I really fell in love with this pleasurable task that I was calling work.

I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to work on meaningful projects for society, with goals from better feeding the population until relevant health solutions, and this is actually what inspires me every day: PEOPLE! I truly believe it’s a privilege to transmit people’s needs & desires to business people and be able to ensure their voice is driving the future.

How has market research changed since you first started your career?

Market research has been truly changing every day, following the world’s, people, and companies’ direction, and when I look back 10 years ago, the transformation is HUGE! All that was seen as trends are our lives now, digitalization & globalization hugely impact people’s mindset and the way they make choices. Companies are now managed by the “Speed Over Perfection” mode and Insights has been following this transformation at a fast pace, starting from the way of approaching people: if in the past we would have long and formal interviews with hundreds of people in a controlled environment, now it’s all about empathizing with enough of them, into their real lives & routines as much as we can, using powerful agile tools – it’s all about having real valuable information in a shorter period of time. Also, because people are now expressing themselves in new ways, using different languages and channels, a new part of Insights’ role is to gather this huge amount of data and generate value where most people would overlook.

What are three skills you believe to be crucial to succeed in market research, and why?

I have a list of 3 things I look for when hiring someone; for me, these are the major factors of the success of an Insights person.

Being curious like a child is the first essential one! Insatiably curious people are keen to learn every day and from different sources, are not satisfied with basic or incomplete information. Given that only a few questions we need to answer in our daily routine are linear, curiosity leads you to drill down, enhance the level of knowledge, and often see beyond the obvious.

I also believe Empathy ability is as important as drinking water for an Insights person (and all human beings!). If you cannot wear other people’s shoes, you will hardly be able to discover and understand their needs and even less to create something meaningful to them, which is why we are there for you.