Candidate Traits: Rigor In The Workplace

As I was writing the post 7 Traits That Set You Apart As A Candidate, I recalled reading a story that perfectly illustrated Rigor, the 2nd of the 7 traits mentioned. Curiously this ‘story’ appeared in the book Lead With A Story by Paul Smith.

Rigor, as defined in the original Fast Company article that inspired my 7 Traits post, is the ability to take in evidence, integrate information from multiple sources, derive meaning from it, and make critical decisions quickly.

(Note: The 7 Traits are known as the Koru7, as they were developed by Kristen Hamilton of Koru, to define what a high impact hire might look like.)

Let’s get to the story, my paraphrased version. The original story is found in Chapter 20 of Lead With A Story.

Rigor in Market Research

A market research manager was looking to promote one of three talented researchers on her team. She would have like to promote all three but wasn’t able to at the time, so she gave each of them a challenge. As brand managers came to the research department often with projects, the challenge was to provide the best solution to the next brand manager who crossed their department threshold.

That brand manager’s challenge was that he had several new ideas for his brand, and was requesting a concept test in order to determine the best idea to move forward with.

A week later, the three researchers came back with their findings.

Researcher 1 developed a perfect test with a leg for each of the new ideas as well as a baseline leg for the current brand concept to compare. His test was designed for age, education and income and also had a target of respondents to adequately represent the diversity of the country’s population.

Researcher 2 determined that the new concepts were similar enough to to require separate testing. The biggest differences existed in the wording describing each concept, so she designed a test to identify the most convincing wording. This solution would be much cheaper to execute than tests for each idea, and make it easier to pick the winning concept.

Researcher 3 appeared not to have done their “homework”, producing no testing plans for the new concept. Hiss boss was surprised, thinking that perhaps he didn’t really want the promotion. He quickly countered by saying that he didn’t think the brand needed any more research and presented the reasons for his opinion. The current concept had already scored very high in concept tests, the advertising for it was well received in the marketplace , and consumer awareness was high. The issue with the brand seemed to be price point.

Researcher 3 suggested that the advertising budget be reduced by 10% after he found that the advertising had reached a saturation point. That savings could afford them a price reduction to the brand, making it more competitive, and actually increasing sales.

Who do you think demonstrated Rigor the best? While they all demonstrated it well, Researcher 3 excelled and was chosen for promotion.