Outsource Your Data Synthesis

This is a new service, where we do the hard work of making sense out of the interviews and listening sessions you have conducted. Make use of the data you have, so it won’t go to waste. We bring you the foundation for inspiration, inclusivity, and innovation.

What you get is a set of patterns, synthesized from the recordings, representing people’s interior cognition as they addressed a particular purpose. These patterns are created by hand, carefully using each person’s wording, thinking, and approach. The patterns form the top half of an opportunity map for your organization. (The top half is also known as a mental model diagram as people addressed that purpose.)

Once we deliver the top half of the opportunity map, you can take it from there … or we can help you with the next steps: aligning your capabilities beneath towers, identifying a few potential areas of priority and working with stakeholders to choose among them, benchmarking the level of help or harm your solutions are doing for one of these priority areas, and measuring improvements in how well people are able to address their purpose, their way, over time.

The Cost

Since this work is based on the richness and length of the interviews and listening sessions, the cost is variable. What we will do is give you an estimate, and we will work toward that estimate or update it if we run into something that changes that estimate. The actual cost to you might be higher than the initial estimate, or it might be lower. It utterly depends on the amount of manual work that is required. And we will let you know early if we see indications that it will take longer than our estimate. That way you have time to get more budget–or we can figure out together what part of it not to do to stay under the estimate.

To give you an idea of the synthesis work required: (transcripts are additional at ~$120/hr)

Data	Total Session Hrs	Our Labor	Total	Cost Range
Rich	40 hours	11.7 per hour	468	$23,400 – $56,200
Rich	15 hours	11.7 per hour	176	$8,800 – $22,000
Not-as-rich	15 hours	8.9 per hour	134	$6,700 – $16,000

It’s all about patterns! There is nothing to show if we can’t find patterns in your data. We will be able to find patterns in rich data which is about the same purpose. We are likely to find some patterns in not-as-rich data. Below that threshold, a session that contains 20-40 interior cognition concepts is potentially usable if you plan to conduct more research to add to it; usually this smaller number of concepts won’t form many usable patterns.

And yes, anything less than 20 concepts per session is not going to form patterns. Likewise, sessions that are not all about the same purpose will not form patterns. These latter conditions are not something we want to pursue, nor do you want to throw money at them. Therefore, we do need to check your data to see what you have got, before we start.

Checking Your Data First _{^{(for a fee)}}

Your interviews and listening sessions must meet some criteria for it to be worthwhile to you. Before a project begins, we charge $350 to look over your data to make sure it will result in patterns. We will also be able to get a sense of how much it will cost and give you an estimate. We will sign privacy and non-disclosure agreements before beginning the check of your data.

Here are the criteria we look for:

1. In the set of interviews or listening sessions that you provide us:
   • Each one covers the one same purpose. (A goal or intent of any size, ongoing pursuit, habitual task, something you make progress on, something you are postponing, etc.)
   • The recordings are converted to transcripts by humans, not by ‘bots. We would rather provide this transcribing service because we work with transcribers who provide high quality, including vocal intonations and context for some of the wording. However, you might have transcripts already at this level of quality.
2. There is interior cognition present in the transcripts in sufficient richness to provide patterns. (Interior cognition is the inner thinking, emotional reactions, and guiding principles that went through a person’s mind as they addressed that purpose in the past.)

Whether your data meets the criteria or not, we will point you in a good direction for this small fee. We want you to harness your knowledge, to make decisions, and be informed about the opportunities for your solutions.