TALK

Earn the right to go bigger

When Venessa Bennett decided to move her research team from reactive, technical work to something more strategic, she was certain it was the right call. Her team was not.

This talk covers what happened next: a deliberately small pilot, built to earn back trust before asking for anything bigger, and the slow, uneven work of getting stakeholders who didn’t yet see the value of research to understand it.

After this talk, you’ll:

• Have a way to test a big directional shift on a small, low-risk scale before asking your team to bet fully on it.

• Be better able to tell the difference between a stakeholder who needs educating, one who needs a different case made to them, and one who just needs more time.

• Come away with language for holding a direction with conviction while still taking your team’s doubt seriously—without either caving to it or dismissing it.