Research Manager
Location: Chicago
Company Profile:
Root is a strategy execution company that engages people as the catalyst and driver for change. The company connects people with complex strategies using creative and visual methods, transformative insights, and consulting know-how on strategy execution. With more than 20 years of capabilities developed from partnering with the world’s largest businesses, Root has created a proven framework that consistently achieves clarity, ownership, and results. With headquarters based in Sylvania (Toledo, Ohio), Root has been recognized as a Great Place to Work for seven consecutive years.
Position Description:
The Research Manager will focus on user-centered research methodologies to help companies formulate more powerful strategies and execute strategies more effectively. The Research Manager is responsible for conducting qualitative, ethnographic, and experiential research and will analyze data to uncover the unique human factors that are barriers to or levers for strategy execution. You will be responsible for designing and conducting research, leading and taking part in team and client brainstorming sessions, synthesizing and interpreting research findings, and developing strategies and recommendations for thoughtful and innovative solutions.
Responsibilities:
- Create, implement, evaluate, and continuously develop the strategies for researching and identifying issues in client organizations.
- Create, implement, and continuously develop systems for recording and retrieving client information, ensuring quality control and measuring effectiveness.
- Develop and implement thorough approaches to generative and evaluative research.
- Manage the transition of research findings into proposed actions for design.
- Collect information and make judgments through observation, interviews, contextual inquiry, and the review of documents.
- Conduct participatory action research in organizations to assess how work is done, and to design work systems, technologies, and environments.
- Collaborate with organizational teams to decide on the implementation of proposed designs, plans, and programs based on culturally institutionalized barriers and facilitating circumstances.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
- 3+ years experience in strategy anthropology, insight research, and/or design research.
- Experience in designing, leading, and executing qualitative and secondary research projects.
- Passion, curiosity, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit.
- Solid business acumen, systems thinking capability, and data management skills.
- Willingness to travel.
- Undergraduate or graduate degree in anthropology, sociology, innovation, strategy, and/or design, and professional experience working in collaborative environments.
Preferred Skills and Experience:
- Uncovering insights that changed the way people work, live, or play.
- Solving really tough problems that were seemingly unsolvable.
- Leveraging research methods into new topics or industries.
- Showing leadership in the midst of ambiguity.
- Starting grassroots movements within organizations.