Digging deeper and understanding more creates greater, effective impact

Strategic Relationship Manager Lorna Leach discusses the importance of insight to ensure partners can make more informed decisions and outlines the support London Sport's Consultancy services can offer.

Think about a time when you felt heard, the person or people you were talking to were really listening to what you said and would consider your needs in their future actions.

It feels good right?

As the Strategic Relationship Manager at London Sport knowing what inspires or undermines people’s decisions to be active is a vital part of how we support the capital to become more active.

General insight will tell you headline information, Active Lives, for example, will show trends across demographics but to really get to the heart of the issue you have to dig a little deeper.

By knowing precisely who or what you are trying to influence or change you can uncover little intricacies that come from the differences we have in our backgrounds, cultures, and communities.

At London Sport, our relationship managers in every borough encourage our partners to deepen their knowledge of the populations they are looking to support to become more active.

Our insight team give organisations access to our research into understanding of lives of less active Londoners though our data portal and access more detailed insight.

This allows organisations to delve deeper into the complexities of inactivity such as the capabilities, opportunities and motivations that inform the behaviours of different Londoners.

For partners in need of bespoke support to answer their questions you can commission our consultancy services across insight, funding and digital marketing.

In the last year, we’ve undertaken research for UK Deaf Sport that underpinned successful funding applications and we’re now supporting those programmes to monitor and adapt to their participants and partner needs ensuring resources are always best-placed for maximum impact.

We’ve delivered focus groups and surveyed residents from Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds in Enfield and Haringey boroughs to help the councils explore why engagement with local leisure provision has low take up from these communities.

Taking time to talk means not only are the two councils better informed, but all partners are now aware that these two communities should actually be considered as three with the addition of Turkish Cypriot, who have significantly incremental perspectives on what isn’t working for them.

Research like this enables the relationship management team, which I lead, to bring offer bespoke options that match the recommendations and turn valuable insight into practical opportunities.

These can be robustly tested to confirm or deny the truth of the research.

But the part I love most about insight is when it pushes us beyond what’s gone before, challenging our thinking and improving the places, spaces and communities of London.

Work that not only provides massive benefits to partners but allows us to help change the world at large from policies to cultural cues, ensuring limited resource go further and creates bigger impacts.

All so that being active is the easiest choice to make.

To find out more about on LondonSport’s consultation offer, contact us here or drop the Consulting Services team an email at insight@londonsport.org and we will be in touch.