Insight & Implications Sheet

Ask "so what?" of each finding until the answer changes what someone would do, then follow it through to the people who must act and the decision on the table.

Practice, not research: the what, so what, now what sequence is a reflective teaching tool (Borton, 1970; Rolfe et al., 2001), the DIKW hierarchy is a contested conceptual model (Rowley, 2007) and answer-first writing is consulting craft (Minto, 1981). The limit of three insights is a rule of thumb.

Use it when:

• You have findings with confidence levels and the reader keeps asking "so what?"
• A report or dashboard has been read, called interesting, and changed nothing.
• You must brief a decision maker and want the implications to land on named roles.

Skip it when:

• You have not graded the findings yet: do 2.9 Evidence Quality Judgment first, or strong and fragile claims will travel together.
• The insight is agreed and you need to compare ways to act on it: go to 2.11 Options & Recommendations.

Everything on this sheet is practitioner craft; its job is to force a move that findings never make on their own. The sequence from what happened, to so what, to now what began as a reflective teaching aid (Borton, 1970) and was later set out for the helping professions (Rolfe et al., 2001). Structured reflection has some experimental support as a learning aid, but the template built on it is still craft. The picture of climbing from data to information to something a decision can rest on is the DIKW hierarchy, a disputed model rather than a description of how insight forms (Rowley, 2007). It reminds you that a finding is not yet an insight. Leading with the conclusion comes from the pyramid principle in consulting, untested but durable (Minto, 1981).

So the "so what?" column in Step 1 is the hardest on the page: a real insight names a cause or changes a choice, it does not reword the finding. Step 2 lands each insight on someone who must act, because an insight nobody acts on is a slogan. Steps 4 and 5 record where the climb ran out.

Take each finding and its grade from 2.9. Ask "so what?" until the answer names a cause or a choice. Then say why it matters for the decision, and how surprising it was.

Strong answer: Finding: "Cafes that stop mostly waste bread at the minimum order (medium)." So what: "Our offer is sized for hotels; small cafes pay for volume they cannot sell." Not: "Waste is an issue for cafes," which only rewords the finding.

Illustrative example: the business, the roles and all numbers are made up.

The Gothenburg bakery from 2.1 has three graded findings from 2.9.

Step 1: "Cafes that stop mostly waste bread at the minimum order (medium)." So what: the offer is sized for hotels, and small cafes pay for volume they cannot sell. Surprise: very, since the team had blamed price. "Price is not the main reason (low)": kept as a question, not an insight.

Step 2: Strategy: decide whether small cafes are a segment worth a separate offer (owner). Operations: test a half crate (head baker, route driver). Customers: offer it to cafes that ordered at the minimum (sales lead).

Step 3: Keep the delivery time. Stop the single minimum for everyone. Start a smaller cafe minimum, priced to cover the route.

Step 4: Risk: the route costs more than it earns; mitigation, price the half crate. Open question: what former cafes buy now.

Step 5: Go with conditions: a three-month test with five cafes, revisited in September. The sales lead reads the sheet to the head baker, who agrees to bake the half crates.