The 2022 Top Consultants: Kelly Peters

Kelly Peters is the CEO and Co-Founder of Trial Run. Kelly is a recognized trailblazer for developing practical frameworks for behavioral economics and the widely applied Trial Run Method. She has overseen the launch of several new business ventures that capitalized on insights into consumer behavior. Her interest in behavioral science stems back to the late 90s working on behavioral scoring models in credit risk and online distribution models, evolved through behavioral finance, and finally culminated in 2008 when she launched what might be the world's first commercial application of behavioral field experiments while at RBC to help drive adoption of online service channels. Among the first to see the commercial potential of the web in 1993, Kelly spent several years in the dot-com industry before focusing on financial services, where she spent 12 years leading complex strategy projects leveraging her expertise in innovation, technology and human behavior. Kelly regularly lectures at Cornell, Columbia, Harvard and other universities. She is a sought-after keynote speaker, has conducted three TEDx talks, and has been featured in The New York Times & Forbes. After studying philosophy and technology, Kelly earned an MBA from Dalhousie University.

What has motivated you to excel over the course of your career?

Curiosity. I get excited about cutting-edge knowledge, the ability to share that knowledge, and helping others apply it.

This has been the case since I was a child. I wanted to become a teacher because of the excitement and energy that comes from being able to help people connect the dots. This is why in my early career, I formed WebGrrls Canada where thousands of diverse women instigated issues such as "what is the web? What is my role in it? How can I apply my skills to help build the internet?." During this time, I launched chapters across the country with the focus on helping women recognize their role in the new age of technology, overcome complexities, and create bridges for them to apply their skills toward building the internet.

My curiosity eventually led me to Behavioral Economics (BE) over 15 years ago. I recognized that by applying BE to business challenges, there is a whole new way of doing market research and creating strategy. At the time, the power of BE was unknown to business. I evangelized the content, and then structured a method around how to apply the insights to real world challenges. It was about building a community and a framework to help others apply BE so that they can solve problems in new ways. In 2010, this is what lead me to co-found Trial Run, which I view as my biggest career success.

What has been the biggest factor in your success so far?

In consulting, the biggest problem is that clients get easily excited about new ideas without a way to apply it. Getting people excited about new ideas is the easy part, the hard part of the job is to help people learn how to break down challenges and systematically solve them. Teaching others how to tackle this "hard part" is the biggest factor to my career success.

Over the last 30 years, I have learned how to help people solve problems by deeply understanding the science of problem-solving. That is, how do humans typically solve problems? What are the psychological biases they exhibit? What does science say about the best methods to help people solve problems? What is the gap between how people typically do it versus how they ought to do it?

A common problem is that people get used to solving a problem the same way over and over again. Everything looks like a nail if all you've got is a hammer. We, therefore, need a way to change the way people solve problems, and to do that, we need to create and teach a new methodology. Using this knowledge, I pioneered a new methodology (the Trial Run Method) that businesses use to solve challenges using BE. Science itself has therefore helped me advance the application of science to the real world.

What do you enjoy most about your career in the consulting industry?

Being a disruptor and approaching challenges with a unique point of view. This means being willing to challenge how strategy is done and being willing to challenge the frameworks that have become sacred cows within the consulting world. More than that, it is about being willing to challenge the egos that define the creative and marketing world.

Four years ago, Trial Run worked with a bank that lost client trust following a scathing incident. The bank wanted front-line staff to be proactive with 'opportunity spotting', and so, sales targets and incentives were established. The program did not go as intended. Some staff felt pressured into coercing customers into products. We were asked to help repair the breach of trust with customers. In our first meeting, we asked the leadership team to write down their definition of trust. It became apparent that their definitions were all different. We then asked them to write down how they'd measure trust. The leadership team began to realize that without measurable, observable behaviors, they will never know if solutions to increase trust were effective or not (or if they were backfiring). Achieving clarity is key to the scientific method.

So, creating disruptions can help us to unlock value by bringing new voices to the table. Whether it's scientific voices, or other voices that don't fit the mold of leadership. We need to start being disruptive about who has a seat at the boardroom table, and disrupting the kinds of decisions that are being made.

What is your proudest achievement to date?

My proudest achievement is my mantra that business leaders can be scientific thinkers, and bringing that out in people. Executing on that mantra means building bridges between academics and business leaders, community leaders and government leaders.

Throughout my career, my ambition has always been about breaking down the barriers. This is why at Trial Run, I've set the mandate as "transforming the society and economy through scientific thinking." Through my firm, we are bringing scientific thinking into the hearts and minds of leaders around the world, and we do so by building a team of scientists who share the same passion.

To me, it's not just about myself or just about my team, it's about helping more and more businesses and organizations around the world benefit from learning and using the power of scientific thinking to change the way they innovate and solve problems.

What's the best advice you've ever been given?

To have intellectual humility. Twenty years ago when I was working at Bank of Montreal, I had an opportunity to watch my boss interact with a consulting company that had been charged with a large mandate. While the consultants were sharing their findings, my boss pounded her finger at one of the data points and asked where the number came from. The senior consultant struggled to answer and ended up giving a hand waving response. My boss' irritation increased as she continued to listen. This is when a junior colleague gently interrupted and explained that the number is a proxy. Kathy gave a huge smile to the junior consultant, and said, "thank you, that's all I needed to know." To the senior consultant, she grimaced, "if you don't know, then you don't know. Separate your ego. Have the courage to say I don't know."

This was an incredible lesson for me because it helped me start to see some of the challenges that the consulting industry faces. In this industry, we feel that we must know all the answers, and our ego gets tied up in that. Sometimes this means we pretend to know the answer, even when we don't. But science is the opposite. Science is about reveling in the unknown and advancing into the zone of the unknown and the unknowable. This is where science provides a very different mindset to the traditional consulting approach, and a different relationship to not knowing the answer.

This advice from my former boss about intellectual humility became the seed for my passion for what scientific principles could bring to the business of consulting.

What does this recognition mean to you?

To me, this recognition is a recognition of Trial Run and the value of scientific thinking in consulting. Throughout my career, I have worked tirelessly to be a champion of scientific thinkers around the world. My whole life has revolved around the goal of building bridges between scientific thinking and the real world. This recognition helps further facilitate the process of building even more bridges that will bring scientific thinking into the real world.