Heinrich van den Worm

You’ve been recognised three times now. What do you think your work stands for?

For me, my work stands for consistency, reliability, and trust. We’re very deliberate about delivering unbiased intelligence because data credibility underpins everything else: influence, confidence, and long-term impact.

Being recognised three times reinforces that consistency matters. Sustainable value doesn’t come from isolated wins, but from showing up with the same standards over time, guided by a clear North Star. That mindset has shaped both how we work and how we build trust with stakeholders

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What’s a hard truth you’ve learned about doing meaningful insight work inside real organisations?

The hard truth is that social intelligence isn’t a quick win. It’s a journey and it’s ongoing, iterative, and deeply human.

While bringing the capability in-house can create early momentum, building a truly effective function takes time. You need to bring multiple stakeholders along, build shared understanding, and steadily increase maturity. Only then can insight move from being interesting to being genuinely impactful.

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Has your perspective on social intelligence changed since you first started working in the industry?

It has definitely changed, and for the better. The industry has evolved significantly from the early days of social listening into a much more strategic intelligence discipline.

My belief in the potential of social intelligence hasn’t shifted, but the way we surface insights has. As the market matured, the focus moved away from broad data dumps towards answering specific business questions and testing hypotheses. That shift has made the work more purposeful and far more valuable.

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What’s a piece of advice or framing you’ve passed on to others that seems to stick?

I often tell people that trust and credibility are earned, and that not every limitation is a blocker.

We approach our work as problem solvers. Stakeholders don’t come to us just for insights, but for guidance and perspective. Having access to data makes us credible, but it’s how we interpret and apply it that builds lasting trust.
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What’s the one question you think the industry needs to be asking right now, but isn’t?

I think the industry should be asking: How do we know this insight changed something meaningful?

We spend a lot of time refining methodologies and metrics, but far less time understanding how insights influence decisions, behaviours, and long-term outcomes. Until we close that loop, we risk optimising intelligence for reporting and not for impact.
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What’s something you once believed about audiences, platforms, or culture that you’ve changed your mind about?

There’s nothing really that comes to mind here. My thinking has always been sortof fluid around this because we change and evolve as humans. So do our consumption patterns and social/digital behaviour.

I have always followed the data and tried to understand these patterns so that I don’t have an unexpected surprise. And if there is an unsuspected surprise, I try to understand why that happened to make sure I understand that behaviour.

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You’ve built your leadership and credibility. Now what do you want to build next? For the field, not just yourself?

I want to build courage, for myself and for the field. I’ve taken a fairly conservative approach until now, but with leadership and credibility established, there’s an opportunity to be braver.

That means being more vocal, sharing learnings, and contributing more actively to the community. Not to be louder, but to help raise understanding of what social intelligence can, and should be.

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