Last week I was reminded, again, to take what people told you with a grain of salt, and to watch closely what they did, rather than believing what they said.
I watched as the CEO of a significant business took a decision that was in direct conflict with the values he regularly espouses to staff and customers, in the interests of a short term cost mitigation.
He did not seem to accept the inconsistency when it was pointed out.
In the early 70’s as a student, I did a couple of holiday stints as a door to door market researcher. In one project, we were banging on doors and asking which brand of cigarette was smoked (in those days, smoking was widespread). When the answer was one of a couple of premium brands, we had to persuade the respondent to show us the packets in the house, and half the time, it was one of the cheaper brands.
Had we accepted what they said, rather than confirming with what they did, the research results would have been even more rubbish than they were.
Putting yourself in the shoes of a research respondent is really hard. It requires empathy, close observation, robust but sensitive questioning, and savvy choices in who you talk to if the results are to be reliable. It also offers the opportunity to gather insights into behavior that enables better product and service design, uncovering unstated or unrecognised problems being faced.
I hesitate to mention, we are about to go into an election campaign, the reality is we are already there, with the welter of blather, tired clichés and bullshit about to overwhelm us, again. As a community, we should really point out to all who want our votes the truth of the post headline.
Illustration credit: Tom Gauld from Instagram.
