Why does ‘Hindsight Planning’ really work?

Why does ‘Hindsight Planning’ really work?

May 6, 2019 | Communication, Small business, Strategy

For years I have used a process I call ‘Hindsight planning’ with clients to conceive then execute  a strategy that delivers sustainable prosperity. 

Put simply, rather than planning forward, as it usually occurs, from an  analysis of the current situation towards a goal,  I seek to have them articulate the goal in great depth, and from a range of perspectives so that they ‘internalise’ the goal as if it has been achieved. They have absorbed an  emotional attachment to the goal as if it was the current reality, rather than a goal.

I always thought it was a bit of a semantic trick, but it turns out I was wrong.

Hindsight planning is rooted in psychology.

Daniel Kahneman in his book ‘Thinking, Fast & Slow’ said it best: ‘Once you adopt a new view of the world, or a part of it, you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed’

In other words, hindsight planning is more than a semantic trick, it is a process of replacing the current reality with a new one, that just happens to be the goal you set out to achieve. Once you believe the new reality, it is easier to look backwards and articulate the things you did right, and those you did poorly, the resources you needed, the timing, capabilities, and all the other things that require assembly for the achievement of a stretch goal.

When you need help with this challenging idea, call me, and challenge me to do for you what I have done for others.

Header Photo: the last known photo of the Titanic as it left Queenstown Ireland, on April 12th 1912. A little but of hindsight would have gone a long way!!

11 ways to uncover the lies in data

11 ways to uncover the lies in data

May 3, 2019 | Communication, Governance

Data does not have an agenda, it does not lie, but it rarely shows the whole story.

Think of the data that would be gathered and analysed after the announcement of a chunk of native forest was opened up for logging. The botanists would have one set of data and analysis of the impact, the accountants another, the entomologists another, those concerned with native animal habitat another, and so on. None are wrong, but all are incomplete without the input of  the others.

Corporate use of data does have an agenda, performance, and unfortunately often personal advancement. Similarly, data delivered as fact by a politician has an agenda: getting elected.

The data does not have an agenda, those who use it often do.

Bias in data can be conscious, as well as unconscious. Someone has to decide what data is collected,  what hypotheses to test, and how it is to be used. All can be shaped to meet a predetermined outcome.

When making a major decision we all look for the data that will give us confidence in our choice.

However, we are all also familiar with the nagging feeling that the data we are looking at is nothing short of bullshit.

So how can you tell?

Here are 11 simple tests to apply.

  • Where did the data come from? Organisations, geographies, people, all make a difference.
  • Was the collection method designed by someone with a vested interest in the outcome?
  • What are the gaps in the data? These can easily be created by the manner in which questions are asked, or often, not asked.
  • What assumptions were made in assembling and analysing the data? No data survives the filtering imposed by the assumptions in the assembly and analysis processes.
  • What statistical measures have been applied? The number of initial data points, upper and lower control limits, confidence levels, all the statistical tools available, but too often dismissed by non statisticians and those running an agenda.
  • Be wary of creative articulation. Percentages are regularly thrown about as ‘proof’ of something. A 50% increase in accidents in your suburb in the past year may mean there were 3 compared to 2 last year. Similarly, averages are often misleading. We expect the mean to be close to the median (middle point in a range) but often it is not.
  • Who gains or loses from the outcome? Just look at the current political ‘debate’ in this country for ample evidence of this. There are no laws about truth in advertising for political ads, therefore the numbers quoted are heavily edited, or it would seem, often just made up.
  • Is the data describing just correlation or is it truly causation. This is often used to make a case. For example this compelling case put forward by the economist a while ago ‘proving’ that intelligence increased with consumption of ice cream.
  • What are the alternative explanations of the conclusions articulated, and what are we not being told?.
  • Is the data giving you the answer to the question being asked, or to some other question? And, how well is the question reflected in the answer?
  • Has anyone with an established perspective opposite to the outcome of the data had a critical look at it? This is often a good way of finding the holes in the collection and analysis.

While statistics can be made to lie, they will also deliver transparency when you understand the basic measures. People will often tell you what they think you want or need to hear, and when it is backed by data, it becomes more credible, particularly if it confirms an already established point of view.

Finally, if it seems too good to be true, there is a fair chance that it is, our instincts are usually pretty good, so follow them until proved otherwise. 

I am  by no means a data nerd, but I do believe that good data can make our collective lives better by improving decision making, and removing just a little of the bullshit sprayed at us so regularly and methodically by everyone with a cause.

Data does not lie, people using data can, and do.

The header cartoon is from David Somerville’s Random Blather blog, an extension of Hugh McLeod’s original.

 

 

 

A reflection on Anzac Day, 2019

A reflection on Anzac Day, 2019

Apr 25, 2019 | Communication, Personal Rant

It is Anzac day 2019, just a public holiday to some,  but a lot more to others.

It is also my beautiful daughters 34th birthday, so it is a good day.

As we take the day off, some will just be thankful that the self-serving, fact free, fabricated drama, and partisan nonsense of this election season has also taken a break. 

Anzac Day has re-emerged from a slumber in the late 60’s to mid-seventies,  when it seemed that it had faded in our collective memory. In 1976 I massaged the itinerary of  a European camping tour I was leading to take us down the Gallipoli peninsula to the Lone Pine memorial.  I was surprised that we were so close, and the visit was not included, but much more surprised that so few of the 45 twenty something passengers, knew much about what had happened there.

Perhaps the re-emergence of awareness and pride in the role Australians have played in wars has less to do with the facts of the sacrifices made by our forebears, than it has to do with our collective search for something to believe in, as they did. Something to bind us together, trust the word of a stranger because they looked in our eyes and said it was so.

The tools of modern communication are extraordinary, but we are more alone, more fragmented,  more focussed on ourselves, and more pessimistic than ever, while  we live in a world of plenty. 

It should be the opposite way around. We are highly social animals, the tools should have made ‘community’ easier, not harder, not more elusive. 

I look at all this through the eyes of a cynical, but well informed, educated, and thoughtful 67 year old baby boomer. I am a recipient of the largess brought on by the post war boom, and general prosperity since. While there have been some set-backs, on balance it has been a good life. That good life is in good measure thanks to those who went before, and made it possible.

Lest we forget.

Happy birthday Jennifer, now let your cranky old dad go and tend the BBQ, as an excuse to soothe his parched throat.

 

 

 

‘Brief’ does not just mean quick!

‘Brief’ does not just mean quick!

Apr 23, 2019 | Communication, Marketing

Providing a project brief is a core skill of great marketers.

Too often I see so called marketers sounding off about service providers of all stripes for failing to deliver, when the brief against which they are being judged is a load of ambiguous, fluffy clichés.

It takes courage for a service provider to tell a principal their brief sucks, but if they are to deliver, the brief has to be good. It is usually best where there is genuine collaboration on the brief development, engaging all the available expertise in defining the problems to be addressed, and sorting the  best way to go about it.

This requires not just the courage to speak up, but the intellectual freedom to do so, and follow differing lines of thought

Often time is a hard barrier, but in most cases that is because the marketer has failed in their duty to deeply consider the particular project  in the context of the strategic framework, which is also often missing.

As a young marketer, we were always seeking the ‘big idea,’ the one thing that would make a difference, the Meadow Lea line ‘you ought to be congratulated’ for instance. This appears to have been replaced by  the need to create an never ending flow of ideas for execution on all the new media platforms. However, a gaggle of mediocre creative does nothing except consume resources.

The day of the big idea is not gone, but we seem to grossly underestimate the time and intellectual energy necessary to come up with them.

The problems with Google

The problems with Google

Apr 15, 2019 | Governance, Marketing

Google is a wonderful tool, ask it any question, and the answer will come back, or at least a million references that may give an answer will come back.

That is terrific, except for a few minor, or major flaws, depending on your mindset, such as:

Confirmation.

The certainty you get from Dr. Google tends to confirm the things you may already know, at least it confirms the path you are on, by giving you easy answers to the question you face. As a kid, in PG (pre-google) days, we had to go looking for the answer, feed our curiosity, critically review the few sources available, and in the process, stumble across other information that might just be a useful addition to the path we were on. Some would point out that Google in delivering millions of references does the same thing. However, we mostly only look at the first page, which reflects best what others asking similar questions have opened. Confirmation bias at work, silently, in the background. 

No challenge

We do not have to work to find information, we just have to ask.

What if we do not know what to ask?

It seems to me we have lost the itch that is curiosity to see things that are different, divergent, and have a different perspective.

There is also another side to it. If we go to a library, and find the book we really like, the book next door is like the one you love, but just a bit different, that is the way libraries are organised, by topic. Google is not. It does not necessarily give you the thing most like what you are seeking, it just gives you a lead on the things that other people have sought by asking similar questions.

Currency

Google assumes that the newest stuff is the most useful. Often this is the case, but equally as often not.  Increasingly the current stuff is just Google-fodder, crap, of little value.

Dr Google removes the random.

As I get older, it seems I have become more curious, As a result I seem to collect random facts, stories, reports, and pieces of information. Sometimes they get used quickly, often they sit on the metaphorical shelf for ages until a use emerges, or it gets merged with another thought at another time. This collection of random curiosities is facilitated by Google, but not encouraged as everything you ask is there when you ask, but you never know what it is that you have not asked. The beauty of having a ‘library’ of trivia is that at some point, that piece of trivia, that random fact or report will add enormously to whatever it is you are doing. Google will never know this, so you need to collect the disconnected random facts like squirrels keeping nuts for winter.

Serendipity cannot be digital

Serendipity comes about from unexpected outcomes, things that go against the common understanding, the tenuous thread you see between two logically disconnected facts. Making these connections requires a multidimensional ‘intelligence,’ not one dependent on a logical algorithm, no matter how ‘smart’ it might be.

 

Google has not only become the default for the world, it is becoming the primary source, along perhaps with its digital stablemate Facebook, that is if anything, better than Google at eliminating the instinctive drive for creativity and curiosity. 

How do we encourage critical thinking when there are only two sources of information?

 

 

 

Managing the Jenga tower of marketing

Managing the Jenga tower of marketing

Apr 3, 2019 | Change, Marketing

Have you ever set up and played with a Jenga tower?

As the game progresses, some blocks can be removed easily, with no impact, others are really sensitive to any movement and can bring the tower down with a crash.

Problem is, the difference is really hard to tell.

This is a  bit like marketing.

There are a lot of variables, all with differing impact on the outcome, and all differing again, depending on the circumstances of what has gone before, and the manner in which the remaining blocks, or variables, are arranged..

What is important for one customer, in one situation, may be irrelevant to another, or even to the same customer in different circumstances.

Experience with Jenga, and careful testing of the ‘stickiness’ of different blocks before you pull them out can deliver you a win. Similarly, in marketing, the more analytical tools you can bring to bear that account for the minor variations, and differing configurations of the variables, the more likely you will be to get a favourable outcome. Increasingly, this task will be done by machine learning and pattern recognition, that accommodates the specific circumstances of the ‘marketing tower’, in this case,  the customer.

However, AI will never completely replace the wisdom of experience, creativity, and domain knowledge, which the truly successful will continue to observe, gather, and ultimately, rely.

 

Photo credit: Wikipedia