Wednesday, 8.46pm
Sheffield, U.K.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? – Albert Einstein
I’m getting close to the end of this mini project whipping through Tom Peter’s book ‘the brand you’.
What’s I’ve seen in the pages I’ve gone through are thoughts about the importance of creating products, of innovating, of paying attention to design, performances, calling cards, presentations.
A bit of a mishmash of stuff really.
But the thing that jumped out at me, the thing that’s the most important takeaway is this.
You will learn what you need to know if you go to the frontline.
Peters has a military background and it turns out that military planners sketch a course of action – creating a drawing using a graphical vocabulary to show a commander’s plan.
My drawing does not follow that vocabulary. It’s based on a distant recollection of geography lessons decades ago.
But the point is that there are people on the front line and there are people way behind the front lines and you need to figure out where you’re going to get the real information to decide what to do next.
If you go into an organisation and talk to the bosses you’ll get a particular perspective, a highly filtered one.
All too often, it seems like bosses convince themselves that the stories they tell about their businesses are actually true.
You can tell the difference between a boss that manages by reading dispatches and one that walks the front line.
It’s the difference between a hospital manager who sits in a room reading budget reports and one that walks along the wards.
It’s the difference between someone who has a nice office and one that sits along with the rest of the team.
Organisations tend to fossilise into hierarchies with reporting lines and structures that mean interaction slows down – and when that happens learning dies.
But you, as a consultant, are different.
You can go in and talk to the people at the front line, the ones doing the work.
You can listen to the people who know what works, what doesn’t, and what needs fixing.
The thing is, sometimes people know that something needs to be made better but they don’t know how to do it and, more importantly, how to bring the rest of the organisation with them.
That’s where the opportunity is for your product or service – to address the uncertainty about what to do next.
At this point you’ve found a problem that needs solving or a situation that needs improving.
And you can think about how to help.
So, the one takeaway from this part of the book is this.
Go and talk to people doing the work before you decide what action to take next.
And then build your product or service to take that action and deliver the outcomes your client needs.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 