Extracting the full spectrum of insight

The Clearer The Input, The Clearer The Output

Success depends on first achieving total clarity on what question needs to be answered, and why leaving it unanswered represents a missed opportunity or risk.

The right questions are a navigation tool;

• Dolphins use sonar to “see” underwater. They send out a ‘click’ sound and wait for the echo to return. Once they have enough echo responses, they can navigate, find prey, and avoid obstacles and predators.
• Questions are the business equivalent of sonar, so getting them right is imperative. Ultimately asking the best questions will help find ways through a problem, locate the right opportunity, avoid imminent difficulties and ultimately meet, but ideally surpass aspirations.
  
  

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” – Albert Einstein

The Clearer The Input, The Clearer The Output

Success depends on first achieving total clarity on what question needs to be answered, and why leaving it unanswered represents a missed opportunity or risk.

The right questions are a navigation tool;

• Dolphins use sonar to “see” underwater. They send out a ‘click’ sound and wait for the echo to return. Once they have enough echo responses, they can navigate, find prey, and avoid obstacles and predators.
• Questions are the business equivalent of sonar, so getting them right is imperative. Ultimately asking the best questions will help find ways through a problem, locate the right opportunity, avoid imminent difficulties and ultimately meet, but ideally surpass aspirations.
  
  

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” – Albert Einstein

Every Person Has Their Own Truth; But It Is Kept Well Hidden

There is no one right research tool, application, or method to address every information need. This stretches well beyond having deep domain experience with qualitative, quantitative and hybrid research practices, and bypasses anything to do with online and in-person methods.

There must instead be a very deep appreciation for the fact that to be human is said to be flawed, or at the very least, complicated:

• There are hundreds of identified cognitive biases that impede judgement, belief formation, memories, reasoning processes, decision making, perceptions and human behavior in general. Humans are largely, therefore, irrational and illogical, and yet predictably so.
• Verbal communication is unreliable as the least developed sense; Humans have an innate inability to articulate unconscious thought and emotional drivers, various reasons create a tendency to lie, and language is subjective and prone to issues of mis/interpretation. Even still, only 7% of what people say is in the spoken word; 38% emerges through tone and inflection, and 55% by body language so 93% of all communication is actually non-verbal.

Appreciating such contextual complexities ensures the appropriate concessions are accounted for in data collection and analysis techniques. Crafting the best research approach is therefore as much an art as it is science, but critical if the fundamental reality is to be represented as accurately as possible.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” – Marcus Aurelius

As Simple As Possible, But No Simpler

Confident business decision making relies on receiving precisely the right balance between complex data and simple stories. Insights are curated to be clear, precise and actionable.

• According to IBM, 2.7 zettabytes of data exist in our digital universe and five exabytes of data gets generated every two days. By 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally.
• Q. So how do we make the information we generate valuable when information is pervasive?
• A. We focus on finding precisely the right balance between a simple story and complex data, so clients are inspired and empowered to navigate the way forward.

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesisers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” – E.O. Wilson