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If you rely on your intuition when you take decisions, then you may be making a serious mistake. The Marketing Experiments Journal has an interesting article on exactly that topic. The definition of the word intuition should alert you. Google’s first is “instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes)”. The Journal points out some marketing examples where that instinctive knowing lead to exactly the wrong conclusion. Perhaps it’s better to follow Henri Poincaré’s advice: “It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.”

Tip of the Hat to A.N.Onym’s thread on Intuition and Marketing in the Cre8asite Forums.

Related Links: How To Think Better

Tag: intuition, creativity

I just couldn’t fail to comment on the kind of headlines we’re seeing this morning. Here’s a typical one: Iraq war ‘waged on false intelligence’. There’s a natural assumption in these cases that some mastermind was manipulating the data to draw false conclusions.

Perhaps that’s true or perhaps it’s another case of the intelligence trap in action.

Some may be knowledgeable enough to wonder what they will find in an article on the play “I Am A Camera” by John Druten made in 1955 almost 50 years ago. This play was made into a film and eventually was the basis of Bob Fosse’s great 1975 masterpiece “Cabaret”. However this is not an item on pre-Second World War Germany. The title says it all. The world is sometimes not what it seems.

Human beings are very visual creatures. An image can evoke a multitude of thoughts and sensations. We go through our lives with our window on the world. We can be moved to feel great emotions – anger, sorrow, joy, happiness, tranquillity – as different images come into our view. It’s a great world.

Associated with any image there is some associated information. This is what the technologues would call ‘meta data’. In other words, this is all the factual information about the image. It can include who made the image, how they made it, when they made it, statistics on its resolution and content. If the image contains symbols and characters, then the meta data might include a text version of the symbols and characters.

The human being turning through the pages of a National Geographic Magazine is not usually concerned with the meta data. Instead they turn over the pages and find some images that attract their attention. So they look more closely. Similarly someone walking down a city street sees people and billboards. One or the other may attract their attention. It’s the direct power of the image that exercises this attraction, not the associated meta data.

Now however the world has changed in a dramatic way for many for huge slices of their lives. They sit in front of a computer screen and see what appears on the screen. Through the Internet they see images from around the world or in their local surroundings. Surely this has become their window on the world. Isn’t this just an enhanced ability to see images?

Well, yes and no … The computer is not just like a glorified camera you hold up to your eye. In the street, you catch a glimpse of an attractive member of the opposite sex. So your attention is drawn to that image and perhaps you turn your head to get a better look.

If you think the computer is doing something very similar, then you are missing an important distinction. In order for you to see an image, you currently have to type in some words to “tell the computer” where to go. In technical terms, you are trying to specify the ‘meta data’ to define what you want to see. You’re forced to do that because the computer only understands meta data. For every image “out there”, there is associated meta data. So the computer tries to match the meta data for what you want to see with the meta data for all the images out there. If there’s a match, the computer brings up the image and you see what you were looking for. I would like to see an image of Paris Hilton in 2003. Suddenly one appears on the screen. So what was complicated about that?

Well that ‘matching meta data’ is a horrendous computing task. In fact for most meta data, the problem is that there are almost an infinity of images out there whose meta data could ‘match’ the meta data in my request. The computer will have used some incredibly powerful computing facilities to be able to produce an image that may match what I’m looking for. I will not be aware exactly what has been done. Perhaps I put my request into a Google search field on a toolbar on my computer. What exactly is done with those search terms, how they may be weighted … someone else determines all that.

So here is the fundamental change. Before I pointed my camera at something I was interested in and soaked up the image. I knew what I was looking at.

Now I must try to specify what I want to look at in words (‘meta data’) and some unknown process points me at a matching image. Whether I see the best image that would fit my needs is unknown to me. Someone else is now pointing me in the “right direction”. Of course, I’m winning because I have the potential to see an image from a very much larger collection of images. At the same time, I may be losing because someone else may have influenced the process so that I see an image they would like me to see, rather than one I might prefer.

I was amused to see that UIE is recommending the KJ Technique. This is a powerful approach and one you should explore. UIE is a great authority on Usability and what they say is always of interest.

I’ve used the technique they recommend many times and it really works. It’s very good for getting into tough questions of company strategy. Particularly if you have a domineering boss and his somewhat hesitant team, this technique allows ideas to surface without anyone having to be seen as a trouble-maker. Often the front-line troops meeting the customers face-to-face know much more of the realities of the company’s successes or failures than the top brass on the 42nd Floor of the Head Office.

The reason for my amusement is the name this US-based group used: the KJ-Technique. They explain the name by stating that it was named for its inventor, Jiro Kawakita. Apparently in Japanese, it is usual to put the last name initial first.

Why amusing? Well I’ve been using it for years and calling it the Crawford Slip technique. I believe Crawford was a Professor in California in the 1920′s. Here is a link to give you more information on the Crawford Slip. As they say, a prophet is not honoured in his own country. It sounds as though Jiro Kawakita is doing for the USA what Deming did in the reverse direction for the Japanese with Quality in 1950. In fact, the KJ / Crawford Slip technique can have even more profound effects on the success of a company than all that Deming did, even though Quality is very important.

Or this item might have been titled, “To be or not to be, …”. This topic came to mind in thinking about a thread How to convince a client that an exit popup is not good. Decisions are usually easier if you only have two things to choose from or only two things to compare.

This idea has been around for at least 750 years. It’s known as Occam’s Razor. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a definition that Google has.
Definition of Occam’s Razor on the Web:
Originally propounded by the English philospher, William of Occam (1300-1349), as: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Which is translated: Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary. In other words, the simplest explanation is the one that is most likely to be correct, or KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) Occam’s Razor is often mentioned in Robert Heinlein’s works.
www.technomom.com/harassed/definitions.html
In other words, try very hard to cut it down to only two choices.

This idea can be further extended into a little two way table that looks like this:

In other words, you show the upsides and the downsides of each of the two choices. It’s surprising this simple approach isn’t used more. It’s a very powerful aid to taking a decision.

It has been suggested in a number of different contexts. One I like is called the Johari Window. If you would like to know more check out Windows – 3 for outstanding performance.

Helicoptering the IMC 2004, one impression that hit me was the different perspectives of the speakers and the majority of the audience members. The speakers are accustomed to dealing with websites of 1000′s of pages. Many members of the audience were business owners dealing with websites with less than 50 pages.

Any website is complex and different people will see different aspects as being important. It’s almost like those 6 blind men touching different parts of the elephant and trying to describe what they’re feeling. (It’s a tree trunk. It’s a wall. It’s a hose. etc.) My mental picture of this assembly is of 12 blind men. 6 of them are around a huge African elephant and trying to explain to the others what they perceive. The other 6 are grouped around a sleek antelope and trying to explain what they perceive. Clearly the confusion may be even greater than if a website was always the same entity.

A natural question then becomes, “What can either group of 6 blind men learn from the other group?” To use a technical term, what are the scaleable features that apply to both. Scaleable is defined as follows, “A scaleable system is capable of growing through additions of modular increments, without necessitating major modification to the original system.”

My own view is that one of the most important scaleable features is one that the antelope group will more easily recognize than the elephant group. This was illustrated by a fascinating question and response that was raised about an IBM website.

The most scaleable feature for me is created by something that is both a strength and a weakness of the Internet. This is the hyperlink. It is so easy to create another web page and give a hyperlink to that web page from your starting web page. Not surprisingly, if a website is being constructed by a committee the easiest resolution of a conflict is to add more hyperlinks so that everyone is somewhat satisfied.

The discussion at one Search Engine Optimization session at the IMC 2004 got on to why IBM has a problem getting good SE rankings for some of its desired keywords. You can illustrate this by a search for – notebook computers. I’ve just done a Google search and the first IBM page that comes up for Thinkpad is #75. An IBM representative acknowledged they had a problem in coordinating the efforts of different work groups working on different web pages. They had realized this and were now working on methods to overcome this problem.

So what is the most scaleable feature? My vote goes for, “Focus, focus, focus”. What is the competitive advantage you’re offering to your potential customer in your target niche? The antelope group relates to this almost instinctively. The elephant group may only see it when they run into problems caused by their lack of focus.

This week, a most amazing coincidence occurred. My brother, John Welford, in Edinburgh has worked on a Map for Brainware and he let me know that he was thinking of launching it with the name, BWMap. That stands for BrainWare Map. It is a resource used in Creative Learning and other related processes. This blog started off with the name, BWrap, so if it had still borne that name, just imagine the confusion.

I did a little Google work and suggested that BWMap was already used somewhat. Better by far to try to find a unique name. So the BrainWareMap was born. So here’s a Creative Learning resource, if you’re into that kind of thing.

IMC 2004 ran for three days last week here in Montreal. It was a valuable experience with thought-provoking speakers and a knowledgeable international audience. Sometimes such an event can trigger “new thoughts” in your mind. It certainly did for me. In some cases, these thoughts arise by applying “Helicopter Vision”.

“Helicopter Vision” is a term that I always heard was coined in Shell Oil many years back. It describes the ability to view from on high some situation and see in sharp outline the right “big picture”. From IMC 2004, there were three “thoughts” that came to me like that, which I will describe in upcoming items. The 4th item I will add thereafter is just a striking phrase that one speaker said that got me thinking.

Helicopter Vision is a very useful skill. An analogy I use for the same thing is the way an eagle flies high with extremely keen vision to spot what is really going on at ground level. It’s all part of better thinking processes. Those interested can read more in one of my papers on How To Think Better.