Finding focus

Editor's note: Susan Fader is insight navigator/qualitative researcher and strategist at Fader and Associates, a Teaneck, N.J., research firm. John Boyd is managing partner at Dyalogic, a Salt Lake City research firm.

In a 1999 experiment, psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris asked subjects to watch a video of a group of people passing a basketball back and forth and count how many passes occurred among members of the group wearing white. In the middle of the video, a person in a gorilla suit walks among the group, stands there for a moment and then walks off. When questioned later about what the video showed, most people do not remember seeing the gorilla.

How can they not see the gorilla that is directly in front of them? Well, it has to do with what you focus on. The viewers are told to focus on counting passes and, by necessity, their brains ignore other details of the situation, so they don’t “see” the gorilla. Their focus impacts their perception of reality. The gorilla is real but the reality for most viewers does not include it.

So what does the gorilla have to do with fielding a research study, developing a marketing plan or even collaborating in a team meeting? In short, we need to start seeing our gorillas – the details we are missing that may be important to our work! 

In the research world, we often assume that facts are static. However, if reality is based on perceptions, then reality is not static. It is always in flux and a person’s reality is always changing. Even if our baseline assumptions about a particular dynamic are correct in one moment, things could change in an instant. Each momentary reality adjusts as each new piece of information is identified. Instead of facts alone determining reality, like the gorilla in the video, variable perceptions create reality.

In addition, as our environment changes, information degrades and disorder (or entropy) sets in. Entropy causes the environment to become confusing and encrypted. When we operate in an encrypted reality, we make suboptimal decisions. Therefore, our intention should be to continually work to decode the ever-changing environment so that we can make better decisions, design and conduct better research studies and achieve our team goals.

To help in that effort, in this article we will lay out an approach we call DISCOVER, which uses dialogue and effective communication with team members to improve the quality and impact of the information available to us and ensure that we are all working in the same shared reality.

Clarifying upfront assumptions

A common mistake that leads to mismatched realities is that historically not much time or effort is spent clarifying upfront assumptions and then challenging them for the best-possible outcome. We make unconfirmed assumptions (as an individual or team) based on our selective filtering of experiences. These assumptions establish a mental model of the world around us which we use to further filter out details we deem important and act accordingly. Unless we challenge our reality, we will act in a way that is potentially mismatched with the reality of the other party.

Take, for example, P&G’s experience with Febreze. When P&G developed the product, it knew it had revolutionary technology that could chemically neutralize odors. So logically, the firm positioned it as an odor-eliminator and the marketing targeted consumers who lived in odorous surroundings, such as heavy smokers and pet owners. But sales were weak. Clearly the marketing team was missing something. Their basic assumption about the product (it was the best odor-killer available), which was true, was not resonating with their potential market. Why?

Desperate to save the product and improve sales, they decided to give Febreze to people and observe how they used it in their homes. P&G discovered that people were using Febreze differently from the way P&G thought they would. For these consumers Febreze was playing a very different role in their cleaning process. Users liked to ceremonially spray Febreze after they cleaned a room, made a bed or vacuumed a carpet to give the room that final touch and feel-good smell. The P&G team adjusted their reality, changed their positioning to connect to that behavior and it eventually became a $1 billion product.

The Febreze team knew what their reality was – what was true about their product. But that did not help them sell it. Their assumptions were mismatched with the marketplace. Once they clarified, through research, what the perception or reality of the marketplace was toward the product, they were able to succeed. 

The Febreze team over-focused on one detail, the assumption that consumers who had heavy odor problems were actively looking to eliminate these odors. Until they challenged that reality and discovered that people with household odors may not find them annoying, they could not “see” the consumers’ reasons for buying the product.

Here’s another example of mismatched realities. A pharmaceutical client was trying to figure out why its implant contraceptive was not being prescribed by physicians and it made an incorrect baseline assumption that physicians were not prescribing the contraceptive in high numbers because the uniqueness and product benefits of this contraceptive were not being effectively communicated. The firm thought the solution was to develop and explore different messaging that focused on better ways of communicating the benefits of the contraceptive. 

Based on this mismatched reality assumption, a multi-country research study with alternative messaging ideas was fielded which pointed to the most effective and motivating positioning. However, this positioning was not the direction that was needed, because the wrong basic assumption had led to pursuing the wrong focus.

During this research, a warm-up question on how the physician would describe this contraceptive to a prospective patient uncovered that it really wasn’t a benefit-messaging problem but one where many physicians were not sure how or where to implant.

It turned out that, rather than a new benefit-messaging approach, clarification and training on how to insert was needed. If we hadn’t asked the physicians how they would convince a patient to use the contraceptive we would have just gotten feedback on which messaging was the most powerful, which would not have solved the prescribing problem.

Operates under a mental model

Everyone operates under a mental model of the world, our own reality. The trouble comes when we assume our perspectives are similar to others without any verification of them being true.

How do we get better at identifying these important and often relevant details as marketers and team members? It starts with understanding basic assumptions. All people, all groups make assumptions about the world around them and as researchers and marketers, we are no different. 

This explains how people can see and experience the same events yet walk away with a different perception about what happened. We make selective observations and when we focus on certain details we miss other important details. 

Doing a better job of matching perceptions with each group’s or individual’s reality is imperative both during the fielding of the research and in interpreting and using the research findings. 

As studies have confirmed, the highest correlation to team effectiveness, measured by the team’s ability to achieve its goals, is the free flow of information equally distributed among the members of the team. Said another way, healthy information flow increases team effectiveness for any group, both at work and at home, and the opposite causes dysfunction. 

Not necessarily aligned

Dialogue is the key to healthy information flow. David Bohm, a well-known physicist who made several very significant discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics, was fascinated with how easily truth becomes obscured. He believed that most human interaction is incoherent, meaning our perceptions are not necessarily aligned, and his remedy for that is what he called dialogue. 

In fact, he believed the subject was so important that he wrote a book about it called On Dialogue. He attributes much of his most important scientific discoveries to his conversational collaboration with his peers in the field. In the book he argues that the best way for groups of people to become aligned amidst their differing perspectives is to have conversations about it so that reality can bubble to the top. 

The word dialogue means meaning flowing through. Dia means through and logue comes from logos or meaning. Bohm felt that the more we can have consistent dialogue about how we perceive things, the more coherent and aligned our worlds become, and the more “truth emerges unannounced.” 

But how do we effectively have dialogue with our team members so that good, clean, truthful information is flowing through the system? The acronym DISCOVER can help us continually discover truth in a constantly changing environment.

Destroy information barriers

Invite feedback

Seek out the data

Challenge assumptions

Observe the environment

Verify understanding

Emotional regulation

Revise and redo

Destroy information barriers. Anything that blocks the free flow of information will contribute to the dysfunction caused by mismatched reality. These barriers can be physical or cultural. In the case of Febreze, the researchers went into the homes to interview the consumers and they consistently had internal dialogue about their findings. With the contraception example, instead of doing a survey or making a phone call, in-person interviews provided visual body language cues that uncovered that the physicians did not know how to implant.

Invite feedback. People are naturally hesitant to offer feedback, especially if that feedback is intended for someone in a position of authority. There needs to be a constant assurance that feedback is not only welcomed but highly encouraged – especially the kind of feedback that is sometimes hard to hear. In the Febreze case, the research leader made it safe for his team members to assert their opinions. They weren’t afraid to disagree and this allowed vital information to flow through the group. 

Seek out the data. Precious information is hiding in the corners and recesses of your teams. It’s important to proactively seek it out through constant probing. Go right to the source and ask candid, relevant questions. Proactively find opportunities to have dialogue. Be accessible, ask your market and perform direct research to learn about what they really care about.

As an example, we worked on a recent research project in which the client wanted to better understand why heavy drinkers of its full-calorie carbonated beverage who also drank diet beverages were not drinking the diet version of its product. The client assumed it was because of dissatisfaction with taste and was about to launch an exploratory in alternative taste formulations. However, we did not base our research design on the assumption that taste was the turn-off, so we were able to find out that the reason for not drinking the diet version was completely different from what the company had assumed. One of the main appeals of the full-calorie drink was that it had caffeine. The main turn-off regarding the diet version was that many consumers incorrectly thought the caffeine had been taken out. They also let us know they liked the taste of the diet version but wished the caffeine had not been removed.

Challenge assumptions. Don’t let your mental models allow you to make unchecked assumptions that could point you down the wrong path. An example of this can be found with market categorization and segmentation. It is very helpful to group consumers, products and line-extensions into different categories. But the way corporate clients might segment the category may be different from the way consumers do. 

For another beverage client, one that tended to segment the many different offerings in its category by flavor and diet/non-diet, it was an eye-opener when heavy drinkers of its drink tended to segment the category by time of day and occasion. (For example, do I need a caffeine jolt or do I need some “me” time to relax while drinking the beverage?) It is very helpful to use a grouping exercise where you have consumers group and name different segments within a category.

Observe the environment. First, we must be self-aware enough to realize that our baseline assumptions may be off due to our mental model or how we perceive the situation. Those who are not self-aware, humble and courageous enough to do the work of dialogue for truth-discovery are doomed to making bad decisions.

When you are self-aware enough to see that your market is shifting or acting in a way that you don’t understand, or when your friend or family member’s behavior changes in a way that concerns you, engage in the dialogue to realign your realities.

Verify understanding. Include an exercise that helps confirm that you are making the right assumptions. At the beginning of any research study quickly check to make sure the corporate and research assumptions align with how the consumer is seeing the world. Verify everything, even down to words and phrases. One common misstep is when generic terms can mean different things to the corporate client and the consumer.

Good communication is quite difficult and without constant vigilance, words and phrases fly by and both parties involved in the interaction are disconnected from each other’s intent. It’s good to stop for ambiguous words and clarify meaning.

We do a lot of work in the financial services industry. Even though financial services is a term that most of us hear and use frequently, the majority of consumers in our research studies use an incomplete definition. Most only think that term refers to banking services and forget to include insurance products. 

So if you don’t make sure everyone is defining the term the same way, you end up with major differences in what you think you are talking about. So how do we clarify? At the beginning of a study ask everyone to write down their definition of the term and then ask what they wrote. If it’s different from the definition that needs to be used, then clarify, e.g., “For this conversation we are defining financial services as including both banking and insurance services.” It’s also helpful to say things back to make sure you’re receiving the message correctly. “When you say ______, what do you mean by that?” 

Emotional regulation. Emotions are what make us human; they can be your best friend and your worst enemy. How often during a conversation do we let our emotions lead us to stop listening and to lash out, causing others to shut down and suppress their true thoughts and feelings? When we let anger, envy, frustration and ego dictate our behavior, our information degrades. By the same token, when we become overly optimistic and lose touch with reality, we can get what a colleague used to call “happy ears,” where we project an outcome based on what we really want instead of what is actually likely to happen.

This is where the step of observing your environment can help. If we are self-aware and we start to notice that our emotions are clouding our decision-making, we can make a real-time adjustment and regulate the emotion so that we absorb truthful information.

Revise and redo. The previous DISCOVER elements relate to gathering the best-possible information in a constantly changing environment. This last step allows you to use the precious information gleaned from making adjustments and apply the learnings to your environment. In this way you can test the new information to see if it gives you better results and then the cycle starts over again where you reapply DISCOVER to decode this modified environment.

This produces a learning cycle of sorts, where if you are continually applying the steps in the midst of change, you are more likely to allow truth to emerge, giving you the cleanest possible information with which to make more optimal decisions. This actually increases the collective IQ of teams and enhances the ability to reach team objectives.

A perpetual learning system

In our fast-paced world, uncertainty, disorder and differing mental models can degrade the quality of information and hamper team effectiveness and goal-attainment. But if teams can keep information flowing by using tactics such as those found in the elements of DISCOVER, they will become a perpetual learning system in the midst of change and operate with the best-possible data, increasing their effectiveness and more efficiently achieving goals.