Picked this up looking across #4AsSTRATFEST. A good brief should allow for fruitful conversation by all involved.
Think the categories are something like: The Common Goal/Aim, Insight (?), Conceptual Idea, Measurement. Or something similar.
Anyway,
Jung von Matt does good stuff.
When I started doing planning this was one of the first principles I found and used. I still call back to it... The balance of doing the basics well and then finding something remarkable to add to it is a helpful base to try to work from. Like combining John Wooden and Led Zeppelin.
I was putting together a bunch of important philosophies and I was pleased that this was still with me. The Art of War has lots of amazing thoughts. But this one is the bit that really connected with me for business. I've covered lots of miles with it.
Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System in the 1950s, describes the method in his book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production as “the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach . . . by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.”
Ohno encouraged his team to dig into each problem that arose until they found the root cause. “Observe the production floor without preconceptions,” he would advise. “Ask ‘why’ five times about every matter.”
Which is great. But when taking the 'why' dive in consumer research, stop asking why before you get to "because it makes life better" as the answer. All 'why' question probes with consumers ultimately lead there--from socks, to cheese, to cars, to snow blowers. So 'making life better' isn't your unique root insight.
I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
Which is probably why someone wise once said "praise by name, criticize by category."
And how tough issues, like this, might just get some traction.
Whatever the job that lands on your desk, begin by breaking it down according to the Eisenhower method, and then decide how to proceed. We often focus too strongly on the ‘urgent and important’ field, on the things that have to be dealt with immediately. Ask yourself: When will I deal with the things that are important, but not urgent? When will I take the time to deal with the important tasks before they become urgent? This is the field for strategic, long-term decisions.
There's a great interview with Moby which has been nicely summarized here. It's about creativity with digital tools. There's a part when he talks about depth, and how easy it is to sidestep doing the work to get there.
"We’re sacrificing rare creativity that has depth for ubiquitous creativity that is very shallow. Like letters vs emails. A letter was rare, but people would tend to write quite a lot. Emails are ubiquitous and they tend to be twenty words. It’s the same sort of thing with music thirty years ago, someone might work on it for six months, and really struggle and it was rare and perhaps had depth, whereas now, you can make an okay sounding piece of music in 30 minutes but it might not have has much depth. [The danger is] because if you can make something look pretty good with not that much effort it’s hard to push yourself to make something great."
I suppose this has always been true, regardless of digital tools. Just really liked the way he said it.
In general, this is a great piece. When looking at pure strategy you need data and analytics to get you, and the room, to where things need to go. The Netflix quote is from here and it's a wonderful articulation of how to think about the importance of data every day.
But again in this piece, just like Always and Never, things aren't black and white, they are shades of gray.
The piece talks about Got Milk? and how the insight that led to that effort, using a focus group, is now something 'of the past.'
I wonder how analyzing milk data would get to Got Milk?'s taste appeal pairing insight with peanut butter sandwiches and cookies as quickly or as decisively as talking with milk drinkers did?
I also wonder if the Got Milk? campaign launched today for the first time, if it wouldn't have many of the similar successes that it had years ago?
Just because we can now do a new thing doesn't mean we should stop doing the other thing. It means we must think more critically and thoughtfully at the onset. Choosing our tools and approaches with care, versus defaulting to one. Ironically, that's what we did in the past. And with the way so many people talk now, it's what we're at risk of still doing today. Just with the new thing, so that makes it okay.