#12 If you're biased and you know it
just breathe, cause we all are.
Hi,
This is Room To Fail, a newsletter about learning strategy and how to let ourselves fail, just to only get things right the next time. Or the next.
I’m Irina.
And here’s the shortest letter to you yet.
🧠⚡︎BRAIN FAILURE
This week’s brain failure is about a love and hate thing about strategy: taking yourself as a starting point when thinking about insights.
Why is it love and hate?
Well, I love working to find the most sincere answers about the problem in question and thinking about how I react on occasions and how do I feel when I buy something. This is one of my favourite things to do: introspection. I’ll let my mind fly and analyse my behaviour, words and feelings, ask myself “why?” a lot. Always next to pen and paper.
But why I find this a hate situation also is because we’re all so biased and sometimes we have so many unprocessed feelings that can take us to many wrong paths. And we don’t even realise it. OFC, the strategy process means backing up the gut feeling with the research, but when the feeling is strong, we sometimes tend to skew the research result to fit our hunch. Or just see them from the desired angle.
This week, I came across somebody else’s brand strategy and amazed me how much of that person was in the ideas, insights and target personas.
And that got me asking myself (and now you): when you begin with intuition how do you push yourself to break it if it’s wrong? And how do you feel afterwards - while realigning your beliefs?
🤯 “HOW DID THEY THINK ABOUT THAT?!” SECTION
One link this week:
Check out this practical guide to Briefs and Briefings from Nick Docherty.
📚 THE STRATEGY BOOK CLUB
(How not to Plan: 66 ways to screw it up, Les Binet and Sarah Carter -
COMPLETED: Y/N, page 152)
A soothing read of 3 more articles, as authors call them, about collective thinking.
And here’s what I loved and found soothing as an introvert that always hated badly organised brainstorms because I felt stupid not managing to think out loud and have great ideas in a group.
Harness collective thinking carefully. Get it wrong, and it can be inefficient, unproductive, or downright dangerous.
Hire and use diverse thinkers. Look for people who think critically and ask awkward questions. Not people who “fit in”.
Don't underestimate the power of solo thinking. Many of the best thinkers are introverts. And most people do their best thinking when they're alone.
Don't default to a brain brainstorming session. Find smarter, more efficient ways to harness collective brainpower.
That’s it this week.
Hope you are well and enjoying this summer the best that you can - while wearing your mask.
Let’s not try to become better for a second.
Just stay in the now a little longer,
i.
P.S: Guys, I’m going to take a break to process some feelings and manage some personal issues that need a lot of my energy and use lots of my brainpower. I going to be back soon with new strategy learnings and stupid GIFs.
Thanks for understanding.
During this time you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Or write to me anytime.