Oct08

You Can’t Know and Not Know at the Same Time

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Much as We Think

I had a conversation this weekend with a young client. He’s building a wonderful product. When I asked him to define his ideal customer he said, “That person is just like me.”

I said, “Hold on, cowboy. Can’t be so! It absolutely, positively has to be someone other.”

One of the hardest parts of making products or designing services is remembering that we can’t possibly reflect the customers that we want to serve. Our customers will never have the intuitive detail and benefit of the thinking behind the product that we have. Things that are obvious to us. They will entirely miss until we tell them.

It’s another reason why we can’t check our own. If we know the thinking that went into it, we can’t find the hidden assumptions or the parts that are missing. We already know why we did what we did.

When we invite an intelligent outsider to table to look with “fresh eyes” and a “fresh mind,” that person won’t necessarily understand when he or she encounters the places where we skipped a step in laying out the logic.

It’s a simple case of you can’t know and NOT know at the same time.

Or as it was Barbara Kiviat said in such a memorable way . . .

When you hear a tune in your head, it’s tough to put yourself in the position of a person who doesn’t. –BARBARA KIVIAT, Time

Hope I didn’t stick some sticky song in your head.

 

  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    Hi Liz

    Funny (again?). My partner in the ‘wood-crime’ knows and cherish quality in products. He hates it when a for a wooden floor the manufacturer used a different colour filler to fill a split in the board. One of our ranges has many dark coloured filled splits and knots in the boards – s feature of the range ‘Aged and Destressed’.
    I have to stop him ‘explaining’ his quality control mentality to our clients who just love the look of those ‘old boards’, filled with a different colour ;-)
    (the filled splits etc don’t reduce the quality of the boards, normally it’s done with a matching colour)

    Reason why this post is ‘funny’: our rep from this range just visited us with new sample boards and off my partner went in a ‘rant’ about the filling ;-)

    Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)

  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    Hi Liz

    Funny (again?). My partner in the ‘wood-crime’ knows and cherish quality in products. He hates it when a for a wooden floor the manufacturer used a different colour filler to fill a split in the board. One of our ranges has many dark coloured filled splits and knots in the boards – s feature of the range ‘Aged and Destressed’.
    I have to stop him ‘explaining’ his quality control mentality to our clients who just love the look of those ‘old boards’, filled with a different colour ;-)
    (the filled splits etc don’t reduce the quality of the boards, normally it’s done with a matching colour)

    Reason why this post is ‘funny’: our rep from this range just visited us with new sample boards and off my partner went in a ‘rant’ about the filling ;-)

    Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)

  • http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss

    Hi Karin!
    We all have our things that are “our things” not customer things. And then there are those things that our “our company things,” not customer things. By the time we get to the things where we’re like our customers, it’s no wonder we don’t which is which. :)

    It’s so much easier just to ask someone else. :)

    Funny. yep!

  • http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss

    Hi Karin!
    We all have our things that are “our things” not customer things. And then there are those things that our “our company things,” not customer things. By the time we get to the things where we’re like our customers, it’s no wonder we don’t which is which. :)

    It’s so much easier just to ask someone else. :)

    Funny. yep!

  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    Hi Liz

    Asking is good, but it doesn’t end there. Realising and recognising the other’s view – or in this case – preferences should follow from the answer we receive after asking ;-)
    Otherwise, we keep ‘hearing’ our own things, no matter how many times we ask.

    Karin H.

  • http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk Karin H.

    Hi Liz

    Asking is good, but it doesn’t end there. Realising and recognising the other’s view – or in this case – preferences should follow from the answer we receive after asking ;-)
    Otherwise, we keep ‘hearing’ our own things, no matter how many times we ask.

    Karin H.

  • http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss

    Great point. Listening, actively wanting to know. Yep. Some folks are just going through the routine of confirming their own conclusions. You are so right about that. :)

  • http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss

    Great point. Listening, actively wanting to know. Yep. Some folks are just going through the routine of confirming their own conclusions. You are so right about that. :)

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