Observe, don’t infer
Inference can be a good thing – if it is accurate. That’s the rub. Sometimes it is not accurate. Some of our closely held truths are inferred rather than observed and verified first-hand. This can be an expensive error in the business world. For example, who are my most productive employees? Notoriously, persons that speak and walk quickly can gain a reputation for high productivity. Those that are slow speakers or walkers can earn the opposite tag, even if they accomplish more than their swift-footed, slick-tongued counterparts. This gap between perceived and real productivity can result in a flawed evaluation of individual performances.
There are many methods to get hard observations and data to compare against the “facts” that we hold dear. Have you observed your product being used in the field? Is the output of the workforce traceable back to individual contributors? When is the last time you conducted a formal survey of employees, customers or other constituents of your business? What assumptions do you take for granted that might be debunked by such exercises?
One relatively easy exercise is to trace the actions of a user of your website. If you have a brick and mortar store and a website, you can have customers that visit your store use the website as they normally would while being observed on an in-store computer. If you are not comfortable asking customers to participate, you can develop basic tasks that are often performed on your website and recruit non-customers not familiar with your site to perform the tasks and comment on the experience. Videotaping the experience can also lend insights regarding where the user’s eyes are drawn, how long they spend on pages, where they run into hurdles or have to backtrack, and other pieces of information. The point with this example and the others is that the decisions we all make are often based on perceptions of reality and inferred “facts” that might not be entirely accurate. The good news is that getting real world information to confirm or refute our assumptions is often inexpensive and can be accomplished quickly.
Ask MagnaVaria to help you move from inference to real facts today.
