When I was younger, I asked a lot of questions. Why? How? Why not? But that doesn’t make sense? What happens if…? Eventually, as I’m sure happens to most relentlessly curious kids, I’d get some variation of: “Dan, stop asking so many questions.” Or worse, the answer I’ve probably hated my entire life: “Because that’s just how it is.”
// I’ve never been particularly good at accepting that.
Maybe it’s because I genuinely want to understand things. Maybe it’s because I’ve always suspected the first answer isn’t necessarily the real answer. Or maybe I’m just a pain in the arse. Probably a healthy combination of all three.
But it’s quite funny that one of the things I used to get told off for as a kid is now essentially something people pay me to do.
// ASK TOO MANY FUCKING QUESTIONS.
I used to joke that, as a strategist, I basically get paid to listen. And listening is absolutely part of it. You listen to customers in research. You listen to clients in workshops. You listen to sales teams, employees, founders, CEOs and the people actually doing the work. You listen to what people say, how they say it, what they don’t say and, occasionally, the slightly awkward silence after you’ve asked something nobody particularly wanted you to ask.
// But I’ve realised over the years that listening isn’t really the job.
Interrogating what you’ve heard is.
Because it’s not enough to hear someone say, “customers want convenience.” Why? What does convenience actually mean to them? Faster? Easier? Fewer decisions? Less anxiety? Less fucking around? What are they currently doing instead? What are they willing to sacrifice for that convenience? And if everybody in the category already claims to be convenient, is convenience even an advantage anymore?
Sales are falling. Why? Customers aren’t engaging. Why? Competitors are growing. Why? Are they actually better, or are they cheaper, easier to find, more distinctive, more relevant or simply more famous? People aren’t buying the product. Do they not want it, or don’t they understand it? Do they understand it but not believe it? Are we solving the wrong problem? Or, perhaps most uncomfortably, are we solving something nobody actually gives a shit about?
One answer should create another question.
BECOME A DETECTIVE.
I think that’s one of the most useful ways to think about strategy, marketing and, frankly, business in general. You’re collecting evidence. Looking for patterns. Noticing inconsistencies. Following strange little clues. Working out what’s missing. Trying to understand why somebody did something rather than simply recording that they did it.
Observation matters enormously, but observation tells you what is. Curiosity makes you wonder why it is, whether it needs to be, and what else it could become.
// And that’s where things start getting interesting.
Because one of the most dangerous things you can become in business is too accepting. Accepting the brief. Accepting the research. Accepting what customers tell you at face value. Accepting the category conventions. Accepting that something has always been done a certain way, therefore presumably there must be a good reason for it.
// Sometimes there is…
Sometimes the reason is that somebody made a decision twelve years ago, everybody else copied it, the person who made the decision left nine years ago, nobody remembers why it happened and now an entire category treats it like the fucking Ten Commandments.
// “THAT’S HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE IT” ISN’T AN ANSWER. IT’S AN INVITATION TO ASK ANOTHER QUESTION.
Curiosity is also where innovation starts. Not with an “innovation workshop”. Not with a wall of Post-it notes. Not when someone puts IDEATE on a PowerPoint slide and tells everyone to think outside the box for the next 45 minutes.
// It starts when somebody notices something and wonders why.
Why does it have to work like this? What if we did the opposite? Why hasn’t anybody tried that? Why are customers using our product in a way we didn’t design it for? What problem are they solving for themselves that we haven’t noticed? What if we removed this completely? Could this be easier? Better? Cheaper? More useful? More interesting? More human?
The interesting thing about questions is that they compound. One question leads to an answer, which creates another question, which exposes an assumption, which opens another possibility. Eventually you can find yourself somewhere completely different from where you started.
LISTEN. BUT DON’T JUST LISTEN.
There’s that famous Henry Ford quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Except Henry Ford probably never actually said it… (apparently…)
Which is fucking brilliant when you think about it, because it perfectly demonstrates the point: someone should have asked another question.
But whether Ford said it or not, the idea people are trying to express when they use it is still useful. It isn’t that customers are stupid or that research is pointless. Quite the opposite. You should listen obsessively. Observe people. Understand their behaviour. Ask them about their lives, frustrations, workarounds, ambitions and anxieties.
Just don’t confuse what somebody tells you they want with understanding why they want it.
People might have asked for a faster horse because what they actually wanted was to get somewhere faster. Or more reliably. Or more comfortably. The horse was simply the solution available inside the world they already understood.
// Your job isn’t necessarily to give them the horse. Your job is to understand the fucking journey.
BE CURIOUS. BE INTERESTED. BE INTERESTING.
I honestly think those are some of the most valuable qualities you can have as a strategist, marketer, business owner or just a human being.
Be interested in things you don’t understand. Talk to people who know things you don’t. Read outside your category. Notice weird behaviour (but don’t be weird about it). Ask stupid questions. Ask obvious questions. Ask uncomfortable questions. Ask the question everyone assumes has already been answered.
// Don’t ask questions just to sound clever – Ask because you genuinely want to know.
If you want to innovate, solve problems, identify opportunities or create something meaningfully different, at some point you have to stop accepting the world exactly as it has been presented to you and wonder:
Why?
So what?
What aren’t we seeing?
What if we’re wrong?
And perhaps the most useful question of all:
// WHAT ELSE COULD BE TRUE?
Turns out I didn’t ask too many questions as a kid. I was just getting in the fucking reps…
// Here’s the getting to uncomfortable truths and getting to the underlying reasons of human behaviour!
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PS: Clarity is easy to talk about and surprisingly difficult to create. If your team is currently navigating complexity, competing priorities or strategic drift, I’d be happy to have a chat.
💀🖤
Cheers,
DANIEL JACOBS
http://bjornfox.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/denialjacobs/
Melbourne, Australia
