Saturday, October 08, 2011

Question unquestioned facts- Generate Insights

Root Cause
Have you heard of this unquestioned fact " Talk about your problems to near and dear and you will feel better". I have accepted this statement with so much faith that I didn't realize the problems that come along with it. What is this all about?

 Lets say your friend has a problem at work or to be specific has a problem with his/her boss. It is so natural for him to talk to  people he trusts. Each time he talks about the event which happened between him and his boss he starts interpreting new things about the event based on your questions and fabricates an answer to justify his position. With this new answer in mind, he walks up to another person and talks about it and based on the other person's question he fabricates a new answer on top of the existing one. Suddenly the problem will loom large in front of him.It will  appear insurmountable and difficult to solve it.

Behind every seemingly large problem there will just be a simple easy to understand root cause. In this case the fight between your friend and his boss could just be a simple EGO issue. The mind complicates it by building events on top of it. The path to find out the root cause is complicated but the root cause will definitely be simple. It takes mature, perseverant and honest  mind to through this complicated process of unearthing the simple fact. Just because the root cause is simple and obvious do not undermine its significance. After all we are simple beings who worked really hard to complicate ourselves.

Marketing is all about travelling a complicated path, trading minds with consumers and generating  insights. Insight is bound to be simple . Just because its simple and obvious we have the tendency to ignore it.. Beware..