Slay Opinion Leadership with Validation!

“In a startup, no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.” Steve Blank

Startups learn the negative consequences of prioritizing opinion over customer truth very quickly. At worse, the consequence is death. The survivors quickly pivot to the customer and dump the notion that they know best.

Blank’s comment is amplified for larger, more mature companies.

To being with, sheer population generates a high volume of opinions. These opinions compete, for a variety of reasons inside the organization (hierarchy, silos, protection, ego, self-interest), and the raw customer truth is lost under waves of “re-interpretation”.

To make matters worse, typical research methodologies that provide answers to “lead the witness” questions, are expensive and take too long. Most important, they don’t reveal what customer’s really want. Only measuring what they have available.

Unfortunately, the consequence of all this can take longer to come to light. Share loss can look like coastal erosion, like it’s not really happening, not really meaningful. Until time reveals the true extent of competitive loss and/or the big competitive storm hits.

THE PITFALL: OPINIONS AS ANSWERS

Opinions in themselves are not necessarily a problem. Opinions seed discussions, offer alternative ways of seeing & solving the problem. We form our opinions based on experience, intuition, values, and our assessment of the context.

It’s when opinions are asserted as answers the problem arises.

Answers shut down discussion. Answers lock out other possibilities worth exploring. Answers can compete, maybe move the discussion into a contest to win, to protect turf.

THE SHIFT: TURN OPINIONS INTO TESTABLE HYPOTHESES.

Opinions are really hunches. Hunches about the world, how consumers behave, what works/what doesn’t work. The issue is over time our hunches are less true. The world changes, consumer change, technology changes. The coastline changes.

Hunches are really hypotheses. Hypotheses are built on assumptions, that can be validated to be true or false.

So now the shift.

Rather than shutting down people’s opinions, let’s re-cast opinions as hypotheses which can be validated with customers.

Take these hypotheses (formerly opinions) to customers/prospects for Validation!

This creates new learning. Opinions will now evolve, informed by market evidence, which can be tested again and again, resulting in new insights and better outcomes.

MAKE THE SHIFT.

Making this shift starts with two ingredients, the methods:

First, adopt lean validation methods that are fast and inexpensive. Validation brings the conversation back to the customer, the source of commercial truth. When combined with fast “test and learn” cycles, teams can explore many avenues and build a shared understanding based on the evidence.

Second, leaders can start this change with themselves. Corporate habits begin at the top. If leaders make their decisions based on their opinion, it’s not surprising that this is norm behavior inside the company.

Leaders can turn their opinions into hypotheses and examine the validity of their own assumptions directly with customers.

While the outward benefit of Validation is the commercial impact of better products and services, Validation can also change the DNA of an organization evolves by putting the focus back on the customer and using the customer evidence to determine what to do/make next.

Welcome your comments and likes. If this article resonates, share with others.

Got a question? Make a comment or email sean@forgeoutcomes.com.

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