Making Decisions with an Understanding of what is Currently Happening
As we mentioned in a previous post from last year, our knowledge (regardless of industry or discipline) has been based on our understanding of what has happened in the past coupled with our understanding of what is happening at the current time. We use these two sets of inputs to make a prediction of what will happen in the near future. Typically, the better the inputs and understanding of these two data categories the better the predictions of future events will be. In this post, we discussed how these inputs disappeared last year due to the pandemic. But one of these inputs has been on shaky ground, at best, in recent years based solely on the fact that our ability to understand what is happening right now is based off a mechanism that is decades old and has not adjusted to the world we currently live in.
Our world has changed by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. With the advent of the internet and our rapid embrace of the digital world, our lives have become almost unrecognizable to our 1980’s selves. Most of us are walking around with a defacto computer thousands of times more powerful than the one we used to get ourselves through high school and/or college (OK anyone under the age of 40 probably didn’t really get that reference), we have the ability to connect with family and friends around the world with ease (trust me Gen Z, this was difficult), and our ability to make the perfect mixed tape takes minutes not hours of painstaking radio listening and a quality double cassette deck (just lost the millennials).
So much of our lives have changed and this certainly includes how we receive and process information. Post-World War II through the 1990’s information moved relatively slowly. Indeed, there were only a few select times during the day when most people tended to get new information that could change their opinions and how they see the world around them. Whether it was reading the newspaper while eating breakfast, listening to the radio before or after work, watching the 6 pm news, or primetime on television, there were a small number of times opinions had a chance of changing or developing. These information opportunities were also incredibly predictable. From 8 pm to 10 pm you knew how many people were typically watching which of the three channels available in which area. There were one or two newspapers they could be reading, and only a handful of choices on the radio. During these times only the biggest stories could go “viral” and it had to be big. The success of the iconic ads such as “I’d like to give the world a Coke” are staggering given how hard it was to spread information. It feels safe to say that pre-internet, Nathan Apodaca would not have been a household name (well at least a household visual).
Today we live in a world where we are bombarded with new information by the hour and even the minute. Our choices of information are almost infinite, and our ability to access information has no time constraints. With new information comes changes in our perceptions and opinions. Over the past couple of decades, we have gone from a world where changes in opinions tended to be slow and deliberate, to one where we are one tweet away from a whole new landscape to deal with.
These rapid changes are a challenge, to say the least for companies and organizations trying to make the best decisions possible based on the best information available of what the current landscape actually is. In our previous world, research on people’s opinions and behaviors could be conducted over a reasonable amount of time, the information could be analyzed, an organization could make a decision based on that information weeks later, and have a reasonable expectation that the information they were basing their decisions on, was still current and applicable.
However, this is not the case in today’s world. Today, by definition the data is out of date by the time the analysis is delivered. This creates a difficult situation for decision-makers since there is less confidence that decisions being made are still the correct ones.
When research is being conducted in the traditional manner in today’s world, there is far too much time between results and decision points. In the example above, the data was being collected in a time of relative stability. The results dipped slightly during the collection period but not enough that would be seen as meaningful. Then as internal discussions are happening and decisions are being made, the negative trajectory continues until a breaking point right before the decision point was implemented. This idea was going to fail regardless of execution given the shifting landscape.
Sometimes the movements are less dramatic but still can dictate the effectiveness of organizational outreach. If your audience is in a more negative mood, due to external events, their reaction to an upbeat ad (as an example) will be different than if the ad matched their mood. Conversely if outside events are creating a positive upswing and the outreach is negative in tone it is likely to fall on deaf ears.
Trying to solve the problem of how to match data and analysis with an ever changing world was what led us to develop and implement our spectrum-based research approach on the Trendency platform. Trying to solve today’s challenges with methods designed around the world of the 20th century was not cutting it. It was time for a new approach. An approach which allows leaders the ability to make decisions with up to date information, understand what the likely outcomes are, and also have the ability to look backwards in time to understand why things happened.
On our platform we continuously engage with our clients’ key audiences over time, through short sets of questions. Trendency dynamically adjusts as people’s perspectives change, giving our clients the ability to make decisions based on knowledge of what is happening right now.
Using the same situation as above, the continuous nature of the data collection allows for timelier decisions. This then provides the ability to maximize outcomes and head off issues before they happen. Instead of implementing a change right after a spike in negative sentiment, the organization was able to understand that this downward nature of the data was indeed a trend. The decision point was then moved up, and a different approach was taken. The end result: the ability to reverse the negative trend and ultimately move the needle in a positive direction.
With a continuous understanding of how the environment is changing, decisions are timelier, match the current mood of your target audience, and ultimately increase the odds of success.
Decision makers no longer need to guess on what is happening or make assumptions on whether anything has shifted. Now information matches the speed of the world we live in, giving decision makers the ability to make their choices based on the current landscape, not what was happening a few days or weeks ago. With the new approach to understanding what is currently happening, organizations are able to get back to the days of combining historical data with what is happening now. In other words, much better decision making.
Our world has changed. Our research should as well.