We Are All Cognitive Misers
We don’t understand each other, let alone customers
A good old funny story says:
A person found an old lamp, rubbed it, and a genie popped out.
And the genie said:
– Listen, I am an ancient genie, I am four thousand years old. I know I must fulfill three of your wishes, but I am so decrepit and weak that I can only fulfill one.
The person thought for some time and said:
– I have a house in Europe and another one in the USA. I am afraid of flying, so please, build a bridge between my houses so I could travel by car.
– Are you out of your mind? – exclaimed the genie – Can you imagine how much concrete I need? You’re asking for a bridge over the ocean! But it is deep! There are waves and winds and all that… Please, please, ask for something else!
The person thought some more and said:
– Make it so that I always understand my spouse.
The genie kept silent for a while and quietly asked:
– What were you saying about that bridge again?
Though humans are social creatures and spend their lives communicating with each other, they are bad at understanding even our best friends, children, and marital partners. We need to make a deliberate effort to get to know them well.
But if we want to understand our customers, we must put even more effort into it.
Because we are all cognitive misers.
Cognitive misers
A few years ago, researchers asked 400 college roommates to describe their own personalities, along with their roommate’s, to see if they actually knew each other (source).
The roommates, who had lived together for more than nine months, knew each other a bit better than complete strangers.
The correlations between how students saw themselves and how their roommates saw them were surprisingly low, in the .2-.5 range (where 1 would be a perfect correlation).
Then, the researchers asked married couples to do the same. Alas – they found out that there were significant differences in perception among spouses, too.
If you believe you’re a neat freak, but your marital partner thinks ‘chaos’ is your middle name, you’re no exception to this rule.
In the 1980s, psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelly Taylor coined the concept of cognitive miserliness. We rely on simple, efficient thought processes to get the job done.
If a modest effort is enough to get along with a friend, lover, or neighbor, why bother?
Our brains consume so much energy that seeking ways to save it is our natural trait. We always look for a way to cut corners. We may not notice it, but the computing devices inside our skulls are very inventive regarding workarounds, heuristics, and shortcuts.
If you’re too much of a cognitive miser in your marriage, it will cost you a divorce.
If you demonstrate this feature in business, you’re unlikely to be successful.
Their Majesty Exchange
We have already discussed that business is all about exchange.
A company exchanges customer values for money.
Employees trade their time for many different assets like salary, acceptance, and the ability to feel confident about the future.
Business partners want as many resources as possible for the values they offer.
And these exchange deals remain mutually beneficial so long as both parties believe they get not less than they give.
So, a great strategic thinker is not the one who foresees the future. It is the one who understands their employees, business partners, suppliers, subcontractors, and, above all, customers.
When I work on a strategy with a team, I always insist that all the key members, including founders, C-suite level executives, and sometimes board members, should go out of the office and meet customers face-to-face.
We always order customer research but never rely only on it. We need to know what customers feel, think, believe, or fear.
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