What if marketing had a black box? What if marketers ran campaigns as pilots fly planes? We would learn a lot, and our mission-directed behaviours would be seriously exposed. Whilst we would crash a lot, would we learn a lot?
Marketers should actively look for data on their errors so they can drive improvements. Image: Shutterstock
In a knowledge-rich world, progress does not lie in the direction of reading information faster, writing it faster, and storing more of it. Progress lies in the direction of extracting and exploiting the patterns of the world… And that progress will depend on … our ability to devise better and more powerful thinking programs for man and machine.’
Herbert Simon, ‘Designing Organizations for an Information-rich World’, 1969.
One of the best accounts of the Middle Eastern part of the Silk Road is that by Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo (d. 1412), who was sent as ambassador to Tamerlane by King Henry III of Castile and Leon in Spain. In his multiple audiences with the barbarian conqueror, never once did the taciturn Tamerlane look for praise. He inquired about his deficiencies. The Castilian delegates were asked to study the supply chain of the Chagatai Mongols end-to-end and suggest improvements.
Napoleon Bonaparte rarely held a council of war but always had volumes of details written on post facto battle evaluations. What was done wrong? Why and how to prevent the recurrence of any mistakes? So detailed was his grasp of past events that when, in exile after Waterloo, he wrote his memoir—The Memorial of Saint Helena—it transformed him from a bloody-minded despot to a fair-minded constitutionalist who had saved the Revolution and liberated Europe’s peoples. Published in 1823, the memorial rocketed to the top of the century’s list of bestsellers. In it, he wrote at length about his losses and faulty assumptions.