商业领域最重要但最易被忽视的问题

从塞尔基因到联合科技，再到玛氏，所有公司都在狂热地谈论创新的必要性。不论是开发新的颠覆性产品还是持续完善运营流程，创新日益成为当今世界的主要竞技场。

因此，高管们（和组织内部的其他许多人）经常需要在不明确、不确定但又具有战略重要性的情形下作出决策。这些决策很少接受过全面的整体性分析模型的检验，高管们只是依靠自己的经验、直觉和信息不全面的判断来作出决定。但这通常并不会阻止高管们投入大量的资源，对他们所面临的情况进行“分析”。

可悲的是，大多数分析从一开始便注定失败，浪费了时间和金钱。

说它失败，并不是因为它最终没有改变高管的想法，而是因为，它从最开始便没有这样的机会。高管们面临的情况太过复杂，很难去应用某种能带来明确指导的综合分析模型。高管们会以“但这个模型忽略了（这种情况中某个支持其直觉的方面）”为理由，拒绝考虑任何模型生成的深刻见解。分析并未成为一个有效的工具，防止高管出现影响其直觉的各种认知偏差，而是变成了“样板文件”，用来证明高管们已经进行了尽责调查，或者支持他们早已做出的决定。即使采用更开放的分析方式，它也很少能够改变高管的想法。

高管们不妨采用一种更有建设性的替代方法。它允许进行支持直觉与判断的有用分析。对于某项行动方案，高管首先需要承认和接受自己的直觉。放弃“保持客观”的古训——此时已为时已晚。当你听到或考虑一种行动方案的时候，虽然你自己并没有意识到，但你内心早已得出结论。试图忽视自己的直觉，只不过是将它压制了下来。它随后又会以潜意识的形式再次出现，比如寻找各种理由，质疑与之相反的分析结果。

通过公开自己的直觉判断，高管可以针对能够真正实现某些目的的事情进行分析。直觉源于高管（以及我们每一个人）对这个世界的各种假设，其中许多为潜意识。这些假设则主要来自经验。虽然一般而言，经验是好事，但也可能带来反面的效果。

可惜的是，高管并不认为假设是假设；他们认为假设便是事实，因此不需要对它们有任何质疑。这种替代方法的第二步，是将一个人直觉背后的假设具体化。然而，由于人们通常认为假设便是事实，要做到这一点并不容易。有许多技巧可以帮助人们区分事实与假设，这些技巧往往涉及对客户的看法，内部执行能力或行动方案的可维护性。

在确定直觉背后的假设之后，下一步便是找出最有可能被证明无效的假设。方法之一是问自己：“如果我现在知道，尽管我有不同的直觉，但这个行动方案还是注定要失败，最可能的原因是什么？”这些最关键的假设可以成为分析的驱动因素，目标是验证或反驳那些决定行动方案最终能否成功的关键假设。

在确定了需要进行分析的关键假设后，挑战并未结束。正是在这个环节，商业领域最重要但最常被忽视的一个问题才会变得至关重要。不论采用数据采集还是前瞻性试点或者试验的方式，分析不仅要指向正确的问题，而且必须能够让人改变主意。在这方面，如果分析结果的消费者——即决策者——不接受分析的适当性和阐述，即便再成熟、再“正确”的分析也毫无用处。要实现这一结果，需要高管配合一线的分析师，保证分析对最终决策者的意义，也就是说，可以使他们改变主意。其中一种颇为有效的方法是，高管愿意在分析开始之前便坚决表明自己的态度：“如果你进行这项分析发现了这种结果，我会愿意承认我的直觉可能是错误的，并考虑改变主意。”这样一来，不仅可以保证分析是有意义且有影响力的，还可以让高管不失脸面，更容易改变主意。

如果这听起来有点像“科学方法”或“假设验证”，那是因为从根本上而言，它们是相通的。但由于数学模型很难完全捕获社会现象（比如商业）的总体性，因此，直觉/经验/判断将始终发挥重要作用，填补数学模型的空白。我们必须对“科学方法”进行修改，使其适应一个直觉与判断发挥重要作用的世界。

那么，什么可以改变你的想法？（财富中文网）

译者：刘进龙/汪皓

审校：任文科

All companies, from Celgene to United Technologies to Mars, are maniacal about the need for innovation. Whether for new, game-changing products or continuous improvement of operational processes, innovation is increasingly the primary grounds for competition in today’s world.

As a result, senior executives (and many others throughout organizations) are constantly confronted with the need to make decisions in situations characterized by ambiguity, uncertainty and strategic importance. Rarely are these decisions amenable to all-inclusive holistic analytical modeling, leaving executives to rely on their experience, intuition and partially informed judgment. However, this typically does not prevent them from investing large sums of resources in an attempt to subject the situation to “analysis.”

Sadly, most of this analysis is doomed from the start, and hence a waste of time and money. Not that it does not end up changing executives’ minds, but rather that it has no chance to do so from the start. The situations are simply too complex to allow for a comprehensive model that can produce definitive guidance. The insights produced by any model can be easily dismissed with “But that ignores [fill in the blank with whatever ignored aspect of the situation that supports one’s intuition].” Analysis becomes not a tool to protect executives from the many well-documented cognitive biases that can influence intuition, but instead boilerplate attempts to demonstrate responsible due diligence or to support whatever one has already decided to do. Even when such analysis is entered into in a more open-minded way, it rarely changes anyone’s mind.

A far more constructive alternative approach is possible, one that permits useful analysis in support of intuition and judgment. It involves first acknowledging and embracing what your gut is telling you about a particular course of action. Jettison the old “stay objective” maxim. It’s too late. As soon as you hear of or consider a course of action, you have already jumped to a conclusion, even if you are not aware of it. By attempting to ignore your intuition, you are simply driving it underground. It will emerge later, often in still subconscious ways, such as finding all sorts of reasons to dispute analysis that runs contrary to it.

By getting intuition out in the open, an executive creates the possibility of targeting analysis at something that might actually accomplish something. Intuition is shaped by all sorts assumptions — many subconscious — that executives (and all of us) make about the world. These assumptions are heavily informed by experience. While experience is generally a good thing, it can also be inhibiting.

Unfortunately, assumptions don’t feel like assumptions; they feel like facts, and hence not necessary to challenge. The second step in this alternative approach is to flesh out the assumptions behind one’s intuition. Because assumptions often feel like facts, this can be tricky. Techniques are available to help people identify these facts/assumptions, often related to beliefs about customers, ability to execute internally or the defensibility of the course of action as others respond to it.

Once identified, the next step is to find the assumptions most likely to prove invalid. One way to identify these is to ask oneself, “If I knew right now that despite my intuition this course of action was doomed to fail, what would be the most likely reasons?” These most critical assumptions then become the drivers of analysis, targeted at validating — or refuting — the critical assumptions on which the success of the course of action will ultimately hinge.

The challenge, however, does not stop with simply identifying the critical assumptions for analysis. It is here where the most important and least asked question in business becomes paramount. Whether comprised of data collection or proactive pilots or experiments, analysis must not only be targeted at the right issues, but actually capable of changing someone’s mind. A sophisticated, “correct” analysis is of no use in this regard if the consumers of the results — the decision-makers — do not buy into the appropriateness and interpretation of the analysis. This requires executives to work with analysts on the front end to make sure that the analysis performed is meaningful to the ultimate decision-makers, in the sense that it might cause them to change their minds. An excellent way to ensure this is for executives to be willing to put a stake in the ground before the analysis is conducted: “If you do this analysis and it shows this, then I am going to be willing to acknowledge that my intuition is possibly wrong and hence consider changing my mind.” Not only does this help ensure that analysis is meaningful and influential, but it makes it much easier for executives to change their minds without losing face.

If this smacks of the “scientific method” or “hypothesis testing,” that’s because it is, at a fundamental level. But because the totality of social phenomena, like business, is rarely able to be completely captured in a mathematical model, intuition/experience/judgment must invariably play a role in filling in the gaps. The “scientific method” must be adapted to a world in which intuition and judgment are going to play a significant part.

So, what can change your mind?