Customers aren’t Complicated. They’re Complex.

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We’ve been reading a great book from our friend Dr. Rick Nason of Dalhousie University, called It’s Not Complicated: The Art and Science of Complexity for Bsiness SuccessIt’s definitely on our “read and recommended list for all our clients. When Megann met with Rick recently, they were discussing analogies for complex versus complicated things, such as: “Complex is like mayonnaise – once you make it, it can’t be separated back into eggs, oil, and lemon juice”. She shared her favourite description of companies who expect to be able to use complicated thinking for complex problems, like the way customers make decisions:

“It’s as though they think customers can be handled like the cakes in an Easy Bake (TM) oven. If they just apply all the same tactics the same way, all the consumer behaviours will pop out the same way at the other end of the machine.”

Hopefully you haven’t been managing your customers like inputs in an Easy Bake oven, but if you have, and you’d like to work on building your team’s complexity thinking, we can help. Why don’t you give us a call, and we can get started with an introductory conversation about how to use the right thinking tools at the right time?

We’re Megann and Steve Willson, and we’re the Partners here at PANOPTIKA. We’d love to work with you and your team to help you see everything you need to know to make better decisions. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or on LinkedIn. And if you’d like to play the home game with us, and get insights direct to your inbox, you can subscribe using the orange button.