The Cost of „Easy“ to Your Business
Listen to the audio version here
In business and in our personal lives, we are addicted to “EASY". It is easier to drive than to walk. It is easier to take the elevator than to walk the stairs. It is easier to let ChatGPT write this email than to think about it. The philosophy of life teaches us that the blind pursuit of the easy will leave you weaker than ever, will leave you lacking your most valuable asset: your abilities as a human being.
Why do some gyms have escalators? Because people want to use them. We are wired to rush for the easy, even when it makes no sense. This desire for easy ways has automated everything strenuous out of our lives, leaving us physically deprived. Suddenly a new demand emerged: gyms. We can design machines and processes to get our work done faster, but we lose the side benefit of building muscle and physical endurance along the way.
I have spent my life with handwriting. As a student, I had paper notebooks that were completely handwritten. I had a diary and I wrote letters. On paper! I could have wished for a real laptop back in 1993. But as a side benefit, I have a beautiful handwriting today. When I give gift cards, the thing people compliment me on most is my handwriting. I built up "handwriting muscles" along the way.
As a student, I had an odd "hobby". For five years I programmed neural nets and analyzed stock data to predict the future. A student job instead would have given me an immediate financial payback. But I chose to wrangle with data for almost five years with no financial result. I did not even enjoy programming and the "failure experience" that came with it. I only enjoyed deep and long methodological discussions until dawn with my co-developer. No immediate success, but something else developed: I built a solid and deep-rooted data science muscle along the way.
Later I wrote many papers and books during my career. We did not have ChatGPT yet. Even today I do not use LLM to write something important. This article is 100% me. For a reason. LLMs today do not meet my quality expectations in terms of expressing exactly what I think needs to be said. And why is that? During the thousands of pages I have written in my life, I have built up a muscle - a "copywriting muscle" that is also hard to copy.
Sooner or later, AI will get better at everything that makes our lives easier.
At the same time, we will lose something. We are losing our muscles and we are moving from being a PRODUCER to a CONSUMER of AI.
The Idiot does things he don’t like.
The Intelligent what he loves.
The Wise what’s needed… joyfully.
How does this relate to business?
Companies use insight agencies to make things easier. Agency consultants use data scientists to do the heavy lifting. Data scientists use analytics tools to have an easier life. Everyone in the process wants to outsource the heavy lifting. The result is that everyone loses their insights muscle in the long run.
An example: Do you know Dr. Steffen Schmidt? Have you ever seen him present? If so, you can tell he knows something about marketing research. I'll tell you why.
He has done everything in the marketing insights process himself. He knows marketing science by heart, but more importantly he has built thousands of questionnaires, not just in Word, but programmed them. Along the way he tried "every" insights tool on the planet to help him. But he tried it himself. He is able to do the whole research process as one person. A typical research agency has up to five departments touching one project alone. As a result, no one really knows what they are "really" doing, while taking 5x the time compared to Steffen.
Doing things ourselfs means spending more time. But it can safe time too as the example shows. The investment in your muscles can pay big dividends.
As a corporate marketing or insights department, you are notoriously thin on resources. But bringing some work in-house may be the smartest move you can make. Without muscle, you are a leaf in the wind, a leaf in the hands of agencies selling you snake oil.
But don't rush into DIY insight tools too fast. I know they are tempting and easy to use. If you have done it the hard way, you have the "muscle" to decide if that DIY tool does the job. Not before.
If you have written dozens of articles yourself, you have the "muscle" to judge whether ChatGPT is spitting out quality or just a mix of BS and marketing jargon.
That is why our tools at Supra are not for everyone. It is a collection of tools for those who have at least a sense that getting great insights is never a "piece of cake". It requires someone to go the hard way. Then distilling that into a process.
Go “nitty gritty”.
Build muscles.
THIS is how you 10x your insights.