Last week we kicked off a series on lessons learned from market research by reflecting on problem definition and the questions we ask.  This week I want us to think about market research, being a stunt person, and taking risks.

Let’s pretend that you are a well-trained stunt person for action movies (I know this is my real life, but might be a stretch for some of you).  You know in this upcoming movie you’ll be doing a lot of jumping and falls and things.  Do you need a parachute?  The answer is, “It depends.” (See what I did there, tying it back to the first blog in the series).  If you’re jumping out of a plane for a scene, then yes you need a parachute.  If you are jumping off of a balcony or something, the parachute wouldn’t be necessary, but maybe you’d want some kind of foam padding to land on.  If you were doing some chase scene on foot where you were just jumping over stationary objects, you probably wouldn’t need anything.  In this example, the equipment you would need to keep you safe is dependent on the risk you are incurring.  The bigger the risk, the more likely you need something to help you mitigate that risk. 

You’re probably wondering how being a stunt person ties back to work.  Mitigating risk is what we do in market research.  What I’ve found over time is that the impulse is to try and eliminate ALL risk.  The impulse is to always do more and more market research to justify and support every situation.  The impulse is to wait until you know every small little thing before ever taking action.  If you think of the example above, the impulse is to give everyone parachutes, even though this doesn’t always make sense.  While I understand and have given in to this impulse from time to time, I also know that no matter what we do we CAN’T eliminate ALL risk.  Do you ever feel this way?  Do you ever feel like you have to do so much additional stuff to eliminate ALL risk before you can take action?

Here’s the difficult part, and the thing I’m still working on.  The difficult part is being able to look at the situation and gauge an accurate estimate of what the risk is, so I can respond accordingly.  Sometimes we are jumping off into the great unknown, so a parachute is needed.  Most of the time though, we know more than we realize and it’s a matter of pulling those thoughts together to guide us or having the faith that we know enough to act.  After all, we’re all well trained stunt people, and I’m pretty sure we are tough enough to take on a few bumps and bruises along the way.

The challenge:  Are you honestly assessing the risks you faced or are you always trying to get a parachute for a street chase?  Are you focused on mitigating OR eliminate risk?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry