What The Apprentice taught me about perspective
My wife and I have been re-watching old series of The Apprentice recently. We’re big fans of the show; plus it’s easy to half-watch while looking after a newborn and the older series are way better (the show went downhill after Nick Hewer left, IMO).
One of the most common phrases the contestants use is “I’d buy something like that”. No matter what the product, whether a box on wheels or a poorly printed t-shirt, the would-be apprentices and business partners claim they’d part with their cash for their product.
Laughing at Apprentice contestants is admittedly easy pickings, like laughing at the hustlers on LinkedIn. But it points to a more profound psychological point anyone working in comms also faces — escaping our egocentricity.
It’s hard to look at a topic from someone else’s POV. As Tim Harford says in a recent FT column, “We can’t help but see things from our own perspective”. Harford cites a couple of academic studies which show how overconfident participants were in getting their points across; we know what we mean, so of course, our audience will understand.
They might understand, but not unless you ask them and make sure. Not unless you get some feedback and are prepared to listen to that feedback. In fact, my other favourite trope of Apprentice episodes past is when a hapless sub-team does “market research”.
Market research on The Apprentice is generally a Sisyphean task; team leaders ALWAYS completely ignore said market research, no matter how much consumers hate the product/idea. Again, it’s ego and innate human nature that are to blame. We don’t want to see the flaws in our creations. We don’t want to have to start all over again. Starting over is HARD. But of course, as anyone who has seen a beautifully constructed creative idea fall apart in front of their eyes can testify, it’s often for the best.
We need that feedback, and we need that fresh perspective to break ourselves out of our pre-existing singular viewpoint. Multiple perspectives and different points of view are generally always valuable when planning campaigns or coming up with ideas. They provide richness and additional layers to our thinking.
It’s also worth reiterating that gathering feedback and getting different points of view doesn’t mean succumbing to groupthink and including everyone’s builds — no one wants to end up with a hideous Frankenstein’s monster of an idea.
That means it’s crucial to be judicious in whose perspective you seek. Speak to your target audience. Speak to those with subject matter expertise — those people whose opinion you trust.
Avoiding groupthink relies to a certain extent on having a diversity of views. Ideally, you want someone in your network you trust for their candour. Maybe also someone who loves to get into the detail of an idea — who asks “how is this ACTUALLY going to work?”.
If you don’t know people like this, you could also approach your idea from that perspective. Untools is a fantastic resource for “better thinking” — it includes an approach called Six Thinking Hats. It gives you ideas of different ways you can add a new perspective to your plans. There’s also a fascinating psychotherapy approach called “chairwork”, where participants use physical chairs to have imagined conversations with different audiences. Now chairwork might be a little too deep for that last-minute Christmas brief you’re working on, but the principle of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, moving beyond “I’d buy something like that”, is never a bad idea.
It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your ideas, to be hindered by the “curse of knowledge”. A fresh perspective, particularly relevant, informed perspective, will only ever enhance your ideas. And will hopefully mean you avoid ending up with comms equivalent of the Tidey-Sidey or the Book-eeze.
