🔪 "Sashimi knife" or "chicken chopper knife"?

🔪 "Sashimi knife" or "chicken chopper knife"?

Why do so many organizations "misuse Research" and finally buy the wrong knife?

💥 When an organization misunderstands "Research = magic medicine to solve every problem,"

"I want to hire a marketing research firm... where is it recommended?"

This is a sentence that I hear from almost every Thai executive industry - retail, medicine, finance, technology.

But what I noticed is that many people don't look for Research because they want to understand their customers more deeply, but because "sales are stagnant" or "I don't know what the problem is, so I have to do something."

And as soon as it walks into the world, the Agency is taken into a "showroom" full of

* Luxury package

* Gold Dashboard

* 200-page report

* Modern vocabulary such as NLP, Sentiment, Insight Engine, AI, Heatmap etc.

Finally, the organization paid hundreds of thousands of dollars... but did not have the desired "2-line answer."

This is the beginning of failure, not because researchers are not good at it, but because organizations "never diagnose their own problems before hiring."

As a result, many organizations use "sashimi knives..." to chop chicken bones.

= = = =

🎯 "The knife is good, but the wrong job." Why did the research fail?

Research is not a magic thing, it is a "tool," and every tool is instantly worthless if you use it in the wrong context.

When an executive tells me I'm going to do research, I always ask, "Do you want to" find out "or" find out "?" These two things are the same as the sky and the abyss.

Good researchers will start asking,

* What's your real problem? (Unmet Needle)

* What decision will this research help to make?

* What will you do if you get the answer?

* Is the desired answer consistent with Brand Positioning?

But researchers who sell good jobs start with, "We have Big Data, Quant, AI, Sentiment Analysis... finishing in one place."

All of which may be "very good," but they do not answer anything if you do not know what the problem is in the first place.

= = = =

💡 Henry Ford - Steve Jobs: The Classic Lesson of "Ask the Wrong Question"

Henry Ford once said, "If I ask my customers what they want, they say they want a faster horse."

Because customers can only explain "what they know" but cannot tell the "root problem" that makes life difficult.

Ford does not build faster horses, but cars, because it understands that the real problem is to reduce travel time, not to develop horses.

Steve Jobs also always reiterated, "Our job is to understand the customer deeper than he understands himself." Research's job is therefore not to ask, "What more features do you want?"

But to observe that

* Why do customers hurt the same spot?

* What steps irritate him?

* What are the problems he has to workaround every day?

The leader's job is to find the problem, not to expect the client to come up with the answer.

= = = =

🧭 What kind of research should an organization hire?

✔ 1. Start with Qualitative before Quantitative.

* The number says "what happened," but only people can say "why did it happen?"

* If you want to understand customers, you must always start with Qualitative.

✔ 2. Choose a researcher who "reads people out."

* Some customers respond to maintain an image; some respond socially acceptable; good researchers have to listen to sounds that customers "don't speak out" to be.

✔ 3. Choose someone who dares to say "the truth you don't want to hear."

* Because the truth that helps an organization grow is always a painful truth.

✔ 4. Choose a partner, not a contractor.

* Good Research is Co-creation, not Outsourcing

* Chemistry between teams is more important than company names.

= = = =

✨ Good leader = the person setting the problem, not the passenger of the report.

Many organizations fail because they think "hiring an Agency will be fine."

But the truth is, no one can solve your problem if you don't know what it is?

The leader's job is to clarify where the problem is, so that the UX and Creative researchers move in the right direction.

Not to let anyone swim, dive or hike when the real problem is... flying.

And no research in the world can help you if you're flying in the wrong direction in the first place.

= = = =

🧩 The tools are never wrong, but the users determine the results.

Good Research is not a 200-page thick report, but a "2-3 line understanding" that makes teams make better decisions right away.

Good leaders are not those who ask, "What research?" but those who answer, "What problems do we have to understand clearly?"

Because how sharp the knife is, it's worthless... if you use it wrong.

# Two stories a day

# Research

# MarketingResearch

# UserResearch

# Innovation

# Leadership

# Strategy

# Leadership