Why do intelligent people defend stupid decisions?

Intelligence is useful.
 

It helps us analyse, reason and solve problems.
 

Unfortunately, it can also help us construct extraordinarily sophisticated explanations for why we were right all along.
 

Once reputation gets attached to a decision, the objective can quietly change. We stop asking, "Is this still, right?" and start asking, "How can I prove I wasn't wrong?"
 

Smart people can be particularly good at this because they have more intellectual tools available for the defence.
 

The problem is no longer the bad decision.
 

It is the need to protect the person who made it.
 

Sometimes the smartest sentence in the room is simply, "I got this wrong."
 

What are you using your intelligence to defend?

 

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What happens after someone notices your advertising?

Congratulations. You got their attention.
 

They stopped scrolling. Saw the billboard. Watched the video. Perhaps they even laughed.
 

Now what?
 

Can they remember your name?
 

Do they understand what you sell?
 

Can they find you?
 

Is the product available?
 

Does the website load?
 

Does anyone answer the phone?
 

Marketing people can become so obsessed with getting attention that attention itself becomes the objective. But being noticed is only useful if something productive can happen afterwards.
Imagine spending a fortune inviting everyone to your party, then forgetting to tell them where you live.
 

Great invitation though.
 

Where are you sending all that attention?

 

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Is your promotion teaching customers not to buy you?

Imagine a shop that discounts everything on the last Friday of every month.
 

After a while, what would you do on the third Friday?
 

Wait.
 

Consumers learn.
 

Promotions are supposed to stimulate behaviour but repeated often enough they can train behaviour too. Buy one free one. Payday sale. 11.11. 12.12. Member weekend. Birthday month. We become so generous that full price starts looking like a punishment for people who weren't patient enough.
 

Promotions can create urgency.
 

Predictable promotions can create postponement.
 

This doesn't mean don't promote. It means understand the behaviour you are rewarding.
 

Your customer is learning from you every time you change the price.
 

What have you accidentally taught them?

 

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When did your USP stop being unique?

"We provide quality products at affordable prices."
 

Excellent.
 

You and approximately four million other companies.
 

Unique selling propositions have an unfortunate habit of becoming less unique with age. Competitors improve. Technology spreads. Features get copied. Yesterday's advantage becomes today's minimum expectation.
 

Yet companies keep repeating the same claim because it is printed in the brand book.
 

A USP is not unique because you put the word "unique" in front of it.
 

If three competitors can replace your logo with theirs and the sentence still works, you may not have a positioning.
 

You may have a sentence.
 

Is your difference is still different?

 

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What business does your customer think you're in?

A restaurant thinks it sells food. The customer may be buying somewhere comfortable to talk for two hours.
 

A hotel thinks it sells rooms. Someone else is buying a good night's sleep before the biggest presentation of her career.
 

A bank thinks it sells mortgages. A young couple thinks they are buying their first home.
 

We define businesses using categories because categories are convenient. They help us organise competitors, calculate market share and prepare very impressive charts.
 

Consumers don't necessarily live inside our charts.
 

They hire products and services to do things in their lives. Functional things, emotional things and occasionally things they cannot quite articulate.
 

Understanding what business, you are in is useful.
 

Understanding what business your customer thinks you are in may be considerably more profitable.
 

What are people really buying when they give you money?

 

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Are your consumers really asking for more choice?

 

There is something comforting about launching another variant.
 

Sales slowing? New flavour.
 

Competitor gaining? New size.
 

Need excitement? Limited edition.
 

Before long, the shelf looks like a family reunion where nobody quite remembers how everyone is related.
 

Companies like choice because every new product feels like another opportunity to sell. 

Consumers may experience it differently. Every additional option asks them to make another decision.
 

Choice is good until choosing becomes work.
 

Sometimes growth comes from giving people more.
 

Sometimes it comes from making the decision easier.
 

What can you remove from the shelf?

 

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Who decided it had to be done this way?

Every company has rules nobody remembers making.

"This is how we submit it."

"Marketing always approves this."

"We've always given retailers three months."

"Head office wants it this way."

Ask who decided and occasionally you discover something fascinating.

Nobody knows.

The person who created the rule may have left in 2014. The problem the rule solved disappeared in 2017. Yet the rule remains, faithfully obeyed by people who inherited it from people who inherited it from someone else.

Tradition can carry wisdom. It can also carry administrative fossils.

Every now and then, it is worth poking the system with a stick.

Not everything old is wrong. But neither is everything familiar right.

Which rule is waiting for someone brave enough to ask, "Why?"

 

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