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February 11, 2006

The Beauty of Bias

It's said that in a service relationship, the worst kind of customer is the one that screams, "I don't know what I want, but I'm not gettin' it!"

We try to be good customers by at least getting advice beforehand to help us figure out what we want. Usually the focus is on getting an accurate fix on which products really do what they claim, and of those, which one is the best one.

That said, we go to industry analysts, and we expect them to help us avoid buyer's remorse.

So, industry anaysts have clients. What does this tell us? Mainly, that you should hire an analyst in the same spirit that you would hire a lawyer! When you are the client, advocacy is the essence of the analyst's effectiveness.

A great analyst is one that can both tell you what you ought to know and tell you what you want to hear. An analyst that can do that is only able to because they understand you and they understand what you're up against. As a client, you shouldn't demand less than that.

But the point of hearing both things is to be able to evaluate the gap between the two. Ultimately, that evaluation is the correct basis for your decision.

Logically, it's somewhat pointless to have only one side of the story or the other, since that doesn't leave you with much to evaluate.

And realistically, if you are not actually a client of the analyst but instead only an observer, then you are not entitled to any more "objectivity" than you are willing to diligently pursue yourself -- by developing great perspective through your own research.

Granted, research is difficult and time-consuming, so it makes sense to go get credible research from people who do that for a living. The trick, then, is to find research that really does what it says it does, and of that, pick the best research.

But what makes for the "best" research?

The typical answer points at the research that has the most accurate, reliable answers. But it's so easy to forget that the answers only make sense because the right questions were asked in the first place.

What are the right questions?

The right questions, to begin with, are the ones that investigate the reasons why you are the one having the problem that you think you have. That self-assessment, which perhaps gets done with the help of consultants, leads to ways of stating the problem (to the analysts) that are more specifically and rationally associated with known characteristics of known solutions. From there, the analyst can become your advocate, by screening out irrelevant options.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at February 11, 2006 9:05 AM

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