Rory Sutherland is vice chairman of Ogilvy Group. In this Ted video, he demonstrates with a high dose of British humour that ‘perspective is everything’ and the consequences of this fact in our daily lives, economic policies, business decisions etc… We do not decide, recall, rationalise, design or plan according to reality but according to our perception of it.
To create value, improve the perception of the product or service, not the product of service itself. Why would the British Postal service want to increase their first mail delivery rate the next day to 99% from 98% (and almost breaking the organisation in the process) when the public perception of next day delivery only stands at 50 to 60%? How to get customers to a restaurant where the food is 5 star michelin quality but which smells of sewage and a dirty floor, improve the food, or clean up the smell and the floor?
“If your perception is much worse than the reality, what on earth are you doing trying to change the reality” he says. Watch this TED video here.
In NLP, we call this REFRAMING.