Are business problems puzzle or mystery

All problems can be solved in two ways

Do not look for a new way to solve things. The answers to the problems exist already. Approaching a problem is half the battle.

Puzzles and mysteries are two types of problems. Puzzles do not have enough information. Getting more information solves puzzles. More information does not solve a mystery. It exists because of lack of accurate analysis. 99% of the businesses solve problems as they would solve a puzzle. The rare business aims to solve mysteries.

Ad guru Bob Hoffman writes: One hundred percent of the time these problems are dealt with as puzzles, not mysteries. We always assume that one more study will yield the magic answer. Research is commissioned. Spies are sent out to live with customers, or to interview them, or hold group discussions with them.

The hard part of solving marketing problems is not getting more information, it’s figuring out what the information we already have means. The important patterns are not usually visible on the surface. It requires a special intelligence to be able to examine imprecise, unfiltered, inconclusive, often contradictory information and come up with a correct analysis.