Science
It is fashionable in business to look to data and science for logic and certainty but to do so is to misunderstand what they can tell you. Science is perceived as a highly certain and logical way of understanding the world but it’s really not. Nowhere in the universe is there a force or particle or anything in between that defines what logic is. And quantum mechanics produces some highly illogical confusions. Even Einstein disliked it.
Simply because something has a logic does not mean it is logical. And science is not even all that certain; science is trying to know how uncertain you are. If you need an illustration of this go to your medicine cabinet and take out any box of tablets. You will find on there a list of potential side effects. Not guaranteed side effects. Potential. Whenever you read up on an illness you have you will likely come across language like ‘Symptoms may include’. Medical science is based upon non-specifics like ‘may’ or ‘potential’ – they’re hardly cast-iron guarantees. And this is because people are incredibly complicated.
Seven billion uniquely different combinations of genetics alive at any one time with different lifestyles, existing conditions, predispositions and age factors make it impossible to guarantee ‘when you take this pill this will happen’. The best that science can come up with is a frequently long list of things that are highly unlikely to happen, but possibly could, so don’t bet the farm on it.
The only way to truly understand what works, what is strong, what is reliable is to understand the how. How was it built, how was it tested, how was it designed. Which is humanity has been able to progress as far as it has. We have split the atom, been to the Moon and cured diseases by using a method for how we drive progress. Science is not about being certain. It’s about how you understand your uncertainty. Under what range of conditions does this theory hold up and where does it fall down? Magic may spark great ideas. But science is about testing ideas to understand how they work.
Marketing magic, some might say, is coming up with the out-there ideas that no one else has that drive the type of impact that no one would expect. But Marketing science is testing this theory. Does a square envelope perform better than a rectangular envelope? Surely envelope size cannot impact a piece of marketing material’s performance, so why would you test this? But maybe envelope it does? Maybe larger envelopes need to be made of better-quality paper because different sizes affect how they stand up through the postal service? Maybe if you only test envelopes made of the same material you won’t know this. Science is understanding the things you don’t know and testing them.
When an academic publishes their findings it is first peer reviewed. Scientists discovered long ago that marking your own homework rarely results in an independent, unbiased perspective. Even after peer review, however, it is not simply accepted. When other scientists evaluate the results they don’t just read the executive summary and accept it. They review the method. Look at the critique of any analysis-based research paper and you will find the same thing every time: questioning of the methodology.
How you came to the conclusions on the results is as important as the results themselves. For if the method is reliable, repeatable, correctly considered or accurately analysed then the conclusions of the report likewise cannot be trusted. Science isn’t a thing. You don’t just ‘do a science’ and expect the revelations of the universe to flow. Science is a method. Science is a ‘how’. How you work impacts what work you do and how you perceive success. ‘How’ is how you avoid creating a new type of water that doesn’t exist.