Ask questions all the time

Last Update: 20.09.2018. By Jens in Newsletter

Yesterday I was working for the stone age project again. We had a meeting with the actual client, the guy paying for our proof of concept. You might remember it is an enterprise client. He’s a manager in the marketing department. Anyways, so after we talked about the proof of concept, I started asking him things like what products and product options sale best, what people actually select in their online configurator and later buy and such things. I won’t bore you with the details but he said one interesting bit that is relevant for you when working in an enterprise environment.

They don’t track many things because certain people responsible for product development are afraid to lose their job. They are afraid that stats or even AI recommendations might make them obsolete. The first showing, that their assumption where all wrong and their customers actually buy totally different. And the latter, that the machine based on data makes better decisions than them.

The thing is, that regardless of the topic, people are afraid to lose their job due to a change you might be working on. Or not, because it is sabotaged. So, if you notice resistance for the things you work on or propose, think about who might be afraid of losing his job. The higher up this fear is in the hierarchy the harder the change is.

Anyways, ask good questions and if people trust you, they will tell you a lot of what’s going on.