Maybe I'm Wrong.

Maybe I'm Wrong.

The hardest person I've ever had to convince wasn't someone else.

It was myself.

Years ago, our company invested heavily in a major brand repositioning effort. The work was thoughtful, polished, and contemporary. Inside the company, there was genuine excitement. Many people believed we had found the future of the brand.

Then we showed it to our customers.

Across market after market, the reaction was remarkably consistent.

They didn't just prefer the existing identity.

They recoiled from the new one.

Not a little.

A lot.

When we shared the findings internally, the reaction was understandable.

People questioned the research.

The truth is...

...so did we.

Not because we doubted what customers were saying.

Because we wondered whether we had somehow influenced what they were saying.

Had we introduced the concepts poorly?

Did the order of presentation matter?

Were we asking the wrong questions?

Had we unintentionally shaped the discussion?

Our moderator, my boss, and I spent far more time questioning ourselves than we did defending the results.

As it should be.

That weekend, my boss and I reviewed hours of video from every focus group.

We didn't spend the weekend defending the research.

We spent it trying to break it.

We looked for inconsistencies.

Bias.

Anything that suggested we had gotten it wrong.

We wanted to find the flaws before anyone else did.

By the time we finished, something interesting had happened.

We weren't more confident in the outcome.

We were more confident in the process.

There is an important difference.

The following week, one of our creative directors suggested something simple.

Instead of comparing the current brand against the proposed brand...

...why not introduce a third possibility?

He developed an entirely new concept.

Now customers had a genuine choice.

The current identity.

The proposed identity.

A completely new direction.

We went back into the field.

Same methodology.

Same moderator.

Same discipline.

The results weren't even close.

The new concept won decisively.

Ironically, that wasn't the most important outcome.

The most important outcome was something else entirely.

We had learned that our process could survive our own skepticism.

I've thought about that experience many times over the years.

Not because of the logo.

There frankly aren’t that many logos that people remember.

But rather, I remember what it felt like to question my own judgment.

I remember thinking,

"Maybe I'm wrong."

Not because I lacked confidence.

Because I believed I owed the evidence that much respect.

That question has stayed with me ever since.

Whenever I encounter a surprising result...

Whenever the data contradicts what I expected...

Whenever everyone in the room seems convinced...

I still ask myself the same question.

“What if I'm wrong? Maybe I’m wrong.”

Sometimes I am.

Sometimes I'm not.

Either way, I'm usually a better decision-maker for having asked.

For Lack of a Conclusion...

I've become suspicious of conclusions that arrive too easily.

Not because they're always wrong.

Because important decisions deserve resistance.

Sometimes that resistance comes from other people.

Sometimes it comes from the evidence.

And sometimes...

It comes from looking in the mirror and asking one humble question.

“What if I’m wrong? Maybe I'm wrong... I don't think I am... but it's possible.”

I've discovered that asking that question doesn't weaken good decisions.

It's often what makes them trustworthy.