Why Start With Experts?
Clients almost always believe they know what their customers are doing and what they want or will want once they make it available to them.
But in over 240 projects, we have almost never found this to be true.
Clients do not really know what customers really want. When we create maps of what a client’s customers are actually doing in their job, typically only about 40% matches the client’s pre-conceived notions. Repeat clients have learned, based on experience, that they will discover at least 4 major false assumptions in every project.
That is why we start with a client's’ highest performing end users. We work with these ‘experts’ to map their wisdom, knowledge and experience.
Don’t get hung up on the word ‘experts.’ Experts are people who perform a job in the top 10-25% based on objective measures.
The main thing to understand is that mapping starts with expert panelists chosen based on performance metrics and not just reputations. Unlike interviews, focus groups and surveys, where the performance level of the sources is unknown, our approach starts with people known to be high performers. This gives clients more trustworthy, robust and valid information from the very beginning of the project.
Benefits of starting with experts include:
Experts map faster. A quick test to identify an expert is to ask a question requiring them to categorize options. Non-experts provide complex answers. Experts quickly categorize the three or four ways something works. Experts speed up the mapping process saving us valuable time.
Experts share richer, more robust information. Insights tested across the expert panel hold up over time and work across environments. This is unlike “best practices” developed without the rigor of Xpert Mapping™, which often fail when applied in new settings.
People appreciate being asked to speak as experts. We start with an appreciative, positive approach. We applaud the wisdom people have learned, often through the school of hard knocks. This brings out people’s best as they create a map or participate in enhancement focus groups or Xpert Interviews™.
Experts have a reputation that intrigues non-experts in their field. When the findings of a map are shared with non-experts, the map gains instant credibility. It gives them a “secret window” to discover how an expert really performs a job.
Experts have ideas for how to improve a job for everyone. Experts’ ideas help average performers incorporate better approaches into their work. Counterintuitively, average performers often never think of the best ways to improve their performance. But once they learn about a better way from an expert, it is much easier for them to incorporate the improved approach into their routine.
Experts provide the detailed information we need to create a comprehensive list of true needs. Solutions can then be laser focused to solve the most important, unmet needs.
Experts share the criteria people will use to evaluate new solutions. We can now test new ideas against these criteria and predict if a solution will be accepted in practice.
Experts exist in every situation. Even with projects using brand new technologies or for newly created jobs, Xpert Mapping™ will benefit by working with experts in related areas to determine the best strategy.
Be careful. Popular, well-liked people may turn out not to be really experts when assessed by objective performance measures. Experts are defined by performance outcomes, not personality characteristics.
Ask yourself, “Why would you waste precious time and resources asking people who are not experts for information they obviously do not know?” Trustworthy information requires that you know the source of the information is credible.