Niko Herzeg Marketing

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: So for the time being, all teachers will devote class time to teaching language arts sample questions. Now if you turn to page eleven, please, I have some things I want to go over with you.
ROLAND “PREZ” PRYZBYLEWSKI: I don’t get it, all this so we score higher on the state tests? If we’re teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?
TEACHER: Nothing, it assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving.
The scores stay down, they can’t.
PREZ: Juking the stats.
TEACHER: Excuse me?
PREZ: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and major become colonels. I’ve been here before.
TEACHER: Wherever you go, there you are.

Much of this rings true in business. The rewards are the driving engine as to how problems are solved. How often do we seek really helpfull information that leads us to interesting questions about the problem at hand? Both as clients and as agencies?

How often are we juking the stats to make the answers fit into a preconceived brief, agenda, pay structure or particular monetizable skill set, (the old “if only in possesion of a hammer” problem), or corporate culture ? If companies come to you in search of answers the key to helping them is to ask better questions, regardless of where they may lead you and them.

If, like the teachers in the clip and in real life, we start at the end (how do WE get paid? Waht would THEY want to HEAR?) this will only lead to bandage improvements. And to envious looks at companies who truly start with the work (schoolkids, consumers, solutions) in mind, thus creating better odds at stable long term success and all that comes with it.

Wherever you go, there you are. No regrets, no sympathy.