A marketing machete that cuts through

Many industries are awash in information and data, the latter often in turgid forms. Its overwhelming presence often encourages the opposite habit: thin-slicing or relying on what is already known - a problem highlighted by Harvard Business Review recently (We use less information to make decisions than we think). It's a tendency prevalent in many companies with a repeatable casualty: less informed decisions will be a deepening challenge given the every-quickening speed in which culture and markets are moving.

One remedy is to be more strategic about the kind of intelligence that matters most. With this focus, teams can move more quickly and productively, confident that their streamlined activity operating from a minimal viable product (MVP) approach is lean without fear of cutting into bone.

Here’s a tool I use in client workshops to accomplish just that. I call it Rumsfeld’s Rubric.

Classifying intelligence by degrees of what is known relative to awareness of it enables more decisive strategic steps to be taken to address a situation or strategize around a problem.

Known knowns: These are the foundational truths and insights in the ‘living memory’ of an organization or a team; it's what they regularly use as the basis for their solution thinking. People are often surprised that what they think are immutable truths are anything but when put examined in the context of a cross-functional workshop. Of course identifying divergence is a source of potentially valuable insight.

Unknown knowns: Organizations often forget what they’ve discovered. The 'living memory' embodied by ‘known knowns’ is only part of a valuable trove of intellectual capital and insight an organization possesses that can contribute to problem solving. Part of my work for clients is to unlock the value in their past investments, not limited to research.

Known unknowns: This body of potential intelligence is valuable when re-assessed periodically. The value in what is unknown depends on many macro and micro conditions. As they change - or as the beliefs and assumptions about them shift - so does their value.

Unknown unknowns: This represents a healthy uncertainty to raise periodically too. Specializing can often create myopia. The outsider perspective from the right kind of consultant can help disrupt it. Asking "What’s key about this problem that we don’t know we don’t know?” is a brave question and productive when applied the right way.

It's important to remember that unknowns vary greatly in value. Assessing and prioritizing the value of different kinds of unknowns - and knowns - are key both within and across quadrants. The tool is also context agnostic. It applies as equally to cultural strategy, consumer psychology and risk management. The mere act of discussing what is needed but missing and why often accelerated progress in unplanned ways. At the very least it helps inform and mobilize quick, targeted opportunities for a test or research, the kind that are free from the shackles of bigger dependencies that so often slow down the speed of corporate advancement.