I hated science classes.
They never intrigued me. The experiments were cool but not enough to make me enjoy the classes.
I do wish I could go back and take one thing from all those science classes:
The mindset of the scientist.
Think about how a scientist approaches a challenge.
They come from an objective standpoint. They want the truth, not the answer they think is right.
How many of us approach business-marketing challenges with this mindset?
Few.
We come with established ideas and are reluctant to give those up—even in the face of better data.
Nobel Prize-winning biologist Peter Medawar (1915–1987) wrote this about the field of science, but I believe it applies to business and marketing:
"If you want to make progress in any area, you need to be willing to give up your best ideas from time to time. Science proceeds because researchers do all they can to disprove their hypotheses rather than prove them right."
They don't try to prove why they're right. Instead, they do everything to disprove their hypothesis.
And if they can't disprove it, then it must be true.
If marketers thought more like that, we'd have far better marketing and content in the world.
Sadly, we act more like preachers.
We're unable to change our views in light of sufficient data and keep preaching the same message like a broken record.
The hard part is realizing when you're acting more like a preacher than a scientist.
Richard Feynman famously said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."
Are you fooling yourself?
🧠 // JO