Under thunk:
There are times when a little research can go a long way.
Angela had sandy golden-brown hair and deep baby-blue eyes that melted my 12 year-old lovesick heart. It was dusk, on a mild evening near the end of June. Finding a few pebbles, I began pinging her second floor bedroom window until she opened it and flashed a grin that made me weak in the knees.
"And just what do you think you're doing here?" It was a playful response, sweetened with still more of that engaging smile of hers.
I stuttered: "I... I have a gift for you."
She beckoned. More hypnotic smiles. I was mush.
"It's a song."
"Sing!" She was giggling now, delighted.
I channeled my inner Mick Jagger, summoning the words. Or in this case... the word.
"Angie! Annnnnngie!"
The song was on the radio nearly every day, and I always saw her face when I heard it or sang along. The trouble was that it never occurred to me that I should make an effort to actually memorize the words before placing myself on Romeo's awkward stage. I thought the words would just flow. They didn't. Mick was somewhere in my head but he wouldn't come out to play.
I stood there in the gravel outside her window, and tried to kick-start it again: "Angie... Beautiful."
She laughed out loud. I'm still not sure what that meant, but I never got a chance to sing to her again.
Over thunk:
There are other times when it's best to put down the analysis and move on.
One might be inclined to believe that the big corporations are better at this stuff. There is some truth to that, but even they get it wrong sometimes. While Microsoft was studying the market and developing their tablet prototype, Steve Jobs was asked his opinion of the idea, and said: "There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. We look at the tablet and we think it is going to fail. Tablets appeal to rich guys..."
Later, one of Microsoft's executives bragged to Steve Jobs at a house party, claiming his tablet would revolutionize computing. Apple might as well get on board, license itself to use Microsoft's ubiquitous software, and prepare to watch the world change. Microsoft had a humongous software advantage and a roughly 10 year head start on Apple in the tablet's development.
After several annoying prods from the Microsoft executive, Steve Jobs, an absolute tyrant with regard to product development, put his people to work and promptly got a touch screen prototype functional.
Just right:
Jobs sat with his new tablet in his hands, amazed. But rather than launch it, he envisioned it even smaller... and the iPhone was born. He delayed the iPad a few more years while he first blew the world away with the first touch screen phone. Then he came back, launched the iPad, and ate up the tablet market, leveraging the iPhone's popular interface.
This was not driven by market research so much as intuition and brilliant innovation at the product level.
When asked if he had some supporting marketing research to give investors confidence in his new launch he replied: "No, because customers don't know what they want until we've shown them."
Perhaps only a person who has studied marketing at the academic level would appreciate how out-of-sync that comment was when compared to the reams of data typically collected and examined painstakingly before a product launch.
In the realm of business management and investment, perfect certainty is a fiction of the overconfident analyst and the occasional cheater, but this is not to say there is no reason to try. There is definitely a reward for doing the legwork to bring things in to focus.
The early bird knew pretty well where those worms were before she plucked them. But that same fowl also had an instinct to know when to quit mulling it over and get on with the dance on the lawn.
There are only so many Steve's in this world. For the rest of us, try as we might to eliminate all ambiguity, we can only ever hope to approach the vicinity of ironclad conviction. Like a squirming, slippery trout, data perfection will wriggle away from us into the great shimmering sea of numbers.
Whether it is an investment decision, or a business purchase, finding the right balance between research and risk will always be as much art as science, as much talent as tenacity.
For those like me, who are willing to work hard, but lack the majestic insights of the great intuitive thinkers of our day, we just stay a little longer at the office and crunch some more numbers. It makes us feel better, smarter, and a little more confident. But in the end, we all have to put a foot forward and sing from the song sheet of our best effort.
This article is not meant as financial or legal, (or marketing research) advice. Readers should consult their own professional (or Guru) before implementing a plan. Mark Ryan is an advisor with RBC Wealth Management, Dominion Securities (member CIPF) and can be reached at [email protected].
