If people would have known about the Titanic hitting an iceberg and sinking to the bottom of the ocean on her maiden voyage what would they have done differently? Would they have gotten on board? Would the captain have many more men on the lookout for those icy mountains while they were trying to extinguish the fires below deck?

Of course, they would have. That ship hitting an iceberg, even if they were passing through the iceberg-heavy waters of the North Atlantic ocean, is a sheer coincidence. A million to one chance. On her maiden voyage…

But what if someone would have warned them beforehand?

What would you tell the people who built the Titanic? Would you convince them not to sail-out? Because of the danger of icebergs? Would you yell it out on that promenade in Southampton? Chances are you’d be dragged away by the police. Not too dissimilar from what happens in compnies.

***

Three times in companies I have played the UX sage. I have championed UX logic to stakeholders who told me they knew better. Better than user feedback, better than me.

I yelled “research over gut feeling” through the halls of buildings only for it to fall on deaf ears, and for me to get frustrated or dragged out ‘tarred and feathered‘.

This is what Cervantes’ Don Quijote must have looked like to the people of his day as he chased his windmills.

But truth be told, nobody knows the future. Not you, not me, not even the ‘user’. Nobody knows what will happen when it will happen and how it will play out. We are all just combining different sources of information that offer just enough certainty for us to make a decision.

In his farewell speech, Jeff Bezos said that he believes in the power of wandering.

“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts… not analysis. If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But it turns out in life that your most important decisions are always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart.

Maybe the best thing is to let it happen. Have the high-hats at the White Star Line draw their own conclusions when the ‘unsinkable’ sinks? And you will have your plan ready.

Because that is what I think is your best strategy.

If you really believe that something bad will happen if they don’t listen to you then let it happen and be prepared for when that proverbial sh*t hits the fan. Have your plan ready and offer it to the people in charge at the appropriate time.
That may work.

And until then… however difficult, let them figure it out for themselves.

With special thanks to Matthew Syed for writing the book ‘Black Box Thinking’.