Strategy Dynamics Briefing 76: Measuring state-of-mind intangibles

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If state-of-mind is to be useful in managing, we need to find reliable measures for them. A full exploration of research methods is beyond our scope here, but since the aim is to understand how strongly people are feeling on an issue, scales that in some way indicate a range from “empty” to “full” will often be appropriate. A common example is the Likert scale, which seeks ratings on (usually) a 5-point scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree“.

It ...

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Spreadsheets no good for strategy

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This blog post from HBS starts well, but ends in the wrong place, saying we shouldn’t try to quantify intangible issues. We do know how to deal quantitatively with such factors. We can handle both tangible qualities that differ between people, such as differing customer sales rates, and also intangible states-of-mind. A bank tracks ‘miserable moments’ their customers experience and knows well how recent history of those problems affects the likelihood of customers leaving. Call center companies know how ...

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