Observing and Listening Are Underrated

Observing and Listening in BusinessApplied qualitative research methods are terribly underrated and underrepresented. One obvious domain is business. Sam Walton is famous for having said that he visited more of his major competitor’s stores than any of their managers. I love the story where he went to see some small-chain competitor’s store together with some of his senior management and afterwards they all trash-talked about how badly set-up it was. Sam Walton’s point of view? ‘Yes, but did you see the candle display? The candle display was fantastic.’ 1 As the CEO of Walmart, he would spend significant parts of his entire career roaming through supermarkets, chatting with staff and customers, observing and learning. Yes, Walmart was also a pioneer in using quantitative data to monitor their business. But that is precisely the point: To get a full picture, you need to rely on both inputs. And the qualitative one is terribly underrepresented. I currently embark in trying to better…