Our decisions are grounded in our ideas about how the world works. According to an article by the INSEAD business school, iterations of interviews make it possible to examine mental models of stakeholders (e.g. customers or managers) in order to gain better insights about how they perceive various constructs and business phenomena. These may be such notions as:
- corporate social responsibility
- sustainable growth
- service quality
- customer centricity
- new roles (Chief Growth Officer or Customer Success Manager)
It may be helpful to explore how people approach these constructs. You can then compare various mental models. We can understand, for example, what the driving force is when large companies are hiring a Customer Success Manager and whether this is different in the case of startups.
How to gain insights
For the exploration of mental models during interviews to be helpful, a certain amount of skill and experience on the part of the interviewee is needed. Otherwise you end up with uninformed guesses, which won’t really help you to move forward.
- Choose the topic you want to learn more about, e.g. market orientation.
- Conduct interviews and aggregate answers of several interviewees: ask them how they approach market orientation or how they define it. Listen actively and find where multiple answers overlap.
- Conduct more rounds of interviews and use prior responses as a starting point: "I've learnt that market orientation is about … Can you tell me your thoughts on this?"
- Once you have a solidly defined construct it is time to start making connections with real-world outcomes.
-jk-