The power of the outsider perspective…
I received a piece of feedback from a non-profit client years ago that remains burned into my memory, even to this day. Or at least, a version of it is.
The client had thanked me, going on to remark that, because I’d not spent years “getting steeped” in their particular niche, I’d asked some really simple questions that made them rethink a lot of their assumptions, and that had been incredibly powerful.
I don’t remember the exact words she used, because just a few hours later they were supplanted by those of my wife, when she paraphrased the insight as: “So, she basically said that you were really helpful because you know nothing?” and proudly referred to me as Jon Snow for the rest of the week.
I prefer to describe it as the “valuable outsider perspective” rather than the fact I know nothing (which I guess is marketing in a nutshell) but I’m far from the only example.
The first London Underground line opened in 1863, and by 1930, it had expanded to include most of the core lines we know today. But if you’d picked up a map of that system back in 1930, it would be unrecognisable, not to mention pretty unreadable.
That’s because back then, they used an overground map of the city and drew the lines on top of it, accurately tracing their paths as they curved and weaved all over the map like spaghetti.
It took an electrical engineer who happened to be doing a big rewiring project for the corporation, to reimagine the map in the form of an electric circuit diagram. His name was Harry Beck, and it took him at least three attempts, and well over a year, to persuade those who needed persuading to print a trial run.
They didn’t see him as bringing a valuable outsider perspective; they just saw someone who very obviously knew nothing about either cartography or communications. But eventually they relented, if only to shut him up.
The new maps, immeasurably easier to read and use, sold out in a matter of hours, and the rest is history.
No doubt there are plenty of others who were less persuasive than Beck and never got their ideas taken up. And for some of them that turned out to be a good thing.
James Dyson only began manufacturing his bagless vacuum cleaner after he’d been turned down by all the major manufacturers. His company now turns over around £7bn a year.
None of those manufacturers saw in him a valuable outsider perspective. What they did see was someone who clearly knew nothing about the lucrative recurring revenue model of vacuum bags.
Likewise, when Netflix founder Reed Hastings tried to persuade Blockbuster to invest in his fledgling business, the suits at the top of that giant video rental chain didn’t see the existential lifeline this outsider was offering them.
They just saw someone who had no idea about footfall and locations, logistics and distribution – all the things they’d come to believe were fundamental to the home movie business.
So, it turns out that people who apparently know nothing, can sometimes offer quite a lot.
This is the insight I’d like you to take away.
We, like most industries to be fair, have a habit of listening to those from inside our niche, and broadcasting to those from outside of it.
We pitch and persuade, lobby and influence, across governments and businesses and media and the public. And that’s all good. It’s part of what we do.
But it’s rare we take the time to listen to those same audiences. Even rarer that we invite them in to share our challenges, to embrace their lack of knowledge, and to fully lean into their outsider perspective.
And yet it’s those people, un-steeped in the norms and assumptions that fill our world, who can so often ask us the simple yet powerful questions, and who can gift us new ways of thinking through our most resilient problems.
However hard it may be for my ego to admit, it wasn’t actually my incisive intellect, my illuminating questions, or even my naked naivety that created such value for that client all those years ago.
It was the fact she invited an outsider in, and listened.
How can you get an outsider perspective on your big challenges?