I can help you define knowns, unknowns, and even “unknown unknowns.”
A lot of strategic planning come down to clarity: what do we know? What don’t we know? What don’t we know that we don’t know, yet? While that sounds philosophical, it’s really a very practical exercise in aligning perspectives among stakeholders, and most importantly, documenting the knowledge, goals, and desired outcomes of a project.
It’s also important to have this conversation before jumping into research. Understanding the context and goals will help me suggest the appropriate research method, and potentially uncover knowledge that already exists but may not have been documented. Many companies, for example, have plenty of data they can already leverage, even before undertaking new research.
And finally, when we have clear goals, we can then start to talk about how to measure success. This can be tricky, especially in the case of experience outcomes that may require deliberately constructing a measurement program. Luckily, I like turning words into numbers — I’m a big fan of the OKR method — as long as we do so humanely, and include the perspectives of people who might not be in the boardroom, or at the whiteboard.