Easy-to-process things feel truer, safer, and more appealing.
More quotesTheories cost most after everyone forgets they are theories.
“This category needs seven exposures.” “Pressure improves performance.” “More choice serves more customers.” Repeat one often enough and it stops sounding like a bet. It becomes furniture. Anyone who walks into it is blamed for being clumsy.
I once heard a sensible proposal dismissed because “our customers don’t behave like that”. Nobody could remember testing them. The sentence had survived three reorganisations and acquired the authority of an old pub landlord.
Every corporate theory needs three things on the label: conditions of use, expiry date, recall trigger. Repetition may create trust until it creates irritation. Urgency may lift effort while errors and resignations accumulate elsewhere. Choice may serve customers until the shelf becomes an eye test.
In ugly plain English, the label reads: we believe X causes Y when Z is true. The recall trigger is the observation that would make everyone less confident. This feels weaker than announcing “best practice” because it admits the possibility of losing. That is exactly what makes it useful.
An explicit theory can fail and improve. An unconscious one keeps invoicing the business under the trading name “common sense”, long after its supposed warranty has expired.