Each and every week the Square Holes team are deep in the bowels of a number of projects, working to mine all of the insights that we can to help grow businesses and support thriving cities.

These insights are used by businesses and organisations to innovate their offerings, move into new markets, track their impact and hone their products and output. Each week we will be sharing a broad insight that we have learnt for you to use in your own work.

Let us know what you find valuable!

Jason: Getting curious about the unknowns

What are your unknown unknowns?

Exactly—you don’t know. That’s the point of curiosity.

Stepping outside your own head with a beginner’s mindset is how new ideas emerge. That’s what research does—uncovers the glitches in marketing, products, and services most leaders can’t see.

We all get stuck in loops, overthinking, like stuck in clunky machine code:

while solution == “no”:

keep_overthinking()

Do the research. Build systems to escape your own bias—and that of your equally introspective team.

Not another workshop full of groupthink:

while everyone_agrees():

repeat_bad_ideas()

Break the loop. Ask real people. Listen. That’s where progress starts.

Dylan: Not all customers are the same

Understanding and aligning with what customers truly value enables brands to position their products / services in a way that is most relevant to them. We recently completed a bit of research talking to a variety of customers for a national group based in SA. Through our discussions it was found that while the brand’s positioning for ‘best in class’ processes and sustainability led initiatives was highly appealing (and a driver to selection) for their large corporate customers, their smaller (often extremely busy) customers cared far less about this and were most concerned with convenience and speed of service. Therefore communication to the larger groups required a different approach than the smaller businesses, based on the specific customer needs present in both. 

Mahalia: Rituals enhance your life

Sometime last year I decided that despite my current aversion to them, I was going to start eating oysters. The main driver behind this is that I felt a need to bring more rituals into my life that push me out of my comfort zone and create a sort of ceremony in living. What I’ve found is that now when I eat out with friends it always starts with the explanation of my seemingly ridiculous goal, that my dinner guests will either joyfully join me in or reluctantly try (carried away by my romanticism of the whole experience). What follows is a glorious moment of connection – with each other, with strong emotions (pleasure, pain depending on their affinity to oysters) and with that ineffable thing that happens when you sit down to eat good food with special people. It’s a ritual that is still sometimes challenging (bigger oysters are still a bit of hurdle), but brings new experiences in both taste and connection each time. Which is all to say that maybe it’s time you created a new ritual for yourself?

Think your business or organisation could do with some insights? Contact us here.