What Evidence Would You Need To See To Change Your Mind?

More often, we mean: I need a new story.
• more immediate
• more vivid
• more aligned with what the people around me already believe than the one I carry now

Did you know it took humans roughly 100,000 years to invent the scientific method? For nearly all of that time, we made our choices through stories, examples, and whatever felt urgent. So why would we think, even for a moment, that wiring would disappear when we learned to run a controlled experiment? The stories we tell (and rarely are any of us telling the same one) sit beneath the surface of every meeting, every purchase, every strategy review.

I think the iceberg metaphor works here. Sitting above the waterline are the decisions:
• the campaign we approve
• the product a customer chooses
• the initiative we quietly shelve
Below it are the mental models that shaped those decisions, and below those, the stories that formed the models. A single vivid account from a respected colleague, or a customer who was delighted or furious, can quietly rearrange how a whole organization sees its market. But an anecdote is not evidence, and we often treat it that way. So what?

Well, this matters in two directions. First, inside our organizations, we often believe we are being data-driven when we are really being story-driven, with the data recruited afterward to support the story. Until we can see this pattern, we are not learning. Second, outside, our customers are doing the same. They are not weighing our evidence so much as asking whether this story is one they can see themselves inside. If we offer only statistics to a mind that thinks in narratives, we should not be surprised when nothing changes. However, the answer is not to abandon stories because we know they are how we make meaning. The discipline is to hold them more consciously and ask where a story came from, what it leaves out, and what we would need to see to let it go. Good news: an election cycle is a great time to practice asking those questions.

Being immune to stories is a terrible strategy, while being willing to examine the ones that govern us is an excellent one. So, which story are you currently living by, and who gets to help you test it?

PS: Because humans are fallible and can never possess absolute truth, we should function within a system that embraces a method of trial and error.