Trust behavior, not what people say they would do

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit says he doesn’t trust what people say in surveys. He trusts what people actually do. When people say in a survey that they would buy a product or do something, there is a 50% chance that they would do it. It’s a coin toss. It’s better, he says, to follow someone who has just done something and ask them why they did it.

Trust behavior (what people actually do), not what people say they would do. Measure behavior and find out why people behaved the way they have done to predict future behavior instead of using what people say they would do (e.g. in a survey) to predict what they would do.

This video is very insightful. Try watching it.

About the Author

Dr. Kenneth Acha, MD, DMin.

Kenneth’s mission is to use medicine, spiritual formation, poverty alleviation, and leadership development to help people live lives to the fullest. He holds two doctorate degrees: the first is in medicine and the second is in spiritual formation. He is a practicing U.S. physician, an assistant professor of medicine, and a senior professor of leadership and spiritual formation at Servants University (SU). Kenneth is also a core faculty in the department of orphan care and poverty alleviation at SU and the founder and president of the Kenneth Acha Foundation, an organization that has helped thousands of orphans in Cameroon and trained many leaders since 2005.

See author's posts