Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

if we allow the world to be run by logical people, we will only discover logical things. But in real life, most things aren’t logical – they are psycho-logical.

A rational leader suggests changing course to avoid a storm. An irrational one can change the weather.

Being slightly bonkers can be a good negotiating strategy: being rational means you are predictable, and being predictable makes you weak.

If you are wholly predictable, people learn to hack you.

‘The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.’fn6

For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel.