Weapons of Mass Delusion

GlobeScan is in the business of measuring perceptions, not facts. This is something I frequently find myself reminding clients when presenting research findings that sometimes show that their stakeholders or consumers have a much hazier - or just plain wrong - sense of what their organisation is doing than they might like. Unless you've invested almost as much time, energy and thought in understanding your stakeholders' perceptions and communicating to them what you're doing as you have in actually doing it, don't expect to be given the credit.

That said, while they can be serious and expensive, misperceptions are rarely a matter of life and death for our clients. The same could not be said of the various misperceptions that led up to the second Gulf War in 2003 - the most glaring one being that Saddam Hussein possessed the infamous 'weapons of mass destruction'. I was interested to read in last week's Washington Post that Saddam told the FBI that he allowed the myth to be perpetuated largely because he was worried about appearing weak to the 'fanatic' (as opposed, presumably, to just regularly psychopathic) Iranian leaders - and would in fact have been open to a 'security agreement' with the USA to protect Iraq from a potential Iranian attack.

Given the human, political and economic consequences of the decision to invade, this could be one of the costliest perception misreadings of all time. At the very least, it's a reminder to the rest of us take some time to make sure we really understand what other interested parties are thinking before embarking on our own risky projects.