OK, it’s been a while. My original idea of reviewing a chapter-a-day from Waiting For Your Cat to Bark didn’t go so well in terms of timing, but the ideas in these chapters are still worth further consideration, so let’s get back to it.

Chapter 16 is a quick introduction to the Persuasion Architecture process known as “uncovery”. Uncovery is the R&D phase, where the “goal is to examine the topology, psychographics, and demographics as they pertain to the business in question. We’re also looking to understand the culture of the organization itself.”

In our own Persuasion Architecture practice, Uncovery is a one or two day exercise which seems designed to educate the Persuasion Architect and get them up-to-speed on the business - and it does do that – but it also allows management and other stakeholders to gain fresh and alternate perspectives on their business. And this turns out to be extremely valuable.

Management teams can easily slip ‘inside the bottle’ as discussed in Chapter 4, and taking a fresh look at the goals and issues and customers you serve can be a surprisingly enlightening effort. Uncovery forces questions to be answered, priorities to be set, and even agreement to be reached among team members. And most importantly the process and discussion puts the current selling process, online and sometimes offline, into a new and very unflattering light – leaving everyone eager to get into and through the process which will result in such dramatic improvements.

Tomorrow (really) I’ll get into Chapter 17 and the first steps of Uncovery.

:: This is part of a chapter-by-chapter review and commentary on Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa Davis. Read the original review here.