The biggest hindrance to building a great solution is not getting yourself out of the way in the beginning.

Personas divide businesses a lot. Some organisations dedicate entire teams and dollars to building out various different personas, giving them names, favourite brands of wine and allergies. Others firmly feel that they are a waste of time and not practical - and to an extent the latter are right.

Data needs to be truly objective to be of maximum value and it all starts at the beginning - data gathering. Too many times have I seen theories generated from the wrong basic premise - which either get abandoned because of lack of trust or are embraced with alarming alacrity as the ultimate truth.

Peter Drucker famously said "If you can''t measure something, you can't manage it"... I'd like to turn that around, especially in light of customer experience through voice of customer feedback - to say that if companies don't simultaneously think about how they are going to manage their customers' experiences once they get this feedback - it's almost better not to put these measures in place.