A self-assessment tool to consider what you know about yourself and what people do or don’t know about you is the Jahori Window. It was created in 1955 by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. They created it to visually represent what people see or don’t see of you. The model can be used for self–analysis, and development.

This is the Jahori window for self-assessment:

As you read through the quadrants from left to right, your perception of self shifts from known to unknown. When you read from top to bottom, what others know of you shifts from known to unknown. The top-left quadrant shows what people know; the bottom right quadrant shows what is unknown to both the self and others.

• Examples of what may fall into each of the four quadrants:
  Open (quadrant 1): name, public achievements.

• Blind spot (quadrant 2): These could be particular talents or skills that come so naturally to you that you don’t recognize them as such, but others are keenly aware.

• Hidden (quadrant 3): This is what you keep hidden from the world, something that only you know, and others don’t.

• Unknown (quadrant 4): This is what is unknown to the self and others.

These four quadrants can grow and shrink based on the situation. For example, when you are new to a group, the fourth quadrant is larger than the others because there is so much unknown. Still, as relationships form and norms are created, the fourth quadrant will shrink in size as the first, second and third begin to grow as you and the group members become more knowledgeable of each other.

Bright Hub PM has a great article and description of the Jahori window and how it can be used for a project team to grow through the feedback mechanism that the Jahori window provides. Each team member has their window, and through teamwork, more and more information is shared and gathered. Check out their article An Overview of the Johari Window Model and How It Helps Project Teams.

But, what if instead of using the Jahori window as a self-assessment, we use it as a tool of inquiry into the perceptions, values, and images a customer holds of an organization? What if we changed “self” to “organization” and “others” to “customers”?

(of course, “customer” can be interchangeable with the product, employee, brand…).

How do the quadrants play out in this example? This is the window of the organization. So each quadrant is filled with the type of information it either purposefully or unintentionally reveals to customers.

• Quadrant 1: This is the organization and its artifacts such as logo, catchphrase, buildings, colors, etc.

• Quadrant 2: This quadrant is what customers know of the organization that the organization doesn’t know they know. A great example is when an organization creates a product for one use, but customers use the product for something completely different. For example, Kleenex was designed to help remove makeup; its unintentional use was for blowing noses. Customers were purchasing the product for unintended use. When Kleenex got word of this, they responded. Play-doh was created to clean wallpaper; Rogaine was for the heart; Vibram was for sailors – for more fun stories where the original product didn’t match customers’ use, check out 9 Stellar Examples of The Unintended Use of Products which Printwand staff wrote in 2012.

This is an excellent example of why collecting customer feedback sooner than later is crucial to enhancing the customer experience and organization growth (provided it all heads in the direction of Bag Balm).

• Quadrant 3: This is what the organization is hiding from its customers. For example, it could be a toxic culture, misleading ads, or campaigns. These things can become publicly known and wreak havoc if not recognized and dealt with. Take, for example, Enron and Volkswagen. In both cases, the organizations withheld unethical business practices from their customers. This isn’t to say that all information withheld from customers is unethical – these are just examples of when it happened and its fallout.

• Quadrant 4: This is what neither the customer nor the organization knows about each other.

So, what does all of this mean? How can we, as CX practitioners, use the Jahori window to provide a better customer experience?

The voice of the customer programs provide insights into the various windows – customer surveys are a great way to reinforce the information in the first quadrant. Another excellent tool is segmented marketing – is the organization communicating to a particular customer in a way that is beneficial to her? This can uncover a mismatch or validate what the organization knew about that individual’s preferences.

Focus groups, interviews, and social listening are great ways to dig deeper in the second and third quadrants to discover what’s missing – what is the customer doing with the product? In what can the organization better serve or adjust to suit the customer? Is something not being communicated well to current or future customers, or are we assuming to know what our customers want?

And finally – what’s missing? What aren’t people aware of within the organization and outside? Who doesn’t the organization know? In what areas can the organization grow and expand?

Some companies were created on the insights of the fourth quadrant; Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, McDonald’s, and FedEx – we didn’t know that we needed things, fast food, fast deliveries, curated shows, etc., until we were presented with the idea. Now, living without any of the products these organizations provide (or the industries created from them) is difficult to imagine.

This is also why it’s crucial to include innovation in the organization’s work. Consider Apple and the creation of the iPhone. The product transformed the world. “The iPhone has also created arguably as many new industries as it destroyed,” wrote Kif Leswing in The iPhone decade: How Apple’s phone created and destroyed industries and changed the world.

Using the Jahori window as an assessment tool will provide deep insight into what’s working, where there are opportunities, and how to better engage with and understand your customer.

Using the Jahori window as an assessment tool will provide deep insight into what’s working, where there are opportunities, and how to better engage with and understand your customer. It also provides a way to understand better how you’re interacting with your customers, what’s working, what can be improved, what you didn’t know about, and how can you grow into a new area?

The Johri window is a wonderful model for an organization to use to understand and question their customers’ perception of the brand, product, experience, or whatever it offers.

I’ve you’d like to discuss this or learn more, please reach out!

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References and further reading

Harvey, Steve (n.d). 25 Disruptive Brands That Changed the World you lIve in. Fabrik.

Leswing, Kif (2019, Dec. 19) The iPhone decade: How Apple’s phone created and destroyed industries and changed the world. CNBC.

Luke, Ryan (2021, Feb. 1). The 10 biggest company scandals of 2020 (theladders.com). Ladders.

McGovern, G., Moon, Y. (2007, June) Companies and the Customers Who Hate Them. Harvard Business Review.

Printwantd staff. (2012, Jan. 5) 9 Stellar Examples Of The Unintended Use Of Products. Printwand.

Segal, Troy (2021, Nov. 6). Enron Scandal: The Fall of a Wall Street Darling Investopedia.

Topham, G., Clarke, S., Levett, C., Scruton, P., & Fidler, M. (2015, Sept. 23) The Volkswagen emissions scandal explained The Guardian.

Unknown (2011, Feb. 12) An Overview of the Johari Window Model and How It Helps Project Teams Bright Hub PM.