Category Archives: Consulting

February 28, 2018 · 12:21 pm

Measure What You Can Measure

The NFL is getting ready for the annual combine. This is where players get tested both physically and mentally to see if they’re NFL material. There is psychological testing to test intelligence. They run the 40-yard dash. It’s a 4-day job interview, much of which plays out on TV.

Teams use the data to make decisions about which players to select in the annual draft. They can stack the reams of information from the combine with the data generated over the course of a player’s college career and choose someone who will, hopefully, fit into a team’s depth chart as well as its philosophy.

Anyone who follows the NFL will tell you that all of this data has its place but it’s far from infallible. Kurt Warner, a 2-time NFL MVP went undrafted. So did Warren Moon, a Hall Of Fame quarterback too. Put Tony Romo on that list as well. No team looked at the data and thought any of these men were worthy of a draft pick. Oops.

You just might be guilty of the same thing in your business. The data isn’t infallible and the data only measures what it’s designed to measure. Tom Brady (selected 199th in his draft year) recently told NFL prospects that they can’t measure heart. He’s right, and it’s because there isn’t a solid way to capture that data.

How are you making this mistake? You might be using one data point to draw a conclusion that isn’t right. Correlation isn’t causation, as we hear so often. Grateful Dead fans don’t all smoke pot and have long hair. Identifying a target as those fans doesn’t mean you should be promoting to the stereotype.

Another faulty conclusion might be due to an error in the data itself. I had an advertiser on a site I ran complain that they weren’t getting great results. They had neglected to respond to a question from their salesperson about turning on frequency capping to extend their reach and limit the number of times a day someone saw their ad. They were reading the data correctly but the data itself was faulty due to an underlying issue.

One of my favorite data error is the foundation of the entire TV business, the Nielsen Ratings. The TV and ad industries have attached an accuracy level to Nielsen ratings that even Nielsen says is unreasonable. A study of a few years back found in analyzing 11 years of data that the margin of error for reported results was often more than 10%. That might not sound like much but it can represent hundreds of thousands or even millions of impressions. The issue here is that buyers are too focused on the (inaccurate) numbers rather than on precise metrics such as sales.

Measure what you can measure. Don’t extend that measurement to other things that aren’t measured as well. I bet your results will improve. Let me know?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 26, 2018 · 12:34 pm

New Greens, New Breaks

One of the first things you learn about writing is that you generally want to stick to writing “what you know.” That’s why things around here generally revolve around business, golf, and food. Sometimes those three things intersect (a bad food experience at an obviously failing snack bar on some golf course?) but generally I manage to get two of the three put together, and all the screeds have a business point to make.

Today, as is often the case on Mondays, something occurred to me on the golf course over the weekend. My home course replaced the greens last summer. We went from bent grass greens to Minverde Bermuda greens. I can hear your eyes rolling, but let me explain what that has meant and why it just might be meaningful to you and your business.

One thing with which many businesses are dealing, either directly or indirectly, is climate change. In the case of golf courses here in North Carolina, it’s meant that some strains of grass just can’t take the heat and clubs spend a lot of money trying to prevent them from dying. There are dead spots, root rot and massive fans that are installed near some greens which run up the power bill trying to cool down the grass that can’t take the heat. Our place lost parts of 5 greens two years ago. The takeaway is that you can believe or not believe in climate change but you can’t ignore the effects that whatever is going on is having. I don’t suspect you run a golf course, but you may stock seasonal items or have staffing needs that are weather-dependent and you can’t stick to the calendar as you once knew it.

That, however, isn’t my main point today. One of the other things that happened when they replaced the greens is that everything was different. The speed was different, the way the ball moved on the green was different, and the new greens were very hard, so you couldn’t land the ball where you used to because it would bounce and roll. The breaks (how the ball moved in response to the topography) were completely different, so all of the local knowledge you had was gone. I will tell you that it’s frustrating to have a putt you’ve made many times before suddenly not move as much as it once did. It is also difficult to train yourself to ignore the slope you know is there because you also know the ball isn’t moving the way it used to.

That sort of thing happens in your business. Things change and you can’t operate under your old belief system. I may believe the ball will move three feet left but on the new green, it barely moves. You may think to be on Main Street will assure you of foot traffic but when the new mall opens, your reality will be quite different. You need to do the best you can is reading the new terrain and adjust your thinking. Otherwise, you’re going to be missing the mark quite a bit, sort of like I did this weekend. New greens mean new breaks and that means a new look at everything you do. Make sense?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints, Reality checks

Tagged as , , , , ,

February 9, 2018 · 9:32 am

Back To The Bar

(Only cropped, no other editing.)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s Foodie Friday and this week I’m inspired by something the folks at Bacardi are doing because it’s something every company ought to be doing in some form. In the case of Bacardi, they’ve called it “Back To The Bar” and the reason for what they’re doing is nicely explained by their CEO and reported by MediaPost:

“Back to the Bar is our version of ‘walking the factory floor,’” said Mahesh Madhavan, CEO of Bacardi Limited. “It puts our people in touch with what’s happening in our business in real life and real time — something you can’t truly understand behind a computer screen, sitting through a presentation, or dissecting a spreadsheet.”

What every employee is being encouraged to do is to go hang around bars. In fact, they’re shutting down the company to allow employees to do so. While they’re in those bars, they’re to connect with customers and encourage them to try cocktails made with Bacardi. I imagine they’ll also get a lot of feedback on the product, consumer approaches to drink selection and other information which, as the CEO says, you can’t get behind a computer screen. It’s a fantastic idea.

Think about your own business. First, I hope you’re eating your own dog food – that you’re a regular user of your own product or service. If not, why not? As an example, over the years I’ve worked in sports with a few people who didn’t really watch sports or know a heck of a lot about it. How they got hired baffled me. I also worked with a TV executive who said he didn’t ever watch some very popular shows because he “wasn’t the demo.” I get that but I think if your job entails marketing to a particular target you need to understand the target and that includes their likes and dislikes even if they don’t mirror your own.

Next, Barcardi is getting first-hand feedback. They’re talking to people who are in a relaxed environment, probably a cocktail or two down the road, and the chances of getting uncensored feedback are excellent. It’s not a written survey or a focus group. It’s way better than those. Most importantly, it’s first hand. I have always loved the old United Airlines commercial from the late 1980’s in which Ben, a senior executive whose company lost a long-term client that morning, is handing out airline tickets to his managers and tells them to go visit clients. Ben himself is going “to visit that old friend who fired us this morning.” It’s a spectacular reminder not to lose touch with people. Don’t rely solely on email and telephone. You probably see this issue even in how your own office works if you still work in one. People don’t visit – they communicate via email or Slack or some other messaging service, even with the person in the next cubicle.

People thrive when they connect with other people. Your business thrives when it really connects with customers. When was the last time you went back to the bar?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,