Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

June 2, 2016 · 10:10 am

Provocateurs

Every business needs a provocateur. It could be someone external such as a client or a vendor but it’s way more preferable if it’s someone internal to the organization. If you’re not familiar with the word, it’s defined as a person who deliberately behaves controversially in order to provoke argument or other strong reactions. An agitator, a shit-disturber. Let me explain.

The biggest enemy of any organization is complacency. It’s easy when things are going well enough to be lulled to sleep by the lullaby of good numbers. Complacency is also the result of what I believe to be a fairly common mentality: don’t make waves. How often did you or someone you know report on some crisis that was occurring in a business and their response was to keep their heads down and wait for the crisis to pass?

Provocateurs force us to be better. They challenge assumptions and force us to look at alternative views of the future. Even though the word has negative connotations, I think one can play this role in a positive manner. In fact, it’s almost an imperative for any manager who is worth their salt.

Let me add a word of caution.  I’ve known (and worked for) managers whose m.o. as provocateurs was to pit their staff against one another.  They’d foster internecine warfare and see who came out on top.  This is NOT the sort of thing I have in mind because all that sort of provocation accomplishes is to burn down some of the foundation upon which a business is built.

Ask questions.  Challenge assumptions.  Provoke discussions.  Make some waves.  Is it risky?  Sure, but just as with any risk the rewards should the risk pay off are tremendous.  You in?

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May 31, 2016 · 11:10 am

GIGO

The Memorial Day weekend gave me a little time to get caught up on some reading. Some of what I was reading were analytics reports (I know – get a life) and while I very much appreciate the cycle of continual improvement Google fosters within their analytics product, that cycle yields a continuously growing amount of data. The problem that I have isn’t so much understanding what I’m reading but trying to figure out why any of it matters to my clients. I also spend time figuring out which of the numbers are lying to me. 

It’s no secret that there are an awful lot of bad actors in the digital world. Once it becomes clear how fraud is detected those bad actors move on to another form. If viewability is important, they create sites where there is 100% viewability but no content of any value. I had a client get all excited about an increase in referral traffic until I pointed out that most of that traffic was coming as a result of referrer spam. When we filtered it out, traffic was flat. Another prospect got excited by the large “stickiness” – time on site and pages viewed – that her site has. They were impressive until you filtered out the IP addresses of her employees, who spent hours a day on the site.

Silly things, I know, but it points to a common problem. An IDG study of a couple of years ago pointed out that nearly half of marketers said they struggle to make sense of the vast amount of data they get. The other half thinks they know what the numbers mean, yet many of their plans are built to achieve unrealistic metrics. The problem is compounded by what the paper identifies as the accuracy problem I mentioned above:

Why is data accuracy still such a big issue? One possible reason is a lack of investment in a defined data management process that includes ongoing, consistent data migration, data maintenance, quality control and governance. Too often data is held and managed in multiple organizational silos. This results in inconsistency, duplication, gaps and errors.

So while “garbage in, garbage out” isn’t a particular revelation, it does serve as an excellent reminder to take out the trash as best you can while compiling all of that data.  You with me?

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May 18, 2016 · 11:38 am

Crappy jobs

One summer when I was in college I found myself without gainful employment. I had spent many other summers as a camp counselor but I had decided not to spend 8 weeks locked in a bunk with a slew of six-year-olds and hadn’t really found anything to do that didn’t require an investment of cash (like an ice cream truck route). All the “good” jobs were taken, and while a buddy and I were offering our services out to paint houses, I really needed to do something to generate cash. That’s how I ended up with a crappy job for which I am still thankful.

My crappy job involved going door to door selling encyclopedias. I’m not kidding. For the younger readers out there, printed encyclopedias were pretty popular (think analog Wikipedia) nearly half a century ago. Every day I would drive my car into some neighborhood and walk the streets knocking on doors. The case I carried was not light, even to my younger, in-shape self. I got rejected nearly every time, at least when someone was nice enough to actually open the door, hear my spiel, and not threaten me with a dog. I also made a few bucks in the process, but calling it a crappy job is an understatement.

I learned a tremendous amount from my crappy job. First and foremost, I learned patience and what is commonly called sticktoitiveness.  I didn’t quit; well, at least not until my painting partner convinced someone to let us paint their house, which was 8 weeks into the summer.  I learned cold-calling and how to qualify leads.  I learned not to fear speaking to strangers. I learned that, just as is baseball, it’s possible to fail 6 times out of 10 and still be an all-star. Most importantly, I gained perspective.  Nearly any other job seemed great by comparison, and I could mentally return to knocking on doors any time things got bad at some subsequent job.

Many years later, “tell me about the worst job you ever had” became one of my standard interview questions.  I looked for people who had a crappy job at some point and we always talked about why it sucked and what they learned. I always leaned toward candidates who had done the worst jobs.

What crappy job have you had? How did it change you?

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