Are You Measuring What Matters?
Recent revelations about phony
Twitter followers are the latest twist in an old game of audience
amplification. You need to make sure that you're always locked in on the right
metrics. And more importantly, that you're always acting on the information.
It's never too soon when you're starting a new business to take a break, catch your breath, look around, and make
sure you're heading in the right direction, doing the right things in the right
way, and chasing the right rabbit. Chasing too many rabbits at once is a
formula for failure. Doing things just to keep busy (or because you can't sit still)
is both debilitating and dumb. And it doesn't matter how fast you're going
if you're on the wrong road. So, do yourself a favor and slow down
occasionally. This isn't anything you don't know. What matters is having
the discipline to stop and take stock of where you are and to "course
correct" mistakes in a timely fashion before they become unrecoverable
failures. Left to themselves, problems will fester and only get worse-- they
rarely go away. Fixing things doesn't happen by itself. I've
developed a simple set of steps to guide you in the process. I call these the 5
A's:
Audit: figure out where to look for
opportunities/exposures and what to look for;
Analyze: determine what's going on--right and
wrong--and when changes need to be made;
Act/Adjust: bite the bullet and do what needs to be
done, but don't take on too much at one time;
After Action: see what happened, good and bad, and,
Anticipate: get started on what's next.
Keep in mind that tweaks are fine-- not everything is a teardown
or a complete redo. You don't test the depth of a puddle by jumping in with
both feet. As we like to say, start small and scale. Importantly, don't
plan on stopping, because this is an ongoing, constant, and iterative process
where you get better a little bit at a time all the time. But only if you get
started and keep at it. Not all the time-- not every day-- but in a
regular and systemic way. Just like innovation, continuous improvement is not a
department or a part time thing or a chore. Always striving to get better at what you do is part of the culture of
the best businesses.
The second and equally
important part of the process is proper metrics. What gets measured in your
business is what ultimately gets done because that's what you are paying
attention to. Of course, watching and measuring the right things is paramount.
Metrics are all the rage today because Americans love nothing
more than keeping score. All kinds of folks-- well-intentioned and also awful
people--play off that desire every day. I can remember in the simpler times
when we thought that clickbait headlines and listicles for losers were about as
low as you could go in the corrupt competition for eyeballs. I warned
then warned then that tricked traffic, vicarious
visitors, and the kind of morons attracted to the latest news on Momma
whoever's new diet weren't worth reaching or pitching to in any case because
they weren't buying anything worth selling-- but at least we thought they
were living, breathing human beings. I said:
"...if you're advertising on a web
site, and its primary traffic drivers are hacks, tricks and clever pet
pix, what are its visitors really worth? Even assuming that those visitors
are people and not tracking robots?
I'd argue that they're not worth your time and certainly not worth your money.
Instead of attracting people who might be interested in your products or
services and also highly influential, you can end up spending money to attract
mobs of easily-influenced people who probably couldn't explain how they
got to a given website if they were asked."
How naïve I was:
things can always get worse and more disgusting. Because the race to the bottom
never ends, and lowlifes can be innovative, too. The latest craze of fraudulent
exaggeration allows you to buy bots to tweet your site and acquire fake robotic
followers to build up your alleged "audience," a service provided by
shady scumbags in foreign lands. Duping people into thinking your social media
voice (your megaphone) is much bigger and broader than it actually is isn't
much different from the many ways that marketers seeking to monetize their
media have lied about their metrics, viewership and reach since the beginning
of time. But that's a swamp for another day.
For the moment, what's
critical as you review your business is to be sure that you're measuring the
right behaviors and results in the right way. To do this correctly, you've got
to go all the way. Too often we settle for part of the story or fall for the
form and forget the substance. I see this all the time in software and solution
implementations. Too many IT professionals think they are keeping score,
but they aren't really asking deep enough questions or looking hard enough at
what's going on in order to actually know the score.
Effective software
rollouts are a three-step process and every step counts. First, you have
deployment -- getting the stuff on everyone's machines and devices. You
can't stop there. Second, you have adoption-- are people using the new
tools and solutions-- are the dogs eating the dogfood? That's a good next step,
but you're not home yet. Finally: results. Is the whole big hairy deal making a
real difference in your operations and your bottom line? If not, it wasn't
worth the trip. This is the hardest and most uncomfortable question because no
one might like the answer. The rule here is simple: if you've made a mistake,
you've got to acknowledge that bad news and make the necessary changes. You
should never stick to a mistake just to try to justify the time and money you
spent making it.
Metrics are messy, but
they're the keys to the kingdom; you've got to master the ones that matter. And
they're fluid. Smart businesses are flexible enough to shift the ways they keep
score (even when this may be unpopular with their customers) if the new
approach makes more sense and is a better and more representative way to track
the behaviors that drive the bottom line. A very relevant example is the recent
shift that Starbucks made to its rewards program. Instead of simply tracking
store visits, Starbucks shifted to tracking what the visitors/customers
actually spent which, of course, makes so much more sense. The airlines figured
this out a while ago and adjusted their frequent flyer programs to emphasize
dollars spent over miles traveled or segments flown.
Part of your review
process should focus on the same kinds of questions and concerns. Maybe you're
measuring what's easy to measure. Maybe you're measuring things that don't
matter and wasting time and money doing that. Maybe you're too focused on
squeaky wheels and not on long-term loyal customers. There are a lot of ways to
get this wrong and only one way to get it right. Get started.