Strategy

If you have read the book, you would have probably been intrigued in a very amusing way. The insights and findings are shocking, the relationships and parallels drawn are a clear sign of genius. Very interesting to know certain statistics (like the fact that sending your kid to a friend's house who has a pool is more dangerous than having them go to a friend who's father owns a gun!). Apparently, more kids die drowning in a swimming pool, than from accidents related to guns. The main lesson in all the findings is almost the same. Don't rely on your gut feeling, or any heuristics you may have about a certain decision, but look at data.

Great information, a big hit to our instinctive thinking, and a reminder that the facts can be completely different from what we feel they are.

The problem is that it ends there. You learn the facts and know that you should be more concerned if your kid wants to go swimming at a friend's house. Most of the stuff is like this. It is a great display of genius and insight, but it hands us ready-made facts based on years of study and data analysis. It gives us a fish, but doesn't teach us how to fish. It's just like if I tell you that eating potatoes is more beneficial than you thought, and that research shows that if you have 5 potatoes per week, you are 27.5% less likely to get a heart attack. Ok, so I start eating more potatoes, if I have the discipline, and that's it.

I'm much more interested in lessons that can become tools for thinking and can be used in other situations. I'm interested in becoming a fisherman. 

There was one really valuable thinking tool that I was able to extract, and is really helpful in explaining many personal and economic behaviors. This is basically the non-linear (on non-absolute) way we take positions toward a certain topic.

This lesson / tool struck me through the Sumo wrestlers study. It shows that the wrestlers are willing to lose certain fights in certain situations. When the stakes are high (determining whether or not a wrestler goes down to the lower levels), things aren't as straightforward as they seem. Wrestlers are likely to have a tacit arrangement, whereby "I let you win this time if you let me win the next time I'm in need". Since one of wrestlers doesn't have much to lose by loosing, they gain a future favor from their opponent who is desperate for winning.

The important learning it gave me is to stop dealing with people's positions in an absolute manner. "This consumer is loyal", "this person loves me", "my boss is really into this project", "the company wants me". All these statements are wrong regardless of whether or not they are true in the moment. The reason is that they are incomplete descriptions of the positions of these people.

To complete these arguments, we need to mention the conditions under which they remain true. The company is really into this project, as long as ... is a more complete argument. The 'as long as' part is crucial, because it might get the other person to have a completely different position, even against their initial position, because their incentives have changed.

"The Next Big Thing" is a very nice thing to figure out. To be ahead of the market, to invent something that nobody thought about, and make a revolution. That's all cool stuff, nothing against it. As everything else, because the potential gains are enormous the risks are enormous too.

You can't 'know' what the next big thing is. You can speculate, do your homework, take the risk, and hope for the best. Again, nothing against that. I'm just analyzing what needs to be done.

The preious big thing, however, is the trend, brand, or idea that is no longer in fashion and buzzing, but started to gain credibility as a viable business option, and it is on its way to maturity.

In this case you have the most profitable option because you are benefiting from the momentum, maturity, and experience that has been gained in the industry.

Email marketing is a great example. It even sounds outdated! But it is still one of the most cost-effective and profitable marketing methods out there. There are many providers giving you tons of options, the analytics and testing are evolved, and there's a ton of data about people's behavior and responses. Furthermore, you can learn a great deal about it, and become really good and sophisticated in your offering.

All these factors make it much easier for you to sell the previous big thing, and since it is still not completely flat in terms of growth you can charge a big premium for it.

Unless you can afford the risk and budgets of going into the "next" big thing, sticking to the "previous" one can be much more profitable.

Having actionable insights is one of the most important things in any analysis you do. Ok, understood. But now what? How do we "make" our analytics actionable?

Page views increased by 15%, or page / visit went down 17%. So what?

These are the results of things that happened on your site, and caused page views, pages/visit, or whatever you are measuring to go up or down. After discovering the disaster (or the great news) you will have to dig deep and know why it happened in order to remedy the situation.

But there is another approach, which starts the other way around, preempts problems, and gives a clear action path in situations like the above.

This is inspired by a sentence that Bryan Eisenberg said in a webinar,"It doesn't make any sense to measure anything if you don't know what you are going to do with it."

Bingo!

This approach starts with the available actions you can influence in your site, and then builds the measurement strategy based on that:

1. Start by asking,"what actions are available to me on the site?"

Possible answers: I can change the content, I can change the layout of the page elements, I can change PPC bids, etc...

2. For each action, list all the possible things it can affect so that you have a ready action list during analysis.

Possible examples: Adding/removing keywords from my PPC campaign affects my conversion rate, getting high quality links affects my position on search results for keywords X,Y, & Z.

3. Build you KPIs based on the things that are affected by what you have control over.

Possible examples: Conversion rate of campaigns if you have control over, pages/visit for traffic sources you can control (like PPC), user experience of a process that you can influence the business rules.

With this approach you almost automatically know what you need to do when KPIs tell you something, because you know how they are affected, and because you already chosen the ones that you can influence.

The answer to "how to make analytics actionable?"...

You don't. You see what you are already empowered to do and analyze accordingly. Important things that you can't control should definitely be reported and you should seek to influence them, but in the current situation you should start with what you have.
 

Anyone working in the new era of factories (people who have their heads inside a computer all day long), lives full days of silent storms. From the outside, you just see a person sitting in a chair, typically slouching, eyes fixed on the screen, and hours passing by, where we go through emails, funny videos, interesting stuff, stressful ideas, deadlines, etc.
On the inside, the person is living in a storm; every video, email, or spreadsheet, is fueled with emotion, stress, conflicting thoughts, and inherent ambiguity, not to mention the unpredictable stuff that keeps coming with no limit. 
It's a storm of ideas that is impacting us on a real level, but it looks silent on the outside.
The funny thing about this storm, is that we somehow control it, and that's precisely why we are controlled by it! 
Because we can open 100 windows at the same time, we do. Because we can have seventeen different applications running at the same time, we do. Juggling, is the new name of the game. Speaking of games, I think gamers are the ones most suited to be the future business leaders. What they can accomplish in a game is precisely what "professional" people do in their computer; they multi task, make split-second decisions, and are comfortable with an ever moving and firing environment.
Dealing with this situation is about being able to channel every idea that comes in a fluid way. An inherent problem with the office atmosphere (which is different from gaming) is the fact that you can easily shut down any of the applications you are running and take a break whenever you want. Of course, the stuff keeps coming, and your clients and bosses are waiting.
The next time you are caught playing a game at work, tell them you are training for the new economy! 
 

An interesting thing I read recently mentioned that Google transformed advertising into a software program. Well, they are not the only ones. Many other companies have transformed many other crafts and professions into software programs.
That is what appears to the superficial observer. People, who have learned how to use a specific software start thinking that (or forget) they are (should be) marketers.
Real people, selling real things, to other real people, who are responding to messages meant to convince someone to do something.
A very clear symptom is when these people start talking solely in terms of click-thrus, conversion, and any other technical terms used to evaluate their efforts.
The way to tackle this issue is two fold:
1. Technical: Yes, you need to master each and every feature of that program you are using. The better you get at it, the more freedom and efficiency you will gain and it will have a great impact on your original objective.
2. Marketing / Business: Well, this is why you exist, isn't it? You need to master the understanding of PEOPLE you are trying to influence to do something. The ins and outs of the business, and what those people are like, how they think, what their preferences are, and what you can learn in order to create a great following.
The more you walk on this parallel path (both at the same time), the more each will make sense, and the more you find value in every new discovery you make in either path.
Try exchanging technical terms with human terms to remember what you are really doing.
The Click thru rate increased: people interested in X responded to this emotion better.
The conversion rate dropped: we need to better understand what is preventing people from trusting us enough to buy the product.
This is not an exercise in positive thinking, it is a focusing tool so you don't get carried away with all the new features you learned how to use, and focus on the core activities you need to focus on.