Measure Everything

Like many, I follow and enjoy Seth Godin’s marketing blog.  Most of his posts only tangentially relate to the work we do, but his recent post, “The scientific method” coincided and lined up with an interesting comment from a client.

Godin argues for a critical approach to thinking about your business and challenging the status quo.  “If you enter a conversation,” he says,  “looking for something to test, measure and ultimately change, it's likely you'll find it. That change makes you more competitive, and you continue to cycle past your competitors.’

Motherhood and apple pie, perhaps, but more often than not it isn’t done.

Corporate politics and fear are often reasons why managers and decision makers hesitate to measure what’s going on and confront what they learn, wherever it may lead.  But so is the lack of confidence that the important things can actually be measured.

We recently completed some work for a health care provider whom we helped assess retention rates for different groups of patients.  The CEO came from outside of the health care industry and was determined to  look at patient retention, though this had never been measured.  Now they know the characteristics of  patients that show better- or worse-than average retention behavior.  The next step is to identify and measure the actual reasons for patient attrition.

The VP Marketing told us that “before this project, we were convinced that most of the important things couldn’t be measured.  Now I believe almost everything can.”

The big change wasn’t as much believing at an intellectual level that important business phenomena can be measured, but rather to approach the world from the point of view that behind every question or opportunity is something than can and should be measured, analyzed, and judged. 

Perhaps that conversion in perspective is relatively easy.  Pick a thorny problem or issue and identify what you can measure to frame it with data.  Just getting started and persisting in finding an approach will almost always yield results.

Godin also highlights the other challenge, which is to adopt the right attitude toward the process, to be open to wherever the data may lead you.

“Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward.”

That takes courage.  But if you have that to begin with, the other part is easy.