BuiltEnvironment

Analysis paralysis

I just read an interesting article called "Don't Get Blinded By the Numbers," in the March 2011 issue (I know, I know, I've fallen behind in my reading!) of Harvard Business Review. The author, Roger Martin, cites an information/decision process used by P&G's CEO, A.G. Lafley, where the numbers were somewhat misleading but the qualitative information was more informative. Martin quotes CEO Lafley as concluding:

"The analysis never tells you the answer. The best it can do is to inform your judgment."

In my 30+ years as a professional A/E marketer, I have seen a great many people suffering from analysis paralysis when there was too much information, when there were too many alternatives from which to choose, or when no answer was clearly "the right one." So they analyze and re-analyze to such depths that intelligent comparisons can no longer be made.

And they are OK with the idea of being stuck, looking at the same data over and over again until there is a clear answer!

They dither until the situation dictates a choice, or until someone else makes the choice for them. In either case, they can point to someone (or something) else as making the decision, and they can't be "punished" for making the wrong choice.

My gut conclusion is that analysis paralysis is the refuge of those who simply don't trust their own judgment, and are more afraid of the imagined consequences should they make the wrong choice, than they are of the consequences of doing nothing (which is also, after all, a choice!).

Industry norms vs. differentiation

I was reading the July 19th edition of "Rants from the Brand Coach," a newsletter written by Jim Walton, the CEO of Brand Acceleration, Inc. I always get great tips, inspiration and thought-provokers from Jim. Today's issue of "Rants" addresses our industry's love of "Best Practices," and wonders whether the concept is really a great thing or is just the first resort of lazy folks and/or unoriginal thinkers.

"Following industry norms" always seems reasonable -- "we found out what everyone else was doing and we did the same thing." Conventional wisdom says we can't get into trouble using industry standard procedures. Unless, of course, our firm is trying to differentiate itself -- to show what makes it different from other firms, not what makes it just like the others.

For many years, I declined every invitation (advertisement) to attend a workshop on how to write proposals. The advertisement always touted how many A/E firms and marketing professioals had taken the course, along with quotes about how much easier they found proposal development now that they had these processes.

I didn't want to do what everyone else was doing, so I always deleted the email or tossed the brochure. However, a few years ago, I realized it would be hard to differentiate my firm at the proposal stage -- to be different from the competition -- if I didn't know what the competition was doing.

The result? I had to attend a multi-day workshops in order to learn what "every other" A/E marketer was learning, to figure out what NOT to do!

I learned a lot of good things -- I still use some of the things I learned, but not all of them. Mostly, I use the workshop's insights about what the client wants to read (vs. what my technical people want to write), but I don't use the organizational templates every other attendee learned to use.

Since then, I have paid greater attention to what my competitors (and successful peers) were doing. I try to figure out whether their actions represent "industry norms" (what everyone else is doing) or original thought (something that will differentiate their firm from the others).

When a concept seems "way far out there," I ask myself if it really makes an emotional connection with the reader or if it was just intended to achieve something "over the top" that would be remembered -- even if it didn't score well.

I also consider why I never thought of that idea myself. I don't automatically copy it, but I don't automatically ignore it either. In fact, some of my best thoughts have come from a seed planted by someone else's original idea, something that sent my thoughts on a track that I might have ignored otherwise.

Along the way, I discovered that differentiation also means the ability to be different from my own past, to not fall back on "tried and true" processes, writing or graphic design just because they take less time and/or effort. Sometimes, I actually have to differentiate my current work from my own previous work.

Social media metrics

In the March 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review, there's a reference to a December 2010 HBR blog post that asked,"What will social media become?" A one-paragraph summary is followed by seven comments on the blog and the author's responses. One comment, by a corporate social media manager, says:

"This year we'll reject false influence metrics like Twitter followers and find hidden influencers."

Apparently, people are using the number of followers their Twitter accounts have as an indication of the level of success they achieve using Twitter.

I am reminded of a company web site some years ago - for a major service provider - where you got to "design" an airplane before you entered the site. You could pick the components you liked and put them together. Planes that would never get off the ground in real life were possible there, and you could print your design for posterity. The site was very popular. Many people came back again and again to design a different plane. They sent their kids and their friends to the site because building the plane was a lot of fun, and they could then print and compare their designs.

Unfortunately, there was no way for the service business to correlate hits with new accounts, and the "click-thru" rate was not a reliable measure since many people (whether customers or not) came back just to "design" a new plane. So the metrics gave a very false picture of the success of the site.

If a person or a company has 100,000 followers on Twitter, is that good or bad? Are they REAL followers that bring about REAL outcomes? Are they becoming clients, or are they just frequent readers? Or did they sign up, read your messages for a few days or weeks, and then just ignore you? Must you know how many followers your competitors have to gauge your success? Are the numbers being "gamed" (faked)?

Part of the blog author's response is, "...we need a better understanding (and better tools) to measure influence in the digital space."

I think a lot of firms in the A/E/C industry climbed on the Twitter bandwagon because it was new, and they sensed "everyone else" was getting on. But do any of us really have accurate ways to measure the impacts and/or influence we generate on Twitter? If we can't measure accurately, than "followers" might be just another interesting number, with little or no impact on the firm's bottom line.

Just wondering...