I hate to say it but many people are mentally lazy. I mean that they do not think outside their current existence as defined by the beliefs, rules and structure of the life they live. I consider that being mentally laziness. You may call it what you want but it is limiting and it sets a person up to relive certain patterns over and over throughout their life. I can generally predict the actions a person will take, based solely on seeing the patterns of their life. There is nothing magically or technical about this, it’s simple observation and then running the likely probability of outcomes. Since I do this all the time when I do market analyses, it is easy for me to spot the patterns, as it is second nature for me.

Our beliefs determine our actions and reactions, thus, once I understand where a person is coming from, I pretty know what the outcome will be. So yes, if you fall into this category of someone who plays it safe and doesn’t leave the box, you are very predictable. However, this is not always true and certainly not true of many people who do not stay in the box. In this case, past results will never tell you the future.

In the lives of many people are pivot points, often belief systems are changed fundamentally at those pivot points, under certain conditions, it is when those conditions happen and action is take, do we see a real change in people. Among some of my fellow MBA’s, I have noticed two very interesting paths among them. Those that take the typical route, working in corporations and staying there. And then there are those who also start out there but then, something changes and they move on to something else like nonprofit or start a business or work for a small company. Something changed and thus you are looking at a person who has different beliefs and different motivations, thus, past performance will not tell you, what you can expect from these people. The latter group, you cannot use past performance to measure their future at all.

This is where many systems fall short, especially in the hiring process where they seek that past performance, but it is a once dimensional measure. This is also why so many hiring decisions fail. Legally, you can’t ask the kind of questions that will get you the information you want, you need someone who can really tell, is this a “me to” person or someone who has left the box. Unfortunately for many companies, those people are often in short supply.

I never compete on price, because someone else always has a lower price than you do.  Sooner or later, someone in China is going to make a knock off of what you make.  Sure it will probably kill the end user but it looks just like yours and costs a lot less.  Over the last 20 years, businesses have trained consumers to look for the best price, not the best quality in product or service.  This type of mental training has lead to customer satisfaction becoming basically useless as a measurement.

Case in point, I know a lot of people who are happy or satisfied with a particular product.  However, they will jump ship if something else comes along at a lower prices that is perceived to be equal or better and in some cases even an inferior product but close enough.  Satisfaction won’t tell you if these customers will stay or go.  We need to focus on customer loyalty, what is the loyalty rating of customers?  Most of you have no clue how to even measure that.  It is doable and generally a lot simpler than most think.

Loyalty helps you to better understand who really is a true customer, someone who is going to stick around and also, how to get the fence sitters to become loyal or if you are really wasting money trying to get them to become loyal.  Sometimes you just have to let them go.

I say the numbers are over hyped because I’ve been on there a long time.  I was on FB when they had it opened to people from certain colleges of which I was.  So I’ve seen all the changes and people complaining about the new look and how they want the old one back, people wanting me to join Farmville or some other game, the scams that go on and so on.  I just role with it, it’s a website, the flavor of the time and like all flavors, it will fall out of favor when a better one comes.

But lets’ be honest, FB isn’t all that great for adults either or businesses.  I have not been writing much this year, I have been writing articles online for ten years and I decided, a break is in order.  So I write when I feel like it.  But on FB, I like to post articles to things I find interesting, and my interests these days have some hint of politics to them, not because I like politics, but because politicians seem to like messing with the things I like.  But since the majority and the administration are all from one party, my friends who like that party, tend to take it personal when I point out bad things their guys are doing.  As a result, I have now have a lot of former democrat friends.  This is what happens, people see something they don’t like, complain and I that’s their right but I don’t care to debate them on an article, so they rant and someone comes and rants at them or with them and well, it’s boring.  Sometimes I post because it might be interesting to some, not because I actually want to get into a flame war over something.  But that and seeing pics of people’s kids, is basically what FB is about for most people.  As a result, I’d say about 25% of my friends are real users of it, 50% come by maybe once a month.

Basically, FB is boring.  It is a great way to reconnect with people and to catch up but beyond that, no, it’s not that interesting.  So I’m not surprised that kids are leaving it for other sites.  I just wonder when businesses will do the same?  Honestly, it is not a great platform for businesses.  I know that’s a horrible thing to say right now but it is true.  It’s not the most business friendly platform and especially since they can delete your account at will, that’s not fun.

In a few years, if not sooner, something better will come along that lets us bring all our friends with us from FB to join and we will find that new site the best thing since, FB.  And all move on.  That’s the nature of the web.

Want to read the article I reference in this post, read it here:  http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007808

Longevity in this situation means, remaining the same.  The consultant was expressing that companies like long histories of doing something.  Now 5 years ago I was told that by a recruiter that I lacked this kind of longevity on my resume and I agree.  But I also work in a  space that moves rather quickly and if you have been doing the same thing today that you were in 2005, you missed a lot!  Longevity is also not very natural.  I am blessed to have a wooded lot that I live on, my office looks out to the woods and I see how my yard changes.

To the average observer, my yard never changes, the big trees are still there, the jasmine and nettle compete for  space, year after year and my blackberry bushes are always full of blackberries.  To the average person, it looks the same as it did last year.  But nature has one rule, keep move, i.e. keep changing.  For me, I see how the tree canopy has grown, the nettle moves into new areas, the jasmine grows higher and the blackberry bushes grow as well.  Even the soil changes and the grass changes.  Everything is always changing, because you can’t grow without change.  Nature gets it, people who preach longevity, i.e. never changing, don’t get it.

A good organization is always changing, always seeking what is coming.  Staying the same is a good way to end up in the also ran category.  I don’t try to relive the past and I don’t think companies should either.  If you look back at history to learn what lessons there are, you’ll see it is the companies that looked forward, who eventually became successful.  Take Intel, they used to make calculators, then they switched to computer processors, back when it wasn’t even cool.  Or Apple, with their phones and mp3 players, they took them to a new level and now they sell millions.  People who would never buy a Mac, now buy iphones and ipads, left and right.  Change is good.

An organization must change, not just in mission but often in what people do.  I’m not saying lay people off, although sometimes it will come to that.  But you can change an organization and what people do without the layoffs.  Also an organization needs to constantly question, is this good enough for tomorrow?  The answer should be no.  If it is yes, then you are either doing something wrong or you have fallen into stagnant thinking.  Most people grow old when they start to do the same thing over and over and change little, nature hates that.  The same goes with organizations because they are created of people.  So longevity as defined by the consultant is really just a myth.  On the surface, it may look the same and look like a constant, but in reality, it’s not.

Web metrics can be very useful in some aspects such as showing the sales funnel for a particular website or the geographic regions or industries in which people are coming to your site from. This type of information can be very useful to a marketer and beyond marketing within an organization. However, some metrics are just busy work. I have a basic rule of thumb, if you cannot tie a metric into the bottom line in some way. Then you should really question whether or not you should be spending your time on that metric. We all know within marketing there are a ton of metrics, which do not have any relevance to the bottom line. They are just there.

I know that we all have had the same conversation with other people within our organization that marketing needs to have more metrics. And over the past decade we have delivered and created many metrics. But again it comes down to how well are we measuring in terms of our impact to the organization. Metrics for the sake of metrics end up making you a slave to those metrics even if those metrics do not have any relevance. So always design your metrics to have relevance to the bottom line, which will then have relevance to the whole organization.

Edward Chenard

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