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That Hair Trigger

A month after the inauguration of Donald Trump I made a mistake in my classroom. I invited in someone — someone I didn’t know personally — to be a speaker.

He came recommended, we had a phone call beforehand, and the day was set. He was to speak about the topic of customer retention metrics (what I teach off of this blog is quite different than what you might expect).

Halfway through the class, at the appointed time, he arrived. He set up his laptop and started with an introduction to himself and his company. But things soon got sidetracked.

At about his third slide, a strange look came over him. He started to make references to the recent election and how upset he was about it. Then the following exchange happened, which I’m obviously repeating from memory since there was no video.

“The thing you have to remember about Trump is that he is the Antichrist,” he said.

I glanced around the room. Continue reading “That Hair Trigger”

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Loop In, Loop Out (Business Models and Media)

Years ago, when I was in college, I spent a couple hours a day reading the New York times in print. I would go to my favorite library, get one of the two copies of that day’s paper, and probably go through half of it. I then read three or four other papers too. The feel and even the smell of the newsprint was something I looked forward to. I started my days that way. When I couldn’t start my days that way, I missed it.

One of my goals at the time was to do something in journalism. I wrote for a handful of college publications. But journalism ended up not being for me, and I have no regrets about that today. In the meantime I still looked forward to reading the paper.

But more often I ended up reading less news in focused hour-long chunks in the morning and more news in quick scattered clips throughout the day, often delivered via social media. This change gave me awareness of new developments but also distracted me incredibly from longer-term projects. You’ve probably gone through that change too.

Continue reading “Loop In, Loop Out (Business Models and Media)”

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Problems or Puzzles

On important matters, people often put more effort into figuring out the right decision. But the right decision is different depending on who puts in the effort. And what if right is defined as the option that won the experimental split test rather than what seems to be best for the overall system?

Part of product testing (and even product concept testing) depends on generating demand data by running variations in front of customers. Run lots of variations, find the ones that perform better based on the metrics you value, and repeat.

I recently read a description of large-scale product experimentation for a financial services company. The business’ product experimentation had direct financial outcomes — namely improved customer retention and customer lifetime value. But there were costs too. Continue reading “Problems or Puzzles”