Here’s how last year’s predictions and hopes turned out:

1: We will find out we aren’t ready for our seat at the table (but we almost are)

Like a big fat jerk, I compared us to the Jamaican bobsled team. That we can show up at the executive roundtable, but we aren’t really ready to compete at that level.

Do I think I was wrong? Maybe not. Do I think we made progress? Definitely. Do we still have room for improvement? Also definitely.

Analytics is already seeing more than just a sliver of dawn light. We are coming into a more fully-illuminated state, and Sterne’s netting of great speakers and real world success stories demonstrates that. Our ability to see analysts who have graduated into central, executive roles demonstrates this maturation. We are getting there. And it’s accelerating.

Many analysts in 2012 will be faced with a decision of whether they want to ride the bigger waves, as they begin to appear. They are riskier. You are more likely to face plant or even drown, but if you can ride these bigger waves successfully, you get more exposure and the mobility to get your ideas (and your title) to places where your abilities will make heads spin.

2: Analytics will no longer be about measurement

I tried to find a picture of a dead horse that wasn’t offensive. I couldn’t.

Let’s not dwell on this: we use measurement to generate ideas to put into practice to drive real world outcomes. It’s our own decision whether we open conversations with the word “outcomes” and work backwards, or open with “measure” and try to work toward outcomes. You all know how I feel about this one, so we can just move on.

3: Vendors will stop selling “insight” and begin selling enablement and competitive differentiation

Ha, well I was on vacation looking at a snow-covered mountain when I wrote this last year. The world seemed so right. So much promise. And I was heavily dosed on crazy pills.

The point of this is to say YOU are the one with the insight. Remember that. The tools will never stop claiming they generate ROI, insight, cure sickness, and bake bread.

They do not bake bread.

Vendors will continue to sell in a way that works. It’s up to us to sell ourselves even better. We are what makes the technology work. Not the other way around.

4: Analytics will separate from its association with other teams

I think we’re really getting there with this one. We are less IT, less marketing, less product, less x, more us. The less we align with any one arm or discipline, the more we are able to be real analysts, weighing our various options and competing priorities to come up with holistic, realistic options for our company to invest in. Thoughts?

5: Privacy concerns will come to a head in the media and we need to address it well, as the referee

This wasn’t as sensational as I had dreamed up. There was a low simmer, but nothing that broke out into rioting in the streets and knee-jerk legislation.

The EU is preparing tin foil hats for all of its residents with some business-crushing upcoming laws around first party cookies and data capture opt-in. The good old US of A will lag a long way behind because of our powerful lobby, and that’s where we need to be smart. It’s very important for our businesses to be able to articulate the value of analytics in terms of how data is used to improve customer experience and marry that to real outcomes in terms of both consumer satisfaction and business outcomes.

Brands that people respect can do a lot of good for our industry: if TOMS shoes can show how web analytics led to more sales, more donations, happier customers, more activity in the social space that boosts awareness, nobody’s going to start thinking TOMS is creepy. It’s time to paint what we do in terms of the good it does and be proud of it, rather than trying to hedge the assumption that evil companies are using data to do evil things (which they are).

Consumers need to see both sides, so just like everything else, they realize that good people do good things with analytics and bad people may do bad things; but analytics itself is not the bad thing.

Our success in protecting what we do and how we do it will not come from our direct interaction with the government. It will come through educating the executive suite on the value this presents (and threat that losing it represents), and allowing the guys who talk to the media, stock analysts, and the lobby take care of it for us.

So, that was last year. How about this year?

My wishes for this year are a little simpler and conveniently less quantifiable. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you already do these things, whether you think these represent a bad or unrealistic approach, or whatever other feedback you have.

1. Analysts need to stop talking about savings

No business on earth is saving for retirement. No business wants to move to the beach or the mountains, live a comfortable life, pay for its grandchildren to go to a good college. No business really cares about savings. Businesses care about spending to grow.

The concept of the capital markets, and funding in general, is all about growth. Most companies are physically worth only a small fraction of their market capitalization. All of the extra money is there for growth. When companies have an IPO, get venture funding, or even get a loan from the bank, that surge of cash is used to fund an accelerated pace of innovation, production, sales, etc. Money is used to buy hard capital (machines, buildings, trucks, copiers, etc.) that will fuel growth, it is used to pay higher salaries for smarter, more innovative people, and more of them, it is used to advertise, and more.

Companies want to spend, not save. Spending is what makes money come in the door. The only reason that money is coming in today is because spending happened yesterday, last month, last year, or 5 years ago. It led up to this moment.

When a business “saves” money and doesn’t put that money to better use somewhere else, that money just sits as cash, which provides little to no return to the business (unless it’s being saved for a large event like an acquisition, etc., or there really are zero viable places to spend). There may indeed be a few scenarios where saving is the only option, but what really matters is more effective capital allocation.

So, let’s stop talking about saving and start talking about reallocating. And in a big picture sense, too. Don’t limit your reallocation thinking to the web site, your digital marketing, or even digital itself. If you find $20 million of “wasted” paid search budget, go to the top and figure out where, anywhere in the organization, a $20 million investment will have the greatest return. Put your money back on the table and keep playing. Saving is quitting.

2. Get businesses to take “I didn’t know we had that” out of their vocabulary

How many times have you been in a meeting where people were recapping a bad decision and someone brought up the fact that there was substantial data, market research, or other evidence that could have helped the business make a better decision, only to hear one or more people say, “Well, if I knew we had that information, I would have used it!”?

Once is too many times.

People, especially in larger organizations, ask for what they think is available. In fact, they may not even reveal their true need, and their request is for specific reports or slices of information they know the organization has on hand:

• “I need a report of traffic source ROI by month and callouts on strategy/tactical shifts on the chart.”
• “I need to know the average time from the first time a visitor comes to us until they purchase, by campaign.”
• “I need a report that shows us which keywords drove the most pageviews in the first quarter.”

Each of these requests is really about something else. Someone is trying to spend their marketing budget more effectively, understand how long after tactical shifts the business will have to wait to see impact, or see how effective their past efforts have been. Each report request is something the requester already knows exists, and it allows for little creativity, analysis, or true assistance with their core effort or goal.

In a perfect world, though, we would hear this:

“What information can we drum up that will help me make decision XYZ?

When people state the nature of their need and simply ask what is available, our role transforms radically. We understand their true need and can bring a creative mix of data, qualitative and quantitative, to evaluate and influence the decision, either making it more quickly or better.

Easy enough?

This second one is more of a hope than a prediction, but knowing the people in this industry, nothing surprises me any more. There are some truly talented and determined people in analytics, and it’s going to be another great year for us.

I think we should read, and we should read a lot. But with everything we read, we need to ask if we really believe it. Don’t just take the author’s word for it. Don’t think that just because they got published that the ideas were vetted. Any specialist in any industry can point to 5 or 50 books that they feel are completely and utterly wrong or misleading, from golf instruction to Ruby on Rails programming to our own world of web analytics.

When you read Avinash’s books, Eric’s books, or anyone elses’ books, blogs, or even worse: companies’ sponsored whitepapers or adversising, just ask yourself, “Do I really believe this is 100% right? Is this the only way of doing this, or are there alternatives? Am I believing something because it is charted or has a seemingly legit data source?”

If you don’t ask yourselves this, I know someone looking to sell their shares of Enron and mortgage backed securities for a good price. They have all the charts and legit data sources you could ever want.

When you ask yourself these questions, however, one of two things happens: you either decide that the point was an interesting one but there may be another way of looking at the world (no, this doesn’t always mean a person is stupid or wrong, you may just feel differently about something), or, better, you confirm what the author said in your own mind, solidifying your respect for their work and thoughtful approach, building more personal conviction and ownership of the concept. In either case, your dissection of their words is what they wanted. No decent human being wants anyone reading their work like a manual for life, because they know that type of reader is a weak, fickle reader who could just as easily be turned by the next post. Writers write to get you thinking so you can reach your own conclusions. Which is exactly why I and so many others have such a great deal of respect for Avinash, Eric, and other major contributors to our industry. They care enough about us to let us reach our own conclusions, and they are comfortable enough with their own lives to be okay with small or even big differences of opinion.

There has been a great deal of manure written and spoken in our industry’s (and others’) history. Microsoft and its fans told the world that Apple was meaningless and Linux less so. How’s that going? And now Adobe is on this rant about the “cost of free” and building fear around Google Analytics and its suitability for enterprise. And even worse, other people are jumping on the bandwagon, trying to earn pageviews by shooting holes in GA and other players in the industry with bazookas. It’s a shame: everyone has been so sensationalist that it’s hard to distinguish the good, valid points from the total nonsense. Some of the points are legitimate, but not all are. It’s also a shame because Adobe/Omniture is a fantastic company that I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with, and they are acting like Tonya Harding rather than working on and talking about their own strengths, of which there are many.

So when it comes to blogs, co-workers, agencies, big companies or anything, listen to your grandpa: “Don’t believe everything you read.”

When you are done with your next best things and your can’t misses, when the smoke blows away and your barrel cools down, you’ll still be sitting there looking at a pristine bullseye. If I looked for the safest place to stand while you brands unloaded all of your budget and efforts on me, it would be right smack dab in the middle of the target labeled, “offer your customers something genuinely better.”

So when the bullets are all gone, put down your arms and come have a talk with us. We’ll still be here. We have some ideas about how to do things better. Realistic ideas. Actionable ones. Ideas with lasting value, the ability to differentiate the offering; ones that may even earn a little trust and respect from our customers that will last.

Each of the efforts you’ve watched dwindle had lasting value, though. It wasn’t the channel that failed. It was the people who thought the channel would somehow take care of things that the business wasn’t willing to take care of. *Social media fits here. Wonderful opportunity for businesses, yet again not a magic bullet. In fact, more of a boomerang bullet.

There are no magic bullets. There is only the hard work it takes to do it better.

So let me start over with something simple. Here is what I believe. Your mileage may vary.

I believe that web analytics has the ability to change the world.

Corny? Yeah. But I believe it anyhow.

I define “change the world” as making a lot of people a lot happier. More joyful. More apt to look forward to jumping in the car every day and heading to work. Less apt to spend the weekend complaining to anyone with ears how stupid their co-workers are.

In my experience (and obviously yours will vary), people aren’t exactly thrilled with how various specialists, teams, managers, etc. get along at work. Many people have different incentives that cause departments to be at odds with each other, some managers may not have a lot of appreciation or understanding of the finer points of some technical or business perspective on something. Usually it all results in everyone calling each other idiots. Disclaimer: I have worked in / consulted with some pretty dysfunctional places, so it may not sound exactly like where you are…count your blessings!

Unhappy stuff.

The reason I think web analytics can fix this (or at least go a long way) is it can shine some light on everyone’s purpose. Not in the way managers shine lights on each sub-purpose a department or role fills, but the more universal purpose of each trade and its contribution to the whole. In other words, analytics can transition each contributor’s accountability away from a person (their boss or boss’s boss, who they may not agree with) and toward a purpose. I believe that’s transformative.

If there is a litmus test of, “Is this best for the company?” instead of , “Is this helping me reach my department goal (or bonus)?” the world will literally be a better place. Because a lot of those department goals and bonuses are in direct opposition to someone else’s department goals or bonuses within the same company.

When I was doing independent research on publicly traded companies, it wasn’t so different from what we do in this industry. We simply tried to look at the system, break it down into pieces, and understand why a company was more or less valuable than the market priced it. Yes, complex. But no, it’s not rocket surgery. Companies with clear operational issues, a lack of an innovation roadmap, management with conflicting goals, competition that was out-iterating and out-smarting clearly have a dimmer future than companies with fewer or none of those issues.

In that line of work, analysts could hold a carrot out in front of CEOs that they would follow anywhere. That carrot was a stock price. If an analyst says there are 5 key barriers to the valuation being 10% higher, changes were about to be made, or a CEO was about to get fired.

Our carrot can be the same thing. The work we do can change every part of a company, from the clouds of tactics whizzing about all the way down to the very nucleus that holds the company together. We can hold the carrots of increased revenue, reduced costs, increased efficiency, improved time to market, more competitive intelligence, better intra-team cooperation, aligned goals, and superior culture out in front, and we have a clear view of the steps that can be taken to close the gaps. We have very delicious carrots.

I believe your executive suite is filled with hungry bunnies. And I believe that if you show them some carrots, web analysts will garner the same respect, salaries, and access afforded to our financial brethren. But we have to remember, only the bunnies like carrots. You need to get your treat in front of the right audience. Often, your CMO won’t care about productivity, efficiency, or the happiness of 2 teams working together. Your digital marketing manager has no idea what EBITDA is. Your director of ecommerce may have never heard of operating cash flow before. They may not care about carrots as much as your CEO or your COO.

This isn’t just going to change the lives of web analytics people. Anyone who, no matter what they do, feels their boss’s actions don’t align with the core goals of a company, people who watch bad decisions get made for perfectly predictable reasons; they will see their life improved, too. Because there can be a new system in place where decisions are made for good reasons. Where tradeoffs and compromises are made in informed ways, rather than internally-competitive ways. And where the “loser” in a compromise is rewarded for a good decision, because we can show the net impact.

Companies like this exist. Very successful ones. And the people that work there would take a bullet to protect their culture. I think that web analysts, for companies operating online, are the most capable shepherds for this transition. It may be a while before we have the CEO/COO (or whoever at a company really understands and lives in the core business function, rather than a discipline) as an audience. But I believe that our target needs to be the people who react to carrots. I won’t shoot for a closer target out of practicality, because, ultimately, shorter targets aren’t the right targets.

That’s what I believe.

What do you believe?

If you have recently let your membership lapse, why was that? Were you expecting something you didn’t get, or did you join not knowing what to expect?

If you were in charge of the WAA, what would you do differently?

Just curious…

Driven heavily by competition in search and the expectation that more content will boost conversion rates, people who manage big web sites are really getting hot and bothered about creating more content. And to create more content, they need a content development strategy.

The trick here is that every time an executive says, “content development strategy,” a kitten is adopted by Hitler.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t present content to users and deepen the content you have available on your site. I think you absolutely should. But it won’t be effective if it’s a part of a content development strategy, in my opinion, because I believe that phrase comes with a lot of baggage and motivation that doesn’t lead to a better site experience. Let me explain where I’m coming from.

Let’s get away from the web for a second. Think about an interaction with a great salesperson who loves what he does. This salesperson is a content repository, able to call on examples, testimonials, stories, or general information that helps him explain the value of what he is selling. And he isn’t doing all of this to pull the wool over his prospect’s eyes. His offering has genuine value.

This salesperson weaves this content into the conversation. The timing is right. The examples are not out of the blue interruptions, but they aren’t out there in the great beyond, either. It all works because the salesman knows he really can help you out, he knows the types of things that are going through your mind, the questions and concerns you need answered, and he is prepared to take the conversation where it needs to go to help you through the process of learning, committing, and buying.

People want to convert. Really!

This brings me to a key point: we act as if our visitors don’t want to do what we want them to do. We, as businesses operating on the web, talk about boosting conversion rates as if we are tricking consumers. Like they don’t want to fly to Dallas in 2 months to visit their sister. Or like they don’t want new shoes. Or they don’t want to subscribe to your magazine. Who in their right mind would ever convert on anything if we didn’t work so hard to trick them?

When we put the questions like this, they sound pretty silly. So why do we approach boosting conversion as if it’s some sort of mechanism we use to create leverage on our visitors? Why in the world do we think people are coming to our web sites against their will?

Instead, I think by simply focusing on a more positive view of our businesses, we automatically set ourselves up to ask the right question: “What would make this experience easier or better for someone who wants what we offer?”

Move over, content. Workflows are king.

I said earlier that I think “content development strategies” come with a lot of baggage and poor motivation, and I want to revisit that. I think motivation really does shine through in how our offering presents itself. I can tell when a site created a blog because they were trying to boost their search engine rankings or just because they felt like they had to create fresh content. I can tell when a site adds reviews, thinking it’ll boost conversion rate (rather than thinking it’ll genuinely help people, like when I see the same pimped out reviews on 3 different sites). And I can really tell when someone embarks on their “content development strategy,” because almost 100% of the time, this content ends up living in some barn in the web site’s back yard, not in the midst of my experience as I learn, commit, and buy the offering.

When we approach the betterment of our site or business in terms of how the company will receive, the end result is always crappier than if we approach the betterment of our site in terms of how it will help our consumers. By simply asking the right question, “How can we create a more positive or easier experience?” we automatically set up the creation of raving fans, brand advocacy, word of mouth, along with things like greater conversation volume, better sentiment in social media, and increased search engine rankings.

We are starting with the KPIs and working backwards: How can we improve sentiment? How can we boost rankings? How can we cause more buzz in social media?

Instead, start with the experience you offer. Start with the workflows your visitors need to complete to meet their need of booking a flight to Dallas, buying shoes, subscribing to your magazine, or whatever else you offer. What parts of that workflow could use a story, a testimonial, a mention of a complementary product, or just a little more information? That is your content development strategy. Turn your workflow into that conversation with the great salesperson.

Workflows are the combination of effective information architecture and good usability. Those two things have to work well together, and they represent the experience from the first pageview through their entire experience. They are not “paths,” because they will almost certainly be different for different types of people. They aren’t “funnels,” either. They are loose, flexible, positive experiences.

If you look at your site from the perspective that your customers love you, love what you offer, and are eager to buy, you can approach this issue from the standpoint of helping them do something they already want to do, rather than manipulating them, the way many brands see it today. Build experiences worth praising, content worth reading in the context of the workflow, and follow up with great customer service that wows.

Then, watch your KPIs fly, knowing no more kittens had to learn German.

I’ve gotten some great feedback via twitter/facebook/conversations that got me thinking about this some more. What’s the purpose of web analytics? Now keep in mind, this is just how I have come to see the world, and you may see it differently. But this works for me (so far) and I’d love to hear your thoughts on why your way works for you. So, please leave comments.

Analytics world view:

We talk about being data-driven businesses. But these aren’t businesses built around a culture of measurement. They’re built around a culture of accountability.

That sounds a little scary, but bear with me here for a second.

It’s my opinion that measurement alone is not a compelling source of value to a business. We know that the absence of measurement is very horrible, and it’s still a problem. There is value to measurement, but it just isn’t compelling, which is why I think there are still sites out there with zero visibility into what’s happening on their sites.

The effective use of that measurement (a separate trade, called analysis) is highly compelling, though.

For example, people get as excited about accounting as they get about watching paint drying on growing grass. Accountants measure. Yes, they occasionally help companies defraud millions of Americans out of their retirement, but most days are just measuring. Analysts, on the other hand, use that measurement to make a company accountable to goals, outcomes, advancement, achievement. I think we need to be building cultures around those things.

But I also know that measurement is seen as a stepping stone on the way to these things. If we can build a culture of measurement first, we will be closer to a culture of achievement.

Now I can’t tell the future, but my gut tells me that this stepping-stone approach will end up biting us in the medium and long term. If we set precedence around our role and a purpose of measuring, we will likely face a difficult battle when we strive for the next stepping stone. Businesses like to define roles. If we’re looking for ours to be fluid or evolutionary, that’s tough for them to handle. I fear that our steps are momentum-less, in other words. So we’d better take big ones.

True, you can’t do analysis without measurement. But this is sort of like saying you can’t build houses without wood; you just don’t see people going nuts about lumber.

Let’s make it a [vitally important] afterthought, and count on the fact that good analysts will make 100% certain that the measurement is handled because it’ll cripple them otherwise.

So, the world view part:

In my mind, the purpose of web analytics, or any analytics, is to give your organization the confidence needed to accelerate the pace of decisions.

I don’t think that the purpose of analytics is limited to helping the company make better decisions: great, slow decisions are a hallmark of companies who stink. Plus, better, more economically-valuable decisions are a completely unavoidable outcome of good analytics, so I’m going to just recommend that we start taking that for granted. Yes, use it as a selling point: it will be the thing that gives your organization greater confidence. But to me, success will be based on pace, not just rightness. Being able to make good decisions faster compounds their effectiveness.

I think it’s an unsafe assumption that once decisions are made better, they’ll magically get made faster. Most big decisions are made slowly because people are afraid of being judged; they’re nearly paralyzed. When you research a decision for a quarter and make the best, most economically-rewarding decision possible, you suck if you could have made the same decision in 5% of the time, and made 50 more decisions over the year that all compounded the value of the first one.

And a culture of accountability sounds scary, like a place where everyone is constantly told about everything they didn’t do right. But think about such a place: the only way for it to sustain itself is for people to establish a comfort level with failure: failure is a part of the process. And the only way the company can survive is if the system is built to react to failure, not built on the assumptions that decisions are right. Think about it today: why is testing so hard? Why are changes to your web site difficult? Because your site is built around decisions made in ink, not in pencil.

Also, we’re talking about being accountable to outcomes, not to some Tyrannosaurus on a power trip. That’s a big deal.

Again, like the last post, this isn’t about making big decisions quickly, it’s about making big decisions often. A usability person or designer who makes one big decision about a product details page will be much less effective than a similarly-skilled person making frequent decisions about that interface based on a constant stream of information that keeps him accountable to the success of that page.

Give it a try. You wouldn’t be the first organization to embrace failure and show employees it’s not the end of the world to be wrong. In fact, being wrong is the only thing that allows us to be more right.

Let’s build that kind of a culture. One that forgets about the measurement, because that has to happen to get to the good stuff. We need to take measurement completely for granted.

Whether we get there stone-by-stone or in one big leap is up to us.

It is a little discouraging. For me, too.

Here are a few things I think are big problems.

1) You are underestimating yourselves.

What do you think separates you from the CEOs, COOs, entrepreneurs, and other “successful” people in the world (both financially and in terms of how valuable these people are perceived to be)? What makes stock traders so valuable? What causes consultants to demand such high salaries? Why is that VP you can’t stand in that role?

Is it luck? Is it nepotism? Age? A result of them acting like jerks to everyone?

Probably yes.

But it’s also experience in situations where big decisions are being made. For better or for worse, these people make decisions get made. Note: I am not saying they make the right decisions or produce the best outcomes. They simply get it done. In the post-mortem, maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong. But the more frequently you make decisions, the more frequently you have the opportunity to make good decisions and benefit from them.

Note again, I didn’t say “quickly.” I said “frequently.” Making big decisions quickly is stupid. Making big decisions often is vital.

Some web analytics people think they are in the business of right/wrong or good/bad. Nope. We are in the business of using the data caused by decisions to cause new decisions as frequently as possible. The more quickly we can generate information (an inevitable result of decisions), look at that information, and make new decisions, the more successful we are. Avinash uses the phrase, “Fail faster,” pretty often, and this is what it’s all about. Productive failure is a result of action. Stop trying to pre-research everything from every angle in an effort to avoid failure, because inaction is also failure, and it’s nonproductive failure. It’s the most consciously-controlled form of failure in the world.

The data you make is better than the data you get. Start making data. Cause decisions to get made.

2) You’re passionate about the wrong things.

You know what Roger Federer wants to do? Kick ass. He doesn’t care about the string tension on his racquet, the type of rubber on his shoes, or the moisture-wicking properties of his shirt, unless it helps him kick ass. If some engineer comes up to him talking about synthetic string composition, Roger’s life just got a lot less interesting. If that same engineer comes up and tells Roger he has an idea about how to kick more ass, however, Roger is all ears.

We’re going to have to build some rapport with the people you’re trying to prod into making more decisions. We spend way too much time talking about our tools, technologies, techniques, data sources, etc. — things these people shouldn’t even know to care about. And most people in our trade have experienced the wrath of teaching executives to care about these things: have you ever had big decisions put on hold while the company is stuck trying to work out data integrity issues, even when the discrepancy won’t change the outcome?

Learn to lead with ass kicking.

3) You call yourselves specialists.

I don’t know who wrote the book that said everyone needs to “specialize” in something to be successful. That’s a total load of crap. Yes, you should get very good at something, that will help. But getting good at something in a vacuum makes you completely clueless how your particular role fits into the production. People argue about practically everything today because they have almost no appreciation for other peoples’ viewpoints and goals.

Ask yourself, “Does that sound like us?”

No, it doesn’t sound like us at all.

Unlike almost everyone else we work with, our success isn’t tied to any one discipline or effort. The more we can help the company compromise between specialists, the better we are. The more we can appreciate the balance between conflicting goals (rather than bullying one or the other), the more successful our business becomes. The less of a specialist we are, the more valuable we become.

So stop calling yourself a specialist. That’s a label that is counterproductive to your success.

A better future is ahead.

I definitely share some frustration about various associations, obstacles, etc. But until we can become the type of people who truly respect ourselves and our abilities, we can’t expect anyone else to. And until we understand that decisions, not rightness, are what drive success, our efforts will plink off of corporate armor, our salaries will remain depressed and un-linked to outcomes, and our reputation as nerdy data-fetchers or tool implementers will remain.

In our day-to-day, we have opportunities to to change this momentum. We can show the world that we are about one thing and one thing only: getting stuff done. Not analyzing it, not reporting it, not charting it: DOING it. Follow up on your analysis and make sure that a real life action is taken. You can’t fail.

To illustrate this conversation, I now explore:  What would happen if I were attacked by people of varying expertise, using varyingly appropriate tools of war?

My analysis:

I think that the most skilled people can work with inferior tools to create their intended outcomes. In many cases, skill outweighs tools in correlation to outcome.

“It’s not about you, it’s about the community.”

This phrase never really sat well with me. Not because I don’t believe in the spirit of the statement (I agree: don’t chase fame or personal return; help others), but really just because the more I thought about it, the more I felt like it discouraged sheep from straying from the flock, in some way. Of course, this wasn’t ever the intent, but I know in my own experience, I’ve often felt like this phrase has been used as a weapon against my own (and others’) different thinking or challenging the status quo.

I believe, in no uncertain terms, that our status quo is crap. We are in an incredible position to interact with businesses at the highest, most sophisticated level, but we don’t. We label ourselves improperly. Our elevator speech is a joke to any CEO. But if that CEO knew what we could do for them, they would kiss us on the mouth, and pay us a hell of a lot more.

So, while I really do like the spirit of the point, I think we need to feel a swelling of our own egos and pride and use our unique talents to “leave our dent” in the world, as Jason Fried says. Whether you want to call it a calling, a gift, a talent, or an obsession, we all have something that makes us special, and when we apply that, we find we are able to move mountains.

Who is it about?

It is about Eric. Eric took it upon himself to do amazing things in our industry, and really was the first one who found and lit a candle in the dark cave of web analytics. We owe him a tremendous thank you. But Eric had to put his own oxygen mask on before helping others. It turned out to be a great service to our industry, and a legacy he can be proud of. And he continues to build on that legacy.

It is about Avinash. Avinash didn’t want to be a web analytics dummy. He learned everything he could. Then he realized that he wanted to share it. The rest is history. A lot of us owe our ability to do what we do to Avinash.

These two guys are who inspire a lot of people to take themselves seriously. Personally, I think it’s all about them. They have made a huge contribution to the community, and that contribution matters because they inspire us.

It is about Rudi. This guy is inspired, and competent beyond belief. And he’s going to inspire a lot of people. He has a gift and has put a lot of hard work in. And that will all serve the community.

It is about Jason. Jason made like a billion dollars appear out of nowhere for a charity that makes unclean drinking water, one of the biggest problems in the world, a lot less of a problem. But this guy also doesn’t take any shit, and when he puts his foot down, it leaves a footprint. If you stick up for what you believe in, it’s about you. And the impact on the community is huge.

It is about me. I started my career in finance, where I learned what makes value happen in companies. And I see us working our asses off every day in this industry trying to make value. But what I also see is that we don’t fully appreciate the value we create, or how simply taking our analysis one step further — looking at business process, in addition to web site data — will transform our lives in such a quantum way, our toes might fall off.

Whether you want to call it a life purpose, a calling, a gift, or whatever, we all have our contribution. In the spirit of Eric’s message, “it’s about the community,” I think it’s best to frame what we do in terms of how it benefits not just us, but our tightly-knit group. But make it about you, because if you’re doing great things, we need to hear about it, read about it, learn from it, get inspired by it, and integrate it into the community. I’m asking you: make it about you. Feel free. Because we’re still looking for leaders and greatness in this industry, and we know it’s out there.

Very few great changes in human history were driven by a large group working together. Almost all radical changes in direction were a result of some individual standing up, saying they weren’t going to take it any more, and rallying the troops. Then some of those troops stage their own revolution. Let’s keep the revolution rolling.