I've been doing a great deal of reading recently on how different cultures (business and otherwise) apply, recognize and accept metrics. Some of this appeared in discussions with Christopher Berry (see links below) and of course the discussions of Engagement are far from over, me thinks. They may pitter away and they're far from over. But my readings have taken me from how science professionals infer metrics -- something incredibly important to their salaries more often than not -- to how different languages create numeric structures and the values these language groups and cultures assign to these structures. The western model of numeric order is far from the only one, it is merely the prevalent one. It's only been prevalent for about 3,000 years. Human cultures go back about 450,000 years (and some folks suggest even further).
There is an exercise NextStage does in some of its trainings that demonstrates how people conceptualize numbers differently. One of the things it demonstrates is that most people have difficulty recognizing discrete elements beyond 10. Show people 9 or so apples and ask them how many there are, they'll usually do a quick count and say "Nine" or maybe "About ten", something like that. Show them eleven apples and they'll say "A lot". This is one reason those "Guess how many jelly beans are in the jar" raffles work so well. You could compute the exact number and the majority of people wouldn't even if they could.
This lack of desire despite ability is the nub of all the "what's the value of these metrics?" debates, me thinks.
One theme that comes across in all the readings was stated by Morris Kline in Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty, "What then is mathematics if it is not a unique, rigorous, logical structure? It is a series of great intuitions carefully sifted, and organized by the logic men are willing and able to apply at any time."More and more of my readings (blogs and otherwise) leads me to believe that these "great" debates about what metrics to use and what tools to use really comes down to what can be done right here right now. Using engagement as an example and to quote a reader and correspondent, it seems most organizations are wishcasting, applying the logic they can understand and have available.
And if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
I offered the following before in Communicating Science to Business and Vice Versa; the numbers don't really matter. It's what you can do with the numbers that matters. Metrics tools and measurement platforms that only provide numbers are only as useful as one's ability to translate those numbers into exact actions. In business, that would be profitable actions.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- Canadian Based Business Differences -- Responding to June Li, Christopher Berry and Jacques Warren
- Responding to Christopher Berry's Vexing Problem, Part 3 post
- The Language of Web Analytics - The Hard(er) Sell in Canada
- Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4" Post, Part 1
- Responding to Christopher Berry's "A Vexing Problem, Part 4" Post, Part 2
- Chicago Ad:Tech 5-6 Aug 08
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