Measured Direction Podcast

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In this episode, we discuss Last-touch Attribution (Thanks @petesena!), Google Analytics Certification and Product Updates (Thanks, @llfgn!), and "Interpersonal Skills" and Organizational Challenges (Thanks, @tgwilson!)

Show Links:
Google Partners - Google Analytics Individual Qualification
LunaMetrics Blog
How Does Attribution Modeling work in Google Analytics?
#measure Slack

Transcript

Jason Rose:
All right. Hey, guys, thanks for listening. This is the second episode of Measured Direction, a digital analytics and marketing strategy podcast brought to you by myself, Jason Rose, a content strategist here at Digital Surgeons and the leader of our analysts practice, Tom Miller.

Jason Rose:
How's it going, Tom?

Tom Miller:
How are you? I'm great.

Jason Rose:
So for those who don't know, digital surgeons is a design and innovation firms really is kind of focus on cool, innovative marketing. So this is a audience driven podcast where people submit questions and we do our best to kind of answer them. And Tom brings all his expertise to the table and we get right to the heart of the problem.

Tom Miller:
Thanks. Yeah. I just want to start out by thanking everyone that supported the launch of the show. You know, downloaded and listened to Episode one. Got a tremendous amount of great feedback. Keep that feedback coming. And we've also gotten a pretty nice stream of inbound questions for the show. This is an audience driven podcast. So we need your help. We need that fuel of your problems or your questions or your discussion topics to keep the fire of this thing going. So, once again, very much appreciated. We love the feedback. And if you want to submit a question to us, the form is located at Bitly b.i t dot l y slash measured direction. Pretty easy to remember if you want to visit this podcast's home page, it's on SoundCloud. It's SoundCloud, dot com slash measured direction.

Tom Miller:
Also on iTunes, I believe if you search measure direction you'll see us come up whether you had a chance.

Jason Rose:
Yeah, it's pretty cool to say big time. Real big deal. Great. So with that in mind, you're getting the first question here.

Tom Miller:
Let's do it. This is why we're here. All right, cool.

Jason Rose:
So the first question comes from Lauren Fagan, an account manager here at Digital Surgeons.

Jason Rose:
You can find her on Twitter at at L o f g n. So she asks, any advice for passing the Google analytics exam? Also, how frequently does Google Analytics change its format? How do you keep up on any changes Google Analytics makes? And how much from the Google Analytics exam is actually relevant to everyday practice?

Tom Miller:
Ok, well, this is great. You know, I think there is sort of two different questions or two different Mattock questions being asked here. The first is related to the Google Analytics Exam. You know, my advice for passing the exam is, you know, Google gives you a tremendous amount of material related to the content of the exam. They give you a preview of the exam. They basically tell you with their you it might be not nailing the brand exactly. But I think it's called the Google Analytics Academy, where they basically take you through. It's a multi hour course. It's a video course where you learn the fundamentals of the product. And presumably with that, you can take the exam. My advice to people is to actually just get into the product, especially if you're just starting out with it and spend several hours, you know, just within the basic interface, what's called the reporting interface. When you get comfortable with this, you know, the concepts of the various dimensions and metrics get into the customizable interface. And then what you need to do is you need to really understand the Google philosophy of how they want you to approach the the product itself, which just goes to good business practice. Right. So understanding your marketing objectives, looking at metrics related to your market objectives, taking Web metrics and using them to understand user behavior, user intent. Right. It's not just about like does page views per visit or page views per user signify an engaged user is starting to understand those dynamics of like what's actually happening and what's going on within your customers or your users mind. Right. Or their behaviors. And how that translate to actually what gets recorded within the tool is important. But let me let me turn the question around you, Jason, because you've recently passed the Google Analytics Individual Certification exam as of a couple of weeks ago with the, you know, this podcast coming up, I really thought it was time to finally get deep into the platform.

Jason Rose:
So as someone who recently passed it, my biggest advice is Tom hit the nail on the head when he said it's really about how you're using the Google product more than it is about the nuts and bolts of implementing it.

Tom Miller:
So you'll get questions that are more or less what's the most important metric for a landing page? It really does get right to the bottom line like that. So obviously, in that case, it's going to be conversions because the landing page ultimately, that's how well it's measured. You know how well it's people are clicking through at the bottom.

Jason Rose:
So the best advice I can give is just spend the time, like Tom said, going through the study guide. They really set it all up nice and easy for you, whether you prefer to read or whether you want to watch through the videos.

Tom Miller:
And then it just. A simple hour and a half to 70 questions, you got to get an 80s pass and. Yeah.

Jason Rose:
I mean, I really liked it. I thought it was tremendously informative experience.

Tom Miller:
All right. Well, let's let's get to the second part of this question. How much from the Google Analytics exam is actually relevant to everyday practice? Well. I mean, that's that's sort of a trickier question, because where I would say that it's very light, the exam itself. And I want to talk a little bit about the exam in a second. But where I would say it's very light is it's very light on the implementation side. I'm sure that's intentional by Google. Right. Google doesn't want to make this too technical. And if you look at the mix of the technical questions and the exam versus the sort of business case questions, you know, it's obviously way weighted toward the latter. Right. I would also say that it is. Probably more weighted to the tactical than the strategic right. So when you ask the question to me, how much from the Google Analytics exam is actually relevant to everyday practice? Well, you know, I'm focused a lot on analytic strategy, right? I'm also my practice is actually focused a lot on implementation. Right. We we do a great deal of implementation work. So I would say for my particular practice, it's certainly relevant, but it's not the focus of the exam isn't necessarily the focus of my Day-To-Day.

Tom Miller:
So one thing I do want to talk about is the exam itself, just to give you a little bit of background, since this is your first time or was your first time ever taking the exam? You know, the process now is way better than it was even a couple years ago. The materials have always been there. You know, Google's always been very good about providing a really, really high level of documentation and use casing for their products. But what was not there is the smoothness up the test itself. So the test itself, the first time I took it, however, many years ago, probably almost a decade ago. Was to me, it felt like it was written in broken English in some of the questions I felt had some cois I ambiguous answers. You know, there was like an answer that seemed like it was the right answer. It wound up being the right answer. But, you know, you can almost make an argument for some of the other answers, which is annoying. Right. I mean, you want you want it to be pretty clear that, you know, your material, you don't want to get an answer wrong because you feel like that the question's a trick question or something like that.

Jason Rose:
Know, you almost feel like the breath of which you understand something is making it harder for you that if you just memorized what maybe was in the study.

Tom Miller:
Yes. These are sort of like, no, I actually understand this.

Tom Miller:
It's making it difficult for me to be clear that, you know, this really only happened the first time I took the exam, which is when it first came out. So they were still I think that's the kinks.

Jason Rose:
I'm not like you said, I have no perspective because it's the first time I took it if I really thought it was pretty. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of all the above questions would probably my only thinking about it, which tends to happen a lot in multiple choice anyway. Right. So it came to a point. Sometimes I feel like I'm not completely sure, but I know three, four. So obviously it's going to become all of the above. But I mean, other than that, it was a pretty, I thought, well written test.

Tom Miller:
You know, I would say the other thing about the exam is it used to cost fifty dollars and you had to renew. I want to say every year now, I think it's an 18 month period.

Jason Rose:
A you know, I think the.

Tom Miller:
It absolutely has to be the most common certification for a digital analytics professional. I'm sure that. You know, 90 percent of Dejoy Legs professionals have a Google analytics certification just because it is so simple now to get it. And if you work at all with the product, you know, for any period of time, you're going to you're going to be able to easily pass it very easily, pass it the. And then, you know, the other factor there is that Google Analytics is the most common, commonly used extoll clickstream Alyx tool. So many Web sites use Google Analytics. So many people in Dejoy analytics, digital marketing, digital operations use this product familiar with this product. I'm sure that there are tens of thousands of people that have their good analytics individual certification at this point.

Jason Rose:
Is it looked at as like a must in the community, like, say, you were hiring someone or do you work in your practice? I mean, if if they don't have the certification, is that something you hold against them or do you just assume anyone can pass it? That's really working with the tool?

Tom Miller:
Yeah, I mean, I would definitely be most interested in making sure that they were working with the tool every day where if I were hiring somebody to be an analyst that was primarily working with that tool, obviously the it it would almost be a red flag for me. I mean, I would certainly want to make sure that. You know, the way that we were interviewing would be set up in a way to that would that would expose someone that was applying for a job like that, but did not have that sort of, you know, did not have that level of skill with the tool. But again, the certificate the test is almost so easy to pass that it almost loses some of its credibility. Right? I mean, it's pretty. I mean, it's it's pretty simple, especially if you use the tool, you know, on a daily basis. It's a pretty simple test to pass. So, I mean, let's let's move on. So another question here. I mean, we're you know, we're talking a lot about you going to latex. This is a tool agnostic show. We are a tool agnostic agency. But I do think it is important to talk about Google Analytics because it is a hugely influential and widely used tool. So we're going to we're going to keep on this thread. You know, her final questions are how frequently does Google Analytics changes form format, its format, its format? And how do you keep up on any changes? Google Analytics makes. Now, I'm going to assume that she's referring to the product itself and not the test the product itself. You know, there is a huge user base of Google Analytics. So when a major change comes through or even, you know, a minor change comes through, the Google Analytics blogosphere reacts to it.

Tom Miller:
And there are a lot of blogs out there that really closely track the product itself. You know, including the Google Analytics blog, which they have their own official blog. They talk about product features and use cases a lot on the blog. But then there are, you know, a a ton of people that use Google analytics every day, myself included, that might write a good article about it. So, you know, the usual suspects as far as digital marketing goes. You know, sources like EA Consultancy or Mozz, they'll catch the big changes. But then they're also sort of some specialty bloggers out there, like Luna Metrics, for example, which is a consultancy in Pittsburgh. They are continually writing about Google tag manager, Google Analytics, and any time anything new comes out. You can expect a blog post by them breaking it down in great detail within a few days.

Tom Miller:
Right. So the latest, you know, I would say the last big seismic event happened with Google Analytics is calculative metrics. And we're going to talk about that in a future episode when we talk about open share, which is a project that we've taken on here. And we've done some really interesting things with calculated metrics as actually part of an integrated product, is that we're releasing I mean, it's an open source project, but it's an open source project that has a very interesting Google analytics integration.

Jason Rose:
They're really going to be excited to get further in the future episodes. Awesome. Cool. So I guess move on to the second question, the nice.

Tom Miller:
All right.

Jason Rose:
So this question comes from Pete Centa, our chief creative officer and founder, you can find him at at Centa on Twitter, PTSD and a.

Jason Rose:
So his question is, why does last touch attribution limit our ability to fairly validate the power Digital has on the consumer journey?

Tom Miller:
Wow, that's a really great question. You know, when we talk about I mean, we should we should break this down, right. So let's talk about last touch attribution. What does that mean? What that means is that you're referring a conversion, which you typically a sale for e-commerce. But really any positive event, positive outcome to the last known inbound or media channel without regard to previous touches that the consumer received along that path to conversion? That makes sense. So when you talk about a last touch attribution model, you're basically say. Well, we'll keep it real simple. So we'll say it's for, you know, just a Web site and say you come to the Web site, the Google search, and you type in. Know, I'm interested in jelly belly jelly beans and you type in Jelly Belly into Google. You go to Jelly Belgacom, you buy crap ton of jelly beans. Right.

Jason Rose:
So under this model, all of the credit gets given to that. That search for the tool for the girl just happened. Google search. Right.

Tom Miller:
So it's a really, really simplistic way of describing your customer journey as a jelly belly. I don't know why I picked them as a jelly belly consumer. You know, it's it's ultra, ultra simplistic, right?

Tom Miller:
Because you're ignoring everything else that happened along the super fragmented digital journey. Now, you don't know if you're following on Twitter or if you're reading blogs or if you've seen other cracks.

Tom Miller:
And you may have you may have actually come to you may have actually come to the Web site before. You know, you may have clicked on a banner ad. You know, you may not have ever even known that Jelly Belly was a thing. And you read on a, you know, some blog somewhere about jelly bellies quality. Right. And so you check out Jelly Belly dot com and you read some content about quality. And that's sort of that's like the first touch, the first touches you reading in that blog and coming to the site. And, you know, you're you're developing your understanding of the product at that point.

Jason Rose:
So you've you've sort of gotten over over the awareness. You've gotten over, you know, some questions about the product that you might have, but then you forget what you're doing. Right. And whenever a month later, you stumble across a jelly belly banner and you're like, oh, you know, I'm right. I was on the side. I just bought some jelly beans. But I didn't for whatever reason, you actually click the banner at, which would be insane because you clicks better ads, right?

Jason Rose:
So let's say for one out of every hundred thousand people or whatever it is.

Tom Miller:
But so you click the banner ad, you come to the Jelly Belly site and you get distracted. You're at work. Right. And so you leave your your window open, you shut it down and your your windows open and you see something with jelly belly on it. And you're like, I you know, I really want to buy these jelly beans. Then you type it into Google. Right. And then you say, all right, I want anybody dot com, I convert. So let me ask you this, Jason. Who should get credit for that conversion? Should it be the banner ad? Should it be your organic search and Google? Or should it be the blog that was originally promoting Jelly Belly was a creator of content.

Jason Rose:
I want to get to the blog that started the whole Horsely the asset class.

Tom Miller:
So we very rarely get credit for the final conversion because typically a customer journey works something like that. They're not necessarily clicking through directly after first engaging with the content on the first touch like that. Right.

Tom Miller:
And so you see you have a stake. Right. So as our content strategies, you have a stake in this native content or whatever it is. Exactly. If I were to bring in a member of our media team, right. To bring Ashley in, she would say, well, the display obviously gets the credit or or a big chunk of the credit. And not only does the display get the credit, but we were you know, we had ads up on all these other sites that you were on. And even though you didn't click those ads, we're tracking the view through. Right. So we actually should get even more credit because we had more touches, even though they weren't active. Right. You know, actively doing something. So, yeah, I mean, it's it's they can be a they can get message. Right. Very quickly to distill this down. You know, no matter how you described. The concept of a customer journey. You know, there are steps along the way that lead into conversion. Right. For any business, for any organization. And they all need to be understood and quantified. Right. That's that's that's what you're doing with attribution modeling. And each one of these steps, each one of these touch points, each one of these things that you're doing along that journey can have an outsized or an undersized effect on conversion. Just based on, you know, the way that you're running your business, the way that your value proposition is expressed.

Tom Miller:
I mean, there are a lot of factors, right. And so when it comes to attribution, what you want to do is and there are sort of two ways to do it. You could actually just go completely algorithmic. So there are services that say we're just going to look at all of your customer touch points. You know, typically mostly through the digital channel, because it's the most quantifiable, the most trackable. And we're going to throw it all into a black box and we're going to say, OK, here is your here's your channel mix. Here's your medium mix that is most effective at generating conversion. Right. Interesting. Google. But Google Analytics does just to get back on that particular product. But with Google Analytics, does is it actually allows you to look at certain different types of models alongside each other. So there's last click. There's first click or last touch. First touch. Then are there various mixes in between of. Sort of. How do we distill this? And there's a lot of magic that comes out of that comparison. Right. So if you do first touch versus last touch and look at what the differences are and your conversion rates, then you get a great deal of insight into not only what is important, but what is influential right now. So you're saying the same thing, but there is a great deal of sort of magic in that segmentation directly.

Jason Rose:
So I know for attributing first touch. Whatever the number may be, so it's 50. And others might be unrealistic, assigning numbers would say 50 versus 15 percent. You mean you can tell the last touch, your vastly underestimating the importance of the right, whatever the first thing the journey was.

Tom Miller:
Right. And we we call that assists. Right. So you sort of have a direct you know, you sort of have a direct response, right. A direct conversion for each of your channels. Then you have assistant conversions. So, you know, with with some products like buying a car, for example, you might you might visit Web site 50 times where you decide you're actually gonna buy the car. Then you're not buying a car online anyway. Right.

Tom Miller:
So, you know, as you can imagine, attribution modeling is a huge, huge topic of discussion and development for digital analysts and marketing analysts in general. It is a very, very challenging topic. And there is there's been this explosion in technology over the past five, 10 years that has really started to try to lock down attribution in a more meaningful. So let's talk about Last Touch, though, because I'm also actually going to defend it. And this is a topic that's come up on the measure slack lately. If you're just joining the measure slack, it is B I.T. that L y that's Bitly slash ad measure slack. That's Capital A capital M Capital s ad measure slack. So if somebody brought up the point and I think it's an extremely valid point, is that it's nearly impossible to build out a good attribution model, particularly if you're talking about a single channel distribution model or attribution model, like a digital attribution model without a really rigorous, methodical approach to your measurement protocol of your touches. And so what am I saying there? I'm saying that. Without having. Without being awesome. At last touch. You can't be awesome at any type of attribution and analysis. Does that make sense? Simply because any touch could conceivably be a last touch, right. I mean, if you want to break it down to, like. Atomic terms. Right. It's. If you don't know any better. And if you don't have a good grasp on your customers journey and where they are, they're and you don't have a good grasp on. Segmenting your customer intent. Right. And so you don't you don't have these customer segments build out. You really need to focus on. Nailing last touch and really just being rigorous and methodical about how you're tagging in and how you're triggering conversions in a way that is going to shed light on that with last touch. And then from there, you know, you have a strong foundation for getting beyond last touch attribution. But, you know, getting to near perfection with last touch is important for. Building on the future of your education model. Does that make sense?

Jason Rose:
I think so. I mean, because especially if you think of it at the end of the day, as much as I have a stake in the content and its role in the customer's journey.

Jason Rose:
At the end of day, the last touches the thing that caused them to convert. So if you don't understand what actually is causing your customer to just suddenly convert. Right.

Tom Miller:
You can create the gaited greatest content in the world that there's not just a simple thing to lead to less touch attribution, whatever the click through the thing on the site, whether it's the banner ad or whatever, is leading most to business. Bottom line. Right. I mean, that's what really it in today is most important.

Tom Miller:
Well, well, not most importantly, be a philosophical question here.

Tom Miller:
You're never going to know until you can nail that last touch. Right. So so the you know, in our example prior is is that search channel was that search channel the most important thing to getting you to convert? I would argue no. Right.

Jason Rose:
Because it most facilitated the actual purchase that was made.

Tom Miller:
It most certainly did. But you probably could have gone to Jelly Belly from a number of different ways. Would you've been prompted to. I mean, to you're you know, you're typing into Google search, right? Jelly Belly or a search engine. Jelly belly. Well, there's a great deal of intent there. Right. And so getting to part of the work and attribution is getting to your intent as a user. Right. You're coming out on search on a brand term. You you're you probably know your motivation is very different than somebody that's coming in through display ad. Or from a block away. Right.

Jason Rose:
And so because you're searching in a search engine, you've probably already made the decision to buy your more or less just saying, hey, I'm the type of an empire right now.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. Yeah, maybe. I mean. If you come across a banner display in your particular case, certainly. Right.

Jason Rose:
And so so that's sort of my point is you really have to and this is mostly a technical exercise, but you really have to nail that last click before you can even get into other types of conversion. Right. Or otherwise, everything just falls apart. It's a house of cards. So, yeah. You know, I could talk about attribution all day. I mean, one thing that is sort of a thing that makes me a little crazy is the word attribution is extremely loaded. Right. And there's there's this causal sense that is loaded with this word.

Jason Rose:
And, you know, I mean, I even called a credit before and I was talking. Right. And I'm on. It's a Goldstar that responsible, whereas. Right.

Tom Miller:
And we use we use these terms. We use these terms dry. Right. Like, this is driving conversion. This is doing this. And it's not necessarily the most. Rigorous use of these terms. Right. I mean, you know, when people start to say, well, X causes Y, I'm like, oh, but how do we know why didn't cause x ray? And and that sort of. It you know, it's one of those things that. I try to be very careful about, but in in marketing speak, it's, you know, misguided causality is a very, very common thing. I see it every single day. Right. And so, you know, attribution, you know, obviously we're trying to get to causation. But, you know, in a lot of cases, we should be really satisfied with high court as he should. So I you know, if it's all I got for this question, it's a great question. Thank you, Pete.

Jason Rose:
Thanks, Pete. So I guess we move on to the final question. This comes from Tim Wilson at Web Analytics, Demystified at Team G. Wilson on Twitter. He's actually part of the dynamic trio on the Digital Analytics Power Hour. So I know we're big fans of that. So thank you, Tim, for submitting this question.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. Thank you, Tim. And I'm going to be a guest on the Dejoy Analytics Power Hour in the future, bringing this format to them. So if you catch this episode in the next week or so, fire me some questions and we might get them on DARPA, which would be great.

Jason Rose:
I also am looking forward to hearing you on there. OK. So a question from Tim is, in your first episode, you alluded to interpersonal skills as being important for analytics. What advice do you have for analysts dealing with either of the following one, the business stakeholder who is all about the data but who seems pretty misguided? So, for example, they're telling the analysts exactly what to do with the data rather than laying out the business question or problem. So don't do it one at the time.

Jason Rose:
Or should I give you read me the second. The second one. So the other.

Tom Miller:
Give advice for dealing with someone who is dealing with the business stakeholder who does not want to engage in a process, who just kind of expects insights and recommendations.

Tom Miller:
Ok. Interesting. Thanks again, Tim. Yeah. This is this is not the easiest question. And did I allude to interpersonal skills in episode one?

Jason Rose:
That was pretty important for an up and coming analytics. Awesome.

Tom Miller:
So we have a core value here at Digital Seargeant, which is lead with empathy. And I think any time you're dealing with anybody within a large or small organization, it's very important to have that empathy and what you know. How do you define it? How would you define it?

Jason Rose:
Well, I think empathy is just about being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and really understand it instead of just feeling bad. Sympathy is like I feel bad for what you're in, but I don't really care because I'm still going to do what I need to do. Well, empathy is taking it a step further and really understanding what someone's going through.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. And that's that's sort of how I feel as well. I mean, I think that that's a really important point. And, you know, I think that there is sort of within the field of to join the lyrics, there's this demonization of executives and demonization of what are called hippo's the highest paid person's opinion. And, you know, there there's a lot of challenges related to people process culture right within Dejoy Analytics. So, you know, the lead with empathy goes to a lot of different aspects of your relationship with a business stakeholder at your core. You may be focused on driving business value. Right. And I think when it comes to people that are in positions where they're doing analytics, I think that you have you have a lot more opportunity to be a multiplier of business value, a lot more than a lot of other positions with that model organization, particularly if you're doing marketing analytics. Right. Your stakeholders should all be focused on the same thing at the end of the day. And that same thing is, again, driving business value, driving shareholder value in a lot of cases. That's driving revenue. Right. Where the disconnect happens is when there's miscommunication around what your intent is and what their intentions. Right. And I think that when you have these massive divergences in sort of alignment. Right. You as an analyst need to take it upon yourself to learn the business, learn the business better. And when I mean learn the business, not just, you know, the dynamics of what your marketing is doing, but you need to read your analysts reports and your fight, you know, your S.E.C. filings and your earnings reports.

Tom Miller:
You need to understand your sales process. I cannot emphasize that one more or nothing.

Jason Rose:
You know, understanding the dynamics of how your sales people close deals or sell your product or work with your wholesalers or however, how your business is structured is a hugely, hugely insightful thing to understand when it comes to how you're looking at your marketing, how you're looking at your operations and should really focus how you're doing your analytics. And I say that because when it comes to most companies, most senior executives are extremely sales driven. Right. And without having that perspective, you're just going to be a child in the woods. Right.

Jason Rose:
Does it almost ever come down to like a separation of church and state type problem? Like, I know coming from a journalism world, you automatically the first place my mom goes to is separating the business from the editorial team and how they have to independently. Does that ever happen with analytics and business stakeholders where it's slowed?

Tom Miller:
The business stakeholders want the data to show a certain outcome and they really kind of push that, I mean, constantly.

Tom Miller:
So it's absolutely constantly in and, you know. So, I mean, this sort of goes to question two. Right. The second part of this, which is, you know, I've got this business stakeholder that does not want to engage in a process. Right. And you say you see that. And, you know, in most cases, I think you could see that as a negative. But in some cases, you could actually see that as a positive because, you know, are you necessarily. Is your process as an analyst or as an analytics team? Is your process their business? Right. And. You know, again, in most cases, it is right, in most cases you're actually working with a team and you've you've common objectives. But you I've also I've worked in organizations where analytics was like ITC. Right. And so were shared services organization. You know, I had know I ran into Lix team where I reported up to the C suite. Right. And then I had analytics teams basically in various lines of business. But we were not we you know, we had dashed lines to other or other other groups within the company. But we had a really solid org chart which was independent of the rest of the company.

Jason Rose:
Right. Interdependent, but independently managed. And we were hugely successful because of that. Right. Because we were, you know, in some cases sort of neutral arbiters. You know, we had a seat at the strategic table, at the product development table, marketing table, et cetera, operations table. But, you know, we weren't necessarily we weren't necessarily within the same work structure as all these various groups. And so, you know, the business stakeholders that don't want to engage in a process and you just expect insight and recommendation. Well, they worked someone like that worked great with the structure because, you know, we we had a very clear mandate to drive business value in ways that we could in ways that we were integrated with these teams. But, you know, when it came to the actual tactics of doing that, we were able to develop our own systems. Right. And it worked out for the past. We were extremely successful across the board because we didn't have organizational baggage that we brought along to the process. Does that make sense?

Tom Miller:
It makes complete sense. It speaks exactly that kind of how I started my question, the question. I mean, the second stakeholder you just described is very siloed off. So what about when it's the flip side of the coin, when you're really, really directly tied to shares, his take orders like that? How do you recommend handling that?

Jason Rose:
Yeah, I mean, you know, the the the disconnects and again, this is a super common thing. And, you know, we really need to do is develop an empathy for. Empathy for what they are going through for their perspective. And, you know, it gets interesting because as you sort of move up in organizations and I'm going to give Kevin Hellstrom props for this because he talks about this on his podcast a lot. That's Kevin Hellstrom at mine, that data on Twitter. He runs mine, that podcast, but he talks about organizational dynamics. And, you know, that's sort of one of his key pillars of success for any analytics team.

Tom Miller:
And what you have to realize is that when people sort of become move up in organizations, they become more risk averse. Right. Because they have more of their personal achievement, more of the personal wealth, more of their position. Everything is tied to the more performance of other people. And what they are responsible for. And so they're not going to take big risks with their career.

Jason Rose:
You know, if you get to be an executive in a large company, you're presumably doing pretty well, has taken also a 20 year career hardworking guy.

Tom Miller:
And now you're kind of sticking your neck out like that.

Tom Miller:
Kids got into college, kids going into private school or whatever, and you don't want to stick your neck out. Right. And and that that is a creation. That dynamic creates crazy negative dynamics for, you know, a typical digital IOW. Right. Because you're a digital analyst. You know it right now with the way that Dejoy Analytics is, the way that the market is. You know, you're a super high demand employee. You if you're smart, you take a free agent approach. I know this might be controversial, but you might you if you're smart, you take a free agent approach to how you are working, how you're doing, what kind of working for companies. Right. And, you know, you're fairly well compensated and you've grown up with digital. You might consider yourself like some of it's doing business. Yet Startup B, you know, you're really into into tech and dime dynamic organizations and matrix organizations. Right. Right. And that is not the culture of, you know, a lot of large companies. Right. And so you have this cultural disconnect. But then you also have this personal disconnect on the motivations of your senior stakeholders and what you think is going to drive the business forward.

Tom Miller:
And you might be right, but it might represent too much risk for your senior stakeholders to stop. Right. So you can say the metric should be X, Y and Z. We should be doing this. And they say absolutely no way. We are not going to you know, we're not going to kill the goose that's laying the goal nest egg. Right. And so I think that that's very important. I mean, again, it goes back to empathy. I think that you need to develop those relationships as professional relationships with your stakeholders. And you need. There needs to be cross training of what's important and what's motivating you. Right. And, you know, it's it's a force for for conflict, but it's also a force for great motivation. Understanding those differences and exposing them can actually be hugely motivating because, you know, you're all trying to shell sail the ship to the same place. Right. And it's it's value. You're trying to generate value for the business.

Jason Rose:
And you just have to get used to the ship turning. Just slow as the Titanic when you first get there all day and you start up to instantly pivot.

Jason Rose:
Yeah. And so is it really just come down to really, just like you said, leaving with empathy and being patient and kind of understanding that.

Tom Miller:
Yeah. I mean, I have a lot on the line and you just have to get your insights there and we'll talk more about this and future episodes.

Jason Rose:
You know, being patient is important.

Tom Miller:
But, you know, I also have some and I you know, I just alluded to it a little bit, but I also have some pretty potent career advice for Dejoy that feel like they're in a bad situation.

Jason Rose:
And hopefully we'll get some more questions to the forum at Bitly B t dot ally slash measured direction related to, you know, some of your you listener issues with your current jobs. And, you know, I'm going to say it here and I'm probably going to repeat myself a lot is that, you know, if you feel like you're in a not winning situation as a digital analyst.

Tom Miller:
Pull the cord, man. You got all the power right now. That's your kid. All of us are the market. So, again, you know, hopefully this is a little controversial. I know.

Tom Miller:
Jim Kane and Michael Hellblazer, if they're listening to this, they're screaming at their their radios and their car, which is good. But, you know, I'm of the opinion that, you know, that the talent supply is so tight. And if you're a halfway decent analyst, you should be working for you should be working in a group that is allowing you to flourish as an analyst. And you should be working for a company that is going to drive a lot of value out of analytics and drive a lot of value out to you. So that's my opinion.

Jason Rose:
Well, everyone who call in and complain bitterly slash production for all your questions. John, what to do now that you're leaving your job?

Tom Miller:
All right. Well, I think that wraps up for the questions that we have for today. Thanks again to everyone that submitted them. We're really looking forward to getting more the response.

Jason Rose:
Yes. Really so much super Flattr and we're so glad to, you know, get started off on the right foot here. Once again, just repeat it for a final time. It's Bitly B I t dot alewives slash measure direction. You can find me on Twitter at j. T. Rose once again, I'm Jason Rose, a content strategist at Digital Surgeons. And you can find Tom at T Miller.

Tom Miller:
That's t. L l. R on Twitter.

Jason Rose:
Great. Well thanks for listening, guys, and thank you so much.