#258: Goals, KPIs, and Targets, Oh My! with Tim Wilson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Analytics Power Hour – Episode #258: "Goals, KPIs, and Targets, Oh My!" with Tim Wilson

Release Date: November 12, 2024

In Episode #258 of The Analytics Power Hour, hosts Michael Helbling, Moe Kiss, Tim Wilson, Val Kroll, and Julie Hoyer delve deep into the intricate world of setting goals, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and targets within business analytics. Featuring guest Tim Wilson, the conversation navigates the challenges and best practices associated with defining and aligning metrics to drive meaningful business outcomes.

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1. Introduction to Tim Wilson and the Episode's Focus

The episode kicks off with introductions, highlighting Tim Wilson's extensive background in analytics, including his role as Head of Solutions at Facts and Feelings and his co-authorship of the upcoming book "Analytics the Right Way: A Business Leader's Guide to Putting Data to Productive Use." Michael Helbling emphasizes the importance of the episode's topic, setting the stage for an in-depth exploration of goals, KPIs, and targets in analytics.

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2. Defining Goals, KPIs, and Targets

Tim Wilson begins by distinguishing between two fundamental uses of data in analytics:

• Analysis and Hypothesis Validation: Exploring and confirming business assumptions.
• Measuring Performance: Tracking whether set goals and KPIs are achieved.

He points out that these functions are often conflated in business reporting, leading to ineffective assessments.

"[...] goals or KPIs can seem like magical thinking, not connected to reality, or laughably small as to not elicit a sense of purpose or effort." [00:13]

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3. Challenges in Setting Effective KPIs

The conversation highlights how businesses frequently merge analysis with performance measurement, resulting in reports that merely describe what happened without objectively assessing if expectations were met.

Tim Wilson critiques the common practice of presenting metrics without contextual goals:

"[...] slides like that with somebody saying, but was it good? Like, was it good or not?" [05:16]

Moe Kiss brings up a scenario where aligned teams still face misaligned expectations from wider business stakeholders, emphasizing the complexity of maintaining alignment throughout a campaign's lifecycle.

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4. The Importance of Alignment

Tim Wilson underscores the necessity of aligning business outcomes with analytics from the outset:

"[...] really capturing that and making and socializing it, like encouraging the marketers to communicate up as well." [07:16]

He advocates for clear, upfront discussions about what constitutes success to prevent later disagreements and ensure that all stakeholders share a common understanding of goals.

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5. Outcome vs. Output Metrics

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around differentiating outcome metrics from output metrics:

• Output Metrics: Quantitative measures like clicks, impressions, or open rates. They are easy to track but often manipulative and not directly tied to business outcomes.

• Outcome Metrics: Qualitative measures that reflect meaningful business objectives, such as revenue growth, customer retention, or brand awareness.

Tim Wilson emphasizes the superiority of outcome-oriented metrics, arguing that they align more closely with business objectives and are less susceptible to manipulation.

"[...] outputs are just so easy to manipulate and they don't necessarily lead to something that matters." [44:26]

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6. Setting Targets and Navigating Forecasts

The hosts explore the complexities of target setting, especially when business stakeholders rely heavily on historical data and forecasts rather than outcome-based goals. Tim Wilson expresses frustration with organizations that resist setting ambitious targets due to discomfort with predicting future performance.

"[...] asking them to predict the future contingent on them impacting the future." [31:48]

He advocates for maintaining original goals even when projects exceed expectations, using such scenarios as opportunities for hypothesis generation and continuous improvement rather than mere validation.

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7. Practical Applications in Campaigns

Through various scenarios, including post-campaign reporting and measurement planning sessions, the hosts illustrate the importance of:

• Clear Definition of Success: Ensuring that all stakeholders agree on what success looks like before campaign execution.

• Avoiding Metric Cherry-Picking: Preventing selective reporting of metrics that appear favorable while ignoring those that do not align with predefined goals.

Julie Hoyer posits that effective KPI setting not only measures success but also protects business partners from future misalignments.

"[...] this is saying, like, we want to be able to, like, objectively have that point on slide one." [06:32]

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8. Overcoming Organizational Resistance

Tim Wilson shares experiences where initiating honest conversations about goal alignment led to healthier business relationships and more effective campaigns. He stresses that although it may be challenging, fostering an environment where success metrics are openly discussed and agreed upon is crucial for long-term success.

"[...] it's a real cost and damage to an organization if that's what they're ending up in." [14:46]

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9. Q&A and Deeper Insights

The episode features an engaging Q&A where the hosts and Tim unpack specific challenges related to KPI setting, metric selection, and the balance between actionable insights and business outcomes. They explore how to ensure that KPIs reflect meaningful progress and how to adjust strategies based on metric performance without falling into analysis paralysis.

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10. Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

As the discussion concludes, Tim Wilson reiterates the importance of:

• Alignment: Ensuring that all stakeholders are on the same page regarding business goals and how they will be measured.

• Outcome-Oriented Metrics: Prioritizing metrics that directly reflect business objectives over easily manipulated output metrics.

• Continuous Improvement: Using both successes and shortcomings as learning opportunities to refine future campaigns and strategies.

The hosts agree that effective KPI and target setting are foundational to leveraging analytics for productive business outcomes, emphasizing the need for clarity, alignment, and a focus on meaningful metrics.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Michael Helbling [00:13]:
  "Setting a goal or a target can be a surprisingly challenging thing in a business."

• Tim Wilson [05:16]:
  "But it doesn't fundamentally answer the question. Did it get as much of that metric?

• Tim Wilson [14:46]:
  "Organizations struggle with this mightily and it's not like an analyst can just fix it with kind of the nature of what their report looks like."

• Julie Hoyer [06:32]:
  "This is saying, like, we want to be able to, like, objectively have that point on slide one."

• Tim Wilson [31:48]:
  "It's something that like an analyst can just say, oh, I'm going to check this box and do it. It is a real cost and damage to an organization if that's what that's ending up."

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Conclusion

Episode #258 of The Analytics Power Hour offers a comprehensive exploration of the critical role that well-defined goals, KPIs, and targets play in business analytics. Through insightful discussion and real-world examples, Tim Wilson and the hosts provide listeners with valuable strategies to enhance alignment, prioritize meaningful metrics, and drive impactful business outcomes. Whether you're an analytics professional or a business leader, the insights shared in this episode are instrumental in refining your approach to performance measurement and goal setting.

Transcript

[Michael Helbling]

Foreign.

[Tim Wilson]

Topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language.

[Michael Helbling]

Hey, everybody, welcome. It's the Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 258. You know, setting a goal or a target can be a surprisingly challenging thing in a business. And as analytics professionals, and we're often involved in that process, some might say not involved enough. All too often, you know, goals or KPIs can seem like magical thinking, not connected to reality, or laughably small as to not elicit a sense of purpose or effort. But when measuring things, how do we create the bar for which they will measure up? And should we, or how do we. Well, let me introduce my co hosts because we're going to talk about it. Julie Hoyer. Welcome.

[Julie Hoyer]

Hello. Happy to be here.

[Michael Helbling]

Awesome. And Mo Kiss. How you going?

[Mo Kiss]

I'm going pretty great.

[Michael Helbling]

Awesome. And Val Kroll, how's it going?

[Val Kroll]

Very good. Excited to be here.

[Michael Helbling]

Awesome. I'm excited to talk about this. I'm Michael Helbling and for this episode, well, we needed a guest. Someone who's got a long track record thinking and working with this topic. And. And Tim Wilson is the head of solutions at Facts and Feelings. Prior to that, he was the senior director of analytics at Further. He is the co founder of the industry leading podcast, the Analytics Power Hour and frequent speaker at conferences all over the world. But most of all today, he is our guest. Welcome to the show, Tim.

[Tim Wilson]

This is a podcast.

[Michael Helbling]

That's right, Tim.

[Tim Wilson]

My publicist was trying to explain to me kind of what. What this is. Okay.

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, it's all part of the whole 4th Floor Productions team. Ken Riverside, doing a whole lot there for Chicago podcasting.

[Tim Wilson]

So is it like live or people listening, like right now?

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, let's just assume they are. Hey, Tim, you also have a book that's coming out early next year, so we're going to plug that a little bit too, called analytics the Right Way, A Business Leader's Guide to Putting Data to Productive Use. And you co authored that with Dr. Joe Sutherland, who's also been on the podcast. Tell me, Tim, did you talk about this in the book?

[Mo Kiss]

Did it come up A little bit.

[Michael Helbling]

A little bit. Okay.

[Tim Wilson]

Actually, I think maybe this is the unofficial kickoff to the. To the. To the book tour that it might be this. It's also the conclusion. Thanks so much for supplying us all.

[Michael Helbling]

Advanced copies of the book, Tim.

[Mo Kiss]

Yeah, Tim.

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah. Where's our galleys?

[Tim Wilson]

As they say in the biz, I'll get those right over this way. You didn't have to pretend that you'd read it. You know that way. It works better this way for everyone.

[Michael Helbling]

We have never done a podcast with a book author where I have not at least partially read the book. What counts as partial most, you know, you speed read it and then you make notes.

[Val Kroll]

Are you trying to get him to set a target, Julie?

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, exactly.

[Julie Hoyer]

Maybe.

[Tim Wilson]

I really like the vibe you guys have. It seems like you guys really kind of like, give each other shit.

[Michael Helbling]

Don't. I don't like it at all.

[Val Kroll]

Hopefully you fit right in. We'll see.

[Michael Helbling]

We'll see. We'll see how you do. This is. Yeah, we'll see if you can hang. All right, let's talk about tim goals and KPIs and sort of what they mean in a business. And, like, where do you start? Let's say you walk into a client or walk into a company and you're like, okay, let's. Let's see what you're measuring, see what you're. What you're doing. What. What sticks out to you when you first talk to people.

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, I. One thing that does that sticks out to me, and it goes back years and years and years. I think I came into the analytics world thinking about analytics as. As measurement, as the most important thing we need to do is measure whether we're achieving what we set out to achieve, which I think is maybe a little different. I was a little naive. It took me a little while to realize that in. In my mind, there's kind of fundamentally two different things we can do with data, and they are very, very different. And one of them. One of them is the world of analysis and validating hypotheses. The other is measuring performance, which is, like. Sounds less sexy, but, like, to me, that's where goals and KPIs and targets sit, and they get kind of mashed together in companies. So I would say when I work with a company, or even when I was in house, it was like the dreaded weekly report or monthly report that in my mind often tries to cram those two things together. They're like, let's do the campaign readout. And it's never really clearly answers the question of, did this campaign meet the expectations we had for it Sometimes because there weren't expectations. And what did we learn? What worked, what didn't work, what can we take forward? And those just get, like, crammed together. So I think that.

[Mo Kiss]

What do you mean by they get crammed together? Like, what does that look like? What do people actually do?

[Tim Wilson]

Well, I mean, I think people. I mean, the campaign's a simple example they'll, they'll show, you know, a slide with sort of search traffic, and it'll show what happened to click through rate over the course of the campaign. And they'll say, here's what happened with clicks. Call it clicks or call it conversions, whatever other metric. Yeah, insert some metric. And they'll say, here's what happened. And you can see that it spiked at this point or it dipped at this point and we made this change. And that's, that doesn't fundamentally answer the question. Did it get as much of that metric? Like it's. That will skip the here's what we expected to hit for that metric. Like, won't get answered because the data is there and there's this kind of assumption that people can look at it. So you wind up with slides like that with somebody saying, but was it good? Like, was it good or not? And so it just, it winds up talking about what happened and kind of what we think the drivers were and maybe what we learned. But it doesn't just objectively answer that question. Did it deliver the results we expected separate from if there were hypotheses to be validated or learnings to be had?

[Val Kroll]

So what's one of the best ways then to get at the goals discussion so that people aren't shrugging their shoulders? Was that good? When you get to that conversation?

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, I'd love to hear from you, like getting them to acknowledge that they should have that discussion. And Michael, you set it up in the, in the int. Little bit that analysts, a lot of times when they get asked the question, was that good? And then they say, see this, this is why I need to be in the opening, you know, in the planning. And yet they still aren't pulled into the planning. And then I think sometimes when they are pulled into the planning, they themselves get caught up in not recognizing what they need to do. So.

[Mo Kiss]

Okay, okay, can I just. I'm going to throw a scenario at you. And I actually love this like, post campaign report scenario because it's my fucking life. So the. We've got the. Got the dream team. The analyst does great job. They're at a meeting months before the campaign launches. They agree on the goals, the objectives of the campaign. They have targets, everyone's aligned, Everyone signs off on the brief. Great. We have a measurement plan. We know how we're going to collect the data. Life's a dream. We get to the post campaign report. It's beautiful, Perfect visualizations. You can see where I'm going with this. Everyone's everyone's in alignment. What, I guess, what do you do when the marketers and the analysts have this really great relationship? They've agreed what good is, but the wider business expectation is metric went up good. And that's what they care about because they haven't been part of that conversation the whole way along. They just see like the shiny post campaign report and they're like, anything where there's an improvement is good. That's their baseline. Whereas for the marketing team and the analysts, they might have a different kind of understanding of what the goal is.

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, I don't think I've ever been in a case where the broader business is saying, that was good and the marketers are saying, yeah, but it's not as good as we expected it to be. But I mean, generally. Point taken. I mean, it is, I think the. That upfront planning. I guess there's a couple of things. One being really, really taking it seriously. And we sort of kind of kitchen use this. Like the two magic questions of what are we trying to achieve and how are we going to know if we've done that? Like really capturing that and making and socializing it, like encouraging the marketers to. It's kind of on them. Like, they need to communicate up as well. If they're doing something and they have a stakeholder and they're waiting until the campaign is fully run and then they're saying, here's what we did and that's the first that someone's aware of it. That's a little bit of a miss on their end. But I think where the analysts can step in is giving them. And even as you're kind of laying out, they set goals, they set targets, they set what data is going to be collected. Like, there's part of that that I think is like critical to the campaign planning. And you want the agency to understand, you want everyone to know that we're running this campaign to drive up retention or drive up MAUs or drive revenue and have that used as a communication tool during the planning and the discussion and the reference to the campaign. So that when the report comes out, there is kind of like slide one is very objectively, this is what we were trying to do. Like the business thing we were trying to do. Increased retention, satisfaction, revenue, whatever. Here's how we were going to measure it and here's how we delivered against target, and that's it. Therefore, of these five KPIs, two wildly outperformed, two were pretty much on par, one really tanked, and that's that's it. Like, that's the extent of the discussion. So that's kind of like to me the point where if somebody says, but wait, the one that you said tanked was actually up year over year or it was, I would have thought that would be pretty good. Or that exceeded benchmarking. Like, look, no, this is, this is if we hopped in a time machine and went back three months, this is what we agreed, success, how we were going to measure success. So, so that's when it's kind of back to where I said things get mashed together. It's. If you're having that discussion on slide 7, then it does kind of open itself up to like now we're discussing whether it was successful or not. Like, no, have the discussion. Was it successful or not? Hard stop now, what was the other stuff that, that came in with it?

[Michael Helbling]

It's time to step away from the show for a quick word about Piwick Pro. Tim, tell us about it.

[Tim Wilson]

Well, Piwick Pro has really exploded in popularity and keeps adding new functionality.

[Michael Helbling]

They sure have. They've got an easy to use interface, a full set of features with capabilities like custom reports, enhanced e commerce tracking and a customer data platform.

[Tim Wilson]

We love running Piwick Pro's free plan on the podcast website, but they also have a paid plan that adds scale and some additional features.

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, head over to Piwick Pro and check them out for yourself. You can get started with their free plan. That's Piwick Pro. And now let's get back to the show.

[Mo Kiss]

I think though what I'm trying to point to is the complicating thing inside a business is sometimes success means different things to different people and tries you might to get like the best alignment known to mankind. Like it doesn't always work out that way. Like sometimes there's a really good understanding between the core group. But then once you get further out into the business, like people might sign off on the, on the report, like the, sorry, the measurement plan ahead of time but like six months later, you know, it's all kind of forgotten and people's expectations change because they fall into sunk cost fallacy. And they're like, and now we're going to try and just show that it's was good because we've already done it and put all the effort in.

[Tim Wilson]

But it's why I spent 15 plus years, I mean I will use analogies like a time machine. And saying this is if you, if you have the discussion in the abstract with an organization and say, look, we are going to be at A point down the road and we're going to want to agree whether this was successful or not. We don't want to spin our wheels debating whether it was successful or not, because everybody's going to want to say it was successful except somebody who wants to bludgeon somebody else because they don't like them. So it's not something that like an analyst can just say, oh, I'm going to check this box and do it. It is a real cost and damage to an organization if that's what they wind up in. I mean, that's so I absolutely get that businesses are messy, but I also watch those planning discussions kind of skate around really focusing on saying, we've got to figure this out. Everybody look me in the eyes, who's going to forget about it, who's going to undermine it later? They need to be brought in, they need to be looked in the eyes. Not like an overly onerous process and sign off. But the fact is, if somebody signs off on something and it's documented and it was clearly stated as a meaningful outcome and they come back later and say, well, you know, but it's like, look, what do you want me to do? Literally, you told me three months ago that this is what success looked like. Do you understand that this is never going to be effective if this is the discussion that we're always having? So it's not, you can't just, it's not a one time check it off and it's done. It is hard. But to me, yes, organizations struggle with this mightily and it's not like an analyst can just fix it with kind of the nature of what their report looks like. So I agree with you, but I also don't disagree with myself.

[Julie Hoyer]

Well, one thing too, like if that case was true, MO and they found that, you know, the analysts and marketing duo that are really in lockstep, they know what success looks like, they set expectations and they find that it didn't hit expectations. My guess is that the next step would be to make a decision of how to make it better and hit the expectations. Right? There would be a change. And so I'm almost wondering like, would leadership really look at it and be like, no, I think that was good enough because I would hope that if they were actually working that property process, the outcome of that would be that they are looking forward to make decisions about the next campaign they run to do better, to meet the expectations. And so I just wonder like, would it come out in the wash that if those teams boots on the Ground have control over it, are working that and continually trying to get better than their story to leadership is like, yeah, we were doing well because we realized, like, we could improve these different things and kind of course.

[Tim Wilson]

Correct.

[Mo Kiss]

I really like that.

[Julie Hoyer]

Rather than they kept doing the same thing and they're like, oh, it underperformed. And then leadership's like, no, it looks good enough. Cause I'm guessing they would be like, oh, yeah, let's change. Let's change. Let's, you know, optimize.

[Mo Kiss]

Yeah, I like that.

[Val Kroll]

And I also think that, like, the measurement planning discussion and like, the target setting and the metrics and everything, which hopefully we'll dive into all those topics discreetly throughout this conversation. But, like, that can't be used as just a contract to, like, save the data team story. Like, this is also saving those business partners from their future selves. Right. Like, this is saying, like, if you can say right now how you want to feel about this performance when it comes back so that you are better informed to make those next decisions exactly how you described Julie. How can we, like, set that bar before we are. We already have the sun cost of being within the campaign. Right. So I think there's also, like, this idea. Sometimes it's seen as like, the shield. And really it's like, you know, positioning it to, like, the partnership discussion of, like, we want to be able to, like, objectively have that point on slide one as you illustrated Tim, and then move on to, like, the parts that get really interesting about adding some of the color so that people aren't like, well, what if you cut it by new versus returning? That is a successful. Then, oh, my God.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Val Kroll]

Lose my mind.

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, I think.

[Michael Helbling]

No, that I'm pretty sure all of us had little mini T trauma reactions when Tim was talking about that before.

[Mo Kiss]

Can I throw to the group then? Okay, so you go into your measurement planning session. I love this because, not gonna lie, everyone can just, like, shadow me along to work after this at my next measurement planning meeting. But, like, let's just. Let's scenario this out. So you get into a room and you do the. So what are we trying to achieve and how will we know if we've done that exercise? And you get everyone to silently brainstorm and put on a poster what you know, what they're trying to achieve? And one person goes enterprise sales. One person goes brand awareness. One person goes monthly active users. One person goes incremental revenue over to you guys.

[Tim Wilson]

I mean, to me, that's perfect because you'd say, well, clearly, most things, I'm.

[Mo Kiss]

Like, my face is like, sorry, you want me to drive brand awareness and enterprise sales with the same thing?

[Tim Wilson]

That's, that's why it's perfect. Because your reaction right there is saying, well, clearly, clearly this campaign is going to fail if we don't get on the same page. Now, I mean, to me doing that, like, that is the, that is where I also feel like the, the value in measurement planning, which, I mean, it's a loaded word because it means different things to different people. But having that exact exercise, you can kind of sit back and say, okay, can we all agree that one campaign is not going to be successful at all of those? And it's kind of up to your role in the room whether or not you're the one to facilitate how do we get on the same page? But imagine the opposite scenario, because I feel like that doesn't happen. Everybody's thinking that. And then you're three months down the road and looking at the metrics and then people are arguing about the execution and what's successful. So I'm like, way, way, way, a thousand times better to uncover that lack of alignment before the execution has started and saying, hey guys, like, we clearly should not be handing any, anything off to a creative team if we're not on the same page with that. So that's why I'm saying it's great. It's great because you're surfacing it under the guise of. I just want to measure this successfully for you. But what you're surfacing is that the business is not aligned. So does that make some sense?

[Mo Kiss]

Makes total sense. Like I said, you want to come to my next meeting?

[Michael Helbling]

So I think, I think I want to pick on a word there, Tim, which is alignment or aligned, because it sounds like that is a very important predicate for what we're talking about. So can you talk a little bit about that part of it?

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, and I, I think it, it is kind of sneaky because it's the data sort of getting people to articulate what they're expecting a result to be is a good way to kind of abstract the emotion a little bit and surface that they're not on the same page. But I mean, the. And mo. I'm assuming it's usually not quite that extreme, like generally. Well, no, I guess I've seen paid search being like, no, this is a, this is a branding play or this is a direct response play or maybe not paid search, but with a campaign. Is this a branding top of funnel thing or Is this a direct response conversion? And all of a sudden you're saying, well, I just want to figure out what the right metrics are so clearly. But now you've articulated out loud that you're not on the same page. And Marketing 101 mean we know that if we're not, not clear on what we're doing, we're running in multiple directions. So it's like trying to figure out what success looks like forces a discussion about what the business purpose for doing an investment. And I know we're saying a campaign, but this can apply to a channel, it can apply to a line of business, it can apply to anything.

[Michael Helbling]

From an analyst perspective, how important is understanding kind of historical and other things like that going into these kinds of conversations, is that crucial? Or could somebody walk in brand new talk about that? Maybe a little bit.

[Tim Wilson]

I think the, I mean any. The extent to which the analyst can have an understanding of the business, I'd rather the analyst understands how marketing or operations or product or CX or whatever the topic is. I'd rather if they were brand new that they have a understanding of the domain. I would put over understanding historical performance of the metrics specific to that company because that, that is what's going to come next is people are not going to want to set targets. They're going to want the analysts to what do we normally do? And you know, pull that data and make that an analyst task, which is a kind of a separate sort of downstream topic that I think people don't like to actually set targets to define success.

[Julie Hoyer]

Can we talk about. Because we've been talking about alignment and what they want to achieve and what does success look like. But can we actually break that down a little and talk about like what. How are you defining a goal? Because we were throwing the word around. So like what's a goal here? Because I think some people will confuse the three goals, KPIs and targets. And in an ideal world, like what. What level goal are we talking about here? Like do you want me talking about clicks? You want to talk about impressions?

[Tim Wilson]

Like, so yeah, I feel like goals is a. Target's a tough word too because sometimes when people talk about targets, they mean what audience? Like their target audience versus the what value do they want a metric to hit? So we, Val and I ran into that with a past client where we had to make sure we weren't saying Target.

[Mo Kiss]

I think people sometimes also confuse targets with forecasts.

[Michael Helbling]

I have, oh, that's also a huge store that people buy stuff at. So Target.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, that's Tarjay. Have you been saying it wrong all this time? Yeah, I have, but it's. I think goals is a, is a loaded word. I tend to think of goals as being what is the. What is the business outcome? Not necessarily tied to a metric. Absolutely. If somebody, if I say what's your goal? And they say our. If they say their goal is to drive a million dollars worth of revenue, I'm okay with that. Because that's a business outcome. It has a metric and it has a target. If they say that their goal is clicks, email click throughs or email open rate that I have a. I'm like, okay, well I gotta use a word other than goal. I gotta say, well, I'm gonna ask what your business outcome, what is it you're trying to achieve? Because I, I don't think there's a right or a wrong when I use goals, but it has bitten me a few times because I have this assumption that people are thinking goals as a business outcome thing. Not even necessarily with how it's going to be measured, just something that is valuable to the business. Which gets back to the earlier discussion. Like if everybody's not on the same page on kind of fundamentally what the business purpose of doing this thing is, then that's tripped up.

[Julie Hoyer]

But can I give you an example and ask what you think about this kind of wording of a goal too? Because I've had it where my publicist.

[Tim Wilson]

Is definitely hearing from this. Because these are like getting peppered with questions. I'm supposed to be articulate.

[Michael Helbling]

This is what it means to be a guest on the show, Tim, on this podcast.

[Tim Wilson]

Okay.

[Michael Helbling]

It's not for the faint of heart.

[Julie Hoyer]

How would you advise someone? Or would you say this goal is fine as, as it's worded? Because I hear sometimes an objective is so big and gray or a goal that they state that. It's like, I don't even know if you guys know what success of that looks like. And it's hard to get them to like narrow it down. Because one I've run into recently is similar to saying like digital growth through personalized experiences. Like that's what they will say their goal is.

[Val Kroll]

Tim. Tim is triggered, visually triggered.

[Mo Kiss]

Isn't.

[Tim Wilson]

Isn't that. Because that's.

[Mo Kiss]

Is that a vision?

[Julie Hoyer]

They're trying to break it down farther.

[Mo Kiss]

Is that.

[Julie Hoyer]

I know it's really hard. It's really hard. And I'm like, is it maybe just reflective that you guys are feeling like the alignment to the rest of the business is Unclear. But it's hard then to come in and try to help them. Like, how. How do I further clarify that? Because it's just so. It's got no railings, but.

[Mo Kiss]

But it's.

[Tim Wilson]

I would every time Val and I ran into this with one of our large clients recently where they're combining the how we're going to achieve the goal or the objective with the objective itself. And so stepping back and saying, okay, what is the outcome? It's good that you have. Call it a strategy or a vision or an idea of how you're going to. But really what we're trying to talk about right now is what result is it that matters, not how you're going to achieve the result. I mean, you're doing the campaign or you're doing whatever. So, I mean, I've definitely gone in when you said, what are your goals? And they're like, well, here they are. We've got these four pillars, and these are the goals. And it's got language in them. If I say, but wait a minute, you mostly care about some outcome. Let's talk about what the outcome is. And that can get wordy because people get really proud of the way that they have come up with some alliterative way or some sort of, you know, cool way that rolls off the tongue. What was it? Digital growth. Through what?

[Julie Hoyer]

Personalized experiences.

[Tim Wilson]

Through. Yeah, like, and I'm sure by the time it hits you, everybody is saying, that's, that's the thing for 2025. Digital growth through personalized experiences. And it's just. You got it. Like, okay, what are you trying to even digital growth? Like, exactly. What do you mean?

[Val Kroll]

Unpack it. That's how you start unpacking.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Helbling]

Because probably a goal lives a layer or two down from that, which is sort of like, okay, so how do you know you're impacting those things, like digital growth and personalized experiences and then your knowledge of, okay, well, if this changes, then we know we're impacting digital growth. Okay, good. Then we could set a goal on that because then we know.

[Val Kroll]

Okay, so getting to that, I'm gonna challenge that just a little bit because, like, would they be happy with digital growth through non personalized experiences? Like, I think, like unpacking it. Because, like, the. Through personalized experiences are like the things that you potentially could do to achieve that digital growth. I think that's what Tim was talking about. Like, there's too much in there, or like, sometimes it will also have a target by X percent, then you're Like Jesus, like, let this all breathe. And so I think like the digital growth just even defining those two words. Like what? Like so exactly what your line of questions were, Michael, but for those two words. So, like, what is digital growth mean? How will you know that you've achieved that? Because like that's going to be a whole conversation and potentially some alignment in and of itself, let alone how you're gonna.

[Michael Helbling]

But I also think it. That just sort of exposes Val sort of like some of the tenuousness of the overall statement, which is really not sure if those two things should even be connected or really are really aligned and in the first place. And so that's part of what I would call a goal setting process is like basically picking your strategy apart a little bit.

[Tim Wilson]

But it's back to your point earlier. Like what do you want the analysts to come in armed with? I want them to have the critical thinking and the communication skills to not. I mean, we can kind of shit on that now. I mean, because we don't have to actually have the conversation. Like what the fuck does that even mean? Is kind of the.

[Mo Kiss]

That was my thought.

[Tim Wilson]

That's. That's what's running through your head. But you can't do that because everybody's kind of in love with it and it's gonna live all through 2025. Like you're not gonna be able to kill it. So that's where then the analyst has to say, cool, got it. You know, I'll be sure to put a tag slide that says those words. But then we're going to get to. But don't you understand that what I'm trying to do is make sure that we can objectively say are we achieving business outcomes? We can worry about how. Because really the how you're going to do it like this, this. We would say somebody has a hypothesis that may be really well grounded that personalized experiences are one of the most effective ways to achieve digital growth. Again, tough to. It takes a while for an organization to get there. But to say there's a whole other process we want to follow with the personalized experiences, because that means a lot. We can do MVPs on personalization. We have lots of hypotheses and we want to validate those along the way. And we know that what we're trying to get them to do is to support digital growth. But let's just talk about the outcome of digital growth, which. What does that mean? What do we mean when we say digital growth? Because chances are they don't Even know what that means either. So. Great point. It's like it's a process, it's not a. There, I think you're done. Well, there are a lot of questions being asked that people say that is a valid question. I don't know the answer. We're gonna have to figure that out. And there's value in figuring that. I understand that. We really do need to figure that out because that is going to pay dividends in every future conversation we have is we're executing over the course of the year. And oh, by the way, it makes the reporting of results much, much smoother as well, but it pays dividends all over the place.

[Val Kroll]

So on the other side of the spectrum, because if this is coming from a place, I'm assuming, Julie, those examples are set by like non data people that those are business stakeholders. And so on the other side of the spectrum, if you were to get into that discuss and say, like, well, what are the, what are the goals of this campaign? And they just say I want to beat benchmark or like I want to exceed benchmark.

[Mo Kiss]

No, no, no, no, no. I, I want it to be higher than last year.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Val Kroll]

So that's like the other side. So like if we could just triage that one, I think that could be helpful too.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Val Kroll]

Tim, again, also visually triggered.

[Tim Wilson]

Also, also triggered because I, I mean there is a whole other piece of this where I get that there is a human reaction. It gets to the, I mean, Michael, the whole targets versus forecasting as well, that fundamentally when we're asking people what would success look like or as valves, like what would put a smile on your face down the road? And that's very uncomfortable because there's people like forecasting, they'll say, well, can't you. The analyst like what's our historical. We just want to do better than that. And do you want to just like you've learned nothing. You don't think you can. You think nothing's more efficient, more impactful. You literally want it to do better than last year. No, no, no, no. We're doing, we got way better targeting. Like how much better? Like what would be an indication, like there's a discomfort in the business of setting those numbers because there is a feeling that they're so used to looking at historical data and having this false sense of accuracy and precision on their historical data, and now we're asking them to predict the future. And we're not just asking them to predict the future, we're asking them to predict the future contingent on them impacting the future. So they all of a sudden, you know, they may ask for, well, can't you just run a forecast and tell me what's going to be? It's like, well, you want to quit your job if it's. If you don't have any influence over what's going to happen, you want just to run a forecast, then what are you doing? Like, you're supposed to be doing something that drives forward. How good do you think that is? But recognizing that they're very. It is uncomfortable, but I think there's. It's unnecessarily uncomfortable. People are just freaked out that, you know, it's going to go on their permanent record if they miss. Miss their. Their target. And the reality is it's not like, it's usually not that big of a deal.

[Michael Helbling]

But I do think this is an area of sensitivity because organizations do treat this different ways. And I think that's a huge part of why this is such a tricky thing for people. A lot of times is because it's like, if you didn't hit that goal or if you didn't hit that target or whatever that is, it's like, oh, that's the worst thing in the world that could happen.

[Tim Wilson]

I don't. People. That card gets played like, oh, but there are organizations. I've worked with a lot of organizations, and in. Mike, you may. I think we've had this discussion before.

[Michael Helbling]

Probably.

[Tim Wilson]

I was saying Michael. I mean, it came out as Mike and I realized I'm just. I just. I just want to know that I do know you're. You go by Michael. That was me just.

[Val Kroll]

Did you listen to an episode before you joined us today? Is that how you do.

[Tim Wilson]

He goes, that's the solar helps that. That that card gets played. Like, oh, but no, no, no. The reality is on an organization by organization basis, asking them like, really? Even when companies have MBOs and they have targets set and things they have to hit, like, even those. They tend to get to the actual period and say, yeah, but there's some manager judgment in that. But when we're talking about a campaign, I just. I just haven't actually seen it. I've had people tell me some organizations will. Really? I'm like, really? Which one?

[Michael Helbling]

Saying it's real. I'm saying the fear of it is real for people.

[Tim Wilson]

And okay, well, then I just teed off on you for no, no good reason.

[Michael Helbling]

So the. The perception is like, oh, if I show up to this business meeting review meeting with this poorly performing campaign or a campaign that doesn't show, you know, digital growth through personalized experience. Continue to pick on that one, then I'm going to look bad, and my, you know, performance is going to be duly, you know, I'll be impacted, right In. In terms of my standing in the company or my job or my bonus or whatever. And I think so. That's. I think that's. It's a huge driver, right? And. And so, like, I see people hedging their bets constantly in these kinds of discussions for that reason, they're just like, I'm not willing to make a commitment, or if I make a commitment, it's going to be, like, so loose that I can slide my way out of it somehow or not. Kind of commit. Like, at the beginning, Tim, you said, like, can we just decide if this was a success or not? And then talk about more of the details? Like, that kind of language is just sort of like, absolutely not. I will not commit to that kind of, you know, clarity in the discussion. And I think that's a big, big.

[Tim Wilson]

Problem that I agree with. And I think it does take modeling a behavior. It does take time. It does take, I mean, if anything, dinging people for saying, but you're telling me you can't tell me if it was a. Objectively good or not. It's okay if you missed, but I just want to know. And I watched. I was in an agency years ago that actually put some performance targets. I mean, I had to sort of. I think it was. The client sort of insisted that we put performance targets in the proposal. And boy, the client team was not happy about that. But it actually forced a discussion, and they put targets in. The client came back and said, it's got to be way more than that. And all of a sudden, the agency was saying, but wait a minute. With what you're spending and what you want to do, seriously, like, that's. We can't possibly hit what you're thinking. And they said, you know what? You're right. Let's do something different. Still spent money with the agency. Thank you for actually having that discussion. So it doesn't. I don't think it takes too many times to get over that hurdle to say, wait a minute, I missed. And because I stood up and said, I missed this, and here's the ideas we have, and here's what we might do differently, and here's what we've done, all of a sudden they're, like, lauded. Like, oh, my God. That person didn't, like, beat around the bush and try to spin a Turd into a skein of gold. They said it was a turd. And in hindsight, yeah, of course it was going to be a turd. But you know what? We all sat around and thought it was practical. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna not do that again. And they're like, thank God you're not gonna keep pushing out turds.

[Mo Kiss]

Okay, what about. Okay, I feel like we've said the word turds enough.

[Tim Wilson]

Did not know where I was going.

[Mo Kiss]

Already have a three year old. So what about the opposite? We keep talking about missing. What is your view on when you are partway through a campaign? Let's say the goal is 3 mil and you're forecast to hit. Maybe you're at 2.8 and everyone goes, right, let's put the goal to 4 mil. What's your perspective on that?

[Tim Wilson]

I would, I would generally want to maintain the original goal and say, sure, we can stretch. I mean, maintain it and say for a record. So even we're doing the readout at the end. Say, this was, this was going so well. It wildly exceeded our expectations. I thought you were going to go down the path of if it exceeded expectations. And then people are asking, like, why it exceeded expectations and that little patience for. Because I think that happens too. Like, what was the analysis? Like, who the hell cares?

[Mo Kiss]

Why do you have little patience for that?

[Tim Wilson]

Because there's limited, there's finite resources. And if you said, it is this investment, we're going to put these dollars and time behind something with the hopes of achieving some thing and we achieve it. And then saying, well, why? Why did we achieve it? Or why did we exceed it? It's like, but you did. Like you paid money and you hit it. Now, you may not have a perfect causal. Causal relationship. You said, we did. X and Y happened. So that's actually technically not causal. I get it. But there's only so many hours in the day. I think I need to more go focus on things where we're not hitting. Now, if it blew it out of the water and somebody says, I wonder if that's because it turns out that millennials in the northern hemisphere absolutely love portrait videos or something. And I wonder if that was it. Okay, cool. Now you have a hypothesis. Go and validate it. Use that going forward. But not in the service of explaining why you paid X. You got Y and that's what you wanted. That's just like, that's just intellectual. Okay, that's intellectual masturbation, I guess.

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, wow.

[Tim Wilson]

You were on a Roll, you said, Is there like. Is there like, some flag that, like, can a podcast be, like, flagged as being only for, like, explicit or something? Is that.

[Michael Helbling]

No, we've got an editing process, Tim, so. Okay, we can bleep all that.

[Mo Kiss]

Clean it up in post.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah. Okay. That's fascinating.

[Julie Hoyer]

So some of what we were just talking about, I feel like, is assuming we have good KPIs measures of success set. And I know that you have written some blogs and ranted a few times about outcomes versus output KPIs, because I was thinking, Mo, your example of like, our goal was three mil. Well, what if somebody had a bad goal or a goal set with a bad KPI of like a million impressions? You know what I mean? Like, so can we talk a little bit about the difference there?

[Tim Wilson]

Sure, yeah. This is. This is literally. Okay. My publicist won't get.

[Julie Hoyer]

I'm hitting all the buttons.

[Tim Wilson]

I'm gonna like.

[Michael Helbling]

It's like, physically painful.

[Mo Kiss]

I'm actually quite enjoying it.

[Tim Wilson]

I mean it. Indulge me in a little story. This goes back to, I don't know, 2004. I learned. I learned that distinction. I think a lot of people know it if you search for outcomes versus outputs, and you'll get kind of varying definitions. But I learned it when I was working with United Way in Austin and we were trying to figure out who. Which agencies we were going to fund in the, like, emergency food, shelter and financial assistance. And there was this guy who was a retired social worker who was leading my committee, and we'd get these proposals in and he would say, look, this, this program sounds good, like what they're doing, but the metrics they've proposed are just output metrics. And he's like, we need to have push them to come back to us in their revision with outcome metrics. And the example that I loved was for a soup kitchen. And they would say, we're gonna. Now I'm gonna botch this. We're gonna serve this many meals. And that's kind of an output because they could directly control it. Ultimately, what they were trying to do was to remove reduced food insecurity, harder to measure that, and their output was in the service of that outcome. So generally somebody would say, I'm measuring impressions, but I'm really trying to grow awareness. But that distinction between an output is just something that is a very specific tactic. And a lot of times in marketing, you can. You can drive that in so many artificial ways. You know, your cpm, you want to drive that down. Just open the Floodgates and let the bots, you know, roll through. Those are outputs. And you're not, you know, an email the business doesn't give two shits about a click through. Like that matters. Not at all. Click through rate doesn't matter. Open rate doesn't matter. Opens doesn't matter. They matter. But they're just outputs. Ultimately you're seeing this email because you're trying to deliver some outcome and an outcome is more and it may be your marketing and saying the outcome I'm trying to deliver is to generate, to deliver qualified leads to the sales team because I really don't have control beyond that. But we as a business recognize that qualified leads have value. So there are. Things get blurry. Sometimes you have to measure, you have to use an output measure because there's just nothing else there. So I tend to talk about trying to have outcome oriented measures and just have a bias towards saying it may be harder to measure, but if it's actually much, much more aligned with the business outcome that you're trying to achieve, it may be worth it to do that because outputs are just so easy to manipulate and they don't necessarily lead to something that matters.

[Julie Hoyer]

And is it fair to say, like if you weren't hitting an outcome, maybe go look at your outputs and see if you're like, you could be more efficient in some of those. Like I'm, I'm thinking about like what if your click through rate is shit and you're not driving the leads they care about because your email sucks. Like thousand measure the outcome. You're not hitting it. Check your outputs.

[Tim Wilson]

Absolutely. So definitely not saying that those metrics don't matter, but they are a very useful diagnostic and even modeling out kind of okay, what has to happen. So if I want to optimize the delivery of those, but that's kind of how we're delivering the outcome. But if you put them all on the same report, then people are kind of the most point people. Like they're going to cherry pick the ones that are, that are up or above or it's like no, no, no, do that. Head scratching offline. Ultimately I want to tell the business are they delivering the outcome that they.

[Julie Hoyer]

Can I hit him with a third one. Yeah, just keep railroading all of you and all of your questions because I'm leading you down a path because I, I really want to ask you.

[Michael Helbling]

Okay.

[Tim Wilson]

Oh dear, now I'm scared.

[Julie Hoyer]

I've been setting this up. Okay, so when it comes to we obviously been talking like analytics, reporting, performance measurement, but we have been saying there's this intuition with a KPI that it needs to be a little more like down the path, down the funnel, closer to something the business cares about. It's inherently valuable in some way. Right now when we talk about like on websites, a, B testing and running tests, a lot of times the, the best practice is to actually choose a measurement for your test closest to your change, I. E. Clicks. So how come those seem to be so at odds? Because I get into conversations with people and they want to be hypothesis driven. But the measurements we talk about, we're like on the ends, different ends of the spectrum.

[Tim Wilson]

So is. Is that the best practice? I mean, that's the easiest signal to detect, right? So it's the cheapest. And like the, the other extreme is saying, I want to drive revenue. It's like, well, that no experiment is going to be powered enough because there's so many other things that happen. So to me, driving more clicks doesn't matter if it's not actually moving a needle. So, so you know something like depending on where the clicks are, saying, well, I want to. If this gets them more PDP views, that should get more people added to the cart. Then. What's a pdp?

[Val Kroll]

Product description page.

[Tim Wilson]

Details. Product details page.

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, Jesus Christ. I've not worked in E. Comm for a while, Tim. Keep like, keep us all up to speed. All right.

[Tim Wilson]

You know what? I never have. I am just so full of shit. I can, I can throw out these. I was just saying it so somebody could get it defined for me. I had no idea what it meant either.

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, I didn't stop the. Stop you to define skeins of gold. But anyways, keep on going.

[Tim Wilson]

So, I mean, because there's. It's easy to get caught up in saying, well, we're, we're. I mean, that I think is a problem in a B testing where you get so caught up in. We want to be able to detect a signal, so we're going to pick a measure where we're most able to detect the signal and gets divorced from something that actually matters. So, I mean, social media was kind of the same way when I was working in that it'd be like, well, what's the value of a retweet? You know? And you're like, well, that's like, what's the dollar value of a retweet? Well, that's garbage. But if you have a social media team that is trying to increase awareness or perception and you're doing that through social media you're not going to tie it to a tweet, but maybe that's another one where you need to field some form of a brand study to, to ask about that or. And I do not know enough details about how Conductrix does this, but the fact that Conductrix put voice of the customer into their platform I think is like absolutely amazing. If you are changing something and that's because you're trying to improve the user's experience or their perception, then yeah, run your test and then freaking ask the split as opposed to saying, well, they clicked on it like, you know, who cares? It's harder. But that goes back to the person who's coming for the test. Like it. There's the problem, the hand wringing in the testing world of button color changes, which somebody was saying, telling me last week they knew somebody did a button color change because they were probably looking at clicks and who the hell cares? So you want, even when you're running tests, generally I think you want to do things that are going to have a real impact. Otherwise you wind up doing high velocity of these minor, minor little things. And I'm out of my league on the experimentation front. I feel like those are the sorts of debates that people come to blows in the TLC or experimentation.

[Val Kroll]

I'll take one additional crack nuance to that too, which is all in the same spirit though, like making sure that the activities that are being done are actually in service of something that the business cares about. So when picking your metric, you obviously you don't want to pick something that's like super naturally volatile so that you're like reading bad signal. It has to be like robust enough. You also want to pick something that's sensitive enough to the change you're making on the page. Which is why people often say pick something that's closest to the change of the behavior you're trying to modify. And I think that that turns into a little bit of a debate of what is the metric you use for your statistical T test versus how do you define success of the broader hypothesis of the change of what you're doing in the first place. And those can be two separate concepts. So if the best way it's I, I. There was a large telecom company years back that said, you know what? I'm sick of using clicks. We're going to make the goal of every single test revenue. And they wanted to implement a chatbot and they still used revenue. Not like how many calls in the call center decrease or how many people were actually able to complete their Task? No, it was revenue. So guess what? The task failed. They never implemented the chatbot, which is just wild. If you knew how large this company was, your. You. Your head would roll. But all that to say that there's a difference between what you need to make sure that your test is adequately powered, that you're able to detect the types of changes versus defining that in the broader context of what success is. Because sometimes you can also set secondary metric to say, but this action can't cannibalize this other really important interaction on the page or something else that I really have to keep my eye on. Because it's all an ecosystem, right, that you're trying to like, balance. There's. If someone else is going to take on a new behavior, sometimes it means it's at the sacrifice of other things. And so I think, again, being really specific and thoughtful about the broader definition of success will save you from the scenario where you have to choose something that is more of an output. But. All right, now I'll hop off my soapbox.

[Tim Wilson]

Sorry.

[Michael Helbling]

That was great.

[Tim Wilson]

That was. That was way smarter.

[Michael Helbling]

Why couldn't you say something like that?

[Val Kroll]

Tim, don't be our guest, Michael.

[Michael Helbling]

Sorry. All right, we do have to start to wrap up and.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah.

[Michael Helbling]

Wow, Tim, it seems like you're pretty good at this whole podcasting thing, so you should really look into it.

[Tim Wilson]

Maybe I'll start one. Yeah, yeah. And so people like. Yeah, they like. They like, watch it. Is it like, on broadcast television? Like, how do the. How do people actually hear this?

[Val Kroll]

MO is so over it.

[Tim Wilson]

Commit to the bit.

[Michael Helbling]

No.

[Tim Wilson]

All right, regroup here.

[Michael Helbling]

All right, we do have to wrap up the show. This has been actually a really great conversation and reminded me of a lot of really useful things and things Tim has yelled at me over the years about this topic. So it's good. This is a much pleasanter version of some of our conversations, which, you know, in fairness to Tim, I'm usually the problem because I'm like, but what about this? So it's good. But one thing we like to do is go around the horn, share last call, something that might be of interest to our audience. Tim, you're our guest. Do you have a last call you'd like to share? And also, Tim, just so you know, for the show, you can never share more than one. I've got like six.

[Tim Wilson]

So, yeah, this will be the only time that I'll stick with one. So I definitely have had, or. I think I've listened to the podcast enough to know that people have referenced Ben Stancil's work before, but I haven't heard anybody reference this piece. That was a while back, but it was called Do AI Companies Work? And it was just a. I have not seen it anywhere where he just breaks down the arms race of like the billions and billions and billions that are getting flooded into the, into the anthropics and the OpenAI's and the Googles and the Microsoft to build the next model and those models then very quickly get overtaken by another model. So he draws kind of the contrast to like when the cloud infrastructure was stood up, that pouring billions of dollars into Google or Microsoft or Amazon into cloud infrastructure, you were building a really sustainable competitive advantage. And he was just like, but how is this working when it's going to cost you multi billions of dollars for something that within six weeks is now fourth on everybody's favorite benchmark? And he's kind of questioning how is, how is that going to be a sustainable model given how easy it is for organizations to kind of seem seemingly to stand up and compete in that space and just throw a ton of money at it. So it was just a little bit of a head scratcher, kind of made me, made me think, so do AI companies work? And that's it.

[Michael Helbling]

Awesome. All right, well, Val, what about you? What's your last call?

[Val Kroll]

Well, inspired by our guest for the first time in a long time, my last call actually relates to the topic of the show. It's a Medium article by Eric Sandersham and it's called Whose Job is It to Produce Actionable Insights. And it was actually inspired by something that Tim wrote. But it, you know, Eric was a guest not too many episodes back and it was an excellent episode. But I'll just give you a couple little tidbits of things in there to kind of like scratch your interest. So the first subheading is called what the fuck is Actionable Insights? And he completes that paragraph by saying. So you can immediately appreciate that there's no need to use the term actionable insight because there is no such thing as a non actionable insight. But it's just a whole joy. And he gets into like the ownership of actionable insights. And it's just he's. I love everything he writes, but this was an especially good one. So highly recommend.

[Michael Helbling]

That's awesome. All right, Mo, what about you?

[Mo Kiss]

Okay, I have got one out of right field and if anyone wants to go, I'm gonna fight them on it. Yeah, it's really controversial, but I just read a book that I thoroughly enjoyed it really surprised me when I had it recommended to me. I rolled. I believe I rolled my eyes and then was like, yeah, you know what? I'm gonna. I'm gonna read it and. And I'm just going to talk a little bit about the book first and then I'll tell you what it is. So it does have a lot of, I guess, like, trauma in it. She had a very difficult childhood. But it does talk a lot about ADHD in women. It talks a lot about kind of like the sexualization of women and how they're treated, particularly in, like, the 90s by, like, the US comedy scene and things like that. And it just. It's actually given me so much thought about so many different areas of my life, like both as a mum and as a woman and how you show up and. Yeah, I've. I really enjoyed it and it completely knocked me for six because I didn't expect to like it. I do also recommend listening to it on Audible because the author narrates it. And the book is Paris Hilton's memoir, which I now am a very big Paris Hilton fan, which is not words I ever thought would leave my mouth. But it's very evident from her book that she had a far more difficult childhood than I probably ever realized because we were, like, around the same age. And so when I was a teenager, like, she was kind of just becoming famous, and I just thought she was, like, this snotty rich woman. But she's clearly worked really, really hard and is definitely the OG influencer, which was like, also just a really interesting kind of thing to read about. So, anyway, for anyone that's interested, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Julie Hoyer]

I wasn't expecting that title.

[Mo Kiss]

Me either. Yeah.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah.

[Michael Helbling]

All right, Julie, keep the street going.

[Julie Hoyer]

Oh, I'm up. All right. We'll see if this one holds up to all the other ones. I recently read an article by Emily Oster on her parent data site that she does, and it was what studies about screen time often get wrong. And now the topic itself as a parent was, like, cool to read because constantly all you hear is like, screen time is evil. This and that, you know? Yeah, no screens. Like, all the stuff. So once I got past my parental guilt, I really liked the article because she has a great way of talking about making causal conclusions from studies that aren't properly designed to do so. And she shows it finally, in such a simple way, she has a diagram with three circles and three arrows. And so she has, for example, here, it's like screen time, child test scores and parental ability and she has two arrows going from parental ability to the other two circles and then a single arrow going from screen time to child test scores. And the way she talks about it is saying like, there are plenty of studies to relate parental ability to both of those other items. But what's interesting is when you try to study that third relationship of screen time to test scores and why everyone's like oh, so worried about it, they end up forgetting the confounding variable like that third circle of parental ability. And so I just love that this simple diagram and the way she talks about it is saying like sometimes you can't forget these underlying variables that are truly driving the relationship that you are trying to observe. And I just found that it was so applicable to a lot of the work I do with clients where I find myself saying like, I feel like this is a self fulfilling prophecy because your two circles you're looking at are like how much marketing I give to this group of this audience and their outcome. But the third circle we're not talking about is that like you segmented them saying they were already high performers, you know, like stuff like that. Or there's plenty of other examples. But I just loved the way she really broke it down and made it easy to digest.

[Val Kroll]

That's a good one.

[Tim Wilson]

That, that does. I mean I was listening to, I think the last episode where there was the. Whoever the one of the co hosts talked about this like eight rules for a causal inference or something. And it, it actually used the kind of the dags, sort of the circles and confounding and the number of different ways those arrows can go. Like there's a lot more than just confounding that comes in. But also I will say in our book we have basically a three circles example late in the book. So and with counsel to people, they should try to draw that sort of thing out to think about it. I mean, I'm curious, like if you've thought about actually trying to draw confounders, potential confounders that you cannot control for when working with a client is kind of a fascinating, like you said, like if it works well on that and you know, she's speaking to kind of a lay audience, that that's an intriguing thing to think about. Actually trying to illustrate the thinking and saying, I can't tell you about this causal thing because that's not data that I have.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, sorry.

[Tim Wilson]

Oh, is that the guest not supposed to weigh in with more?

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah, we don't usually.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah, we might have to cut that out.

[Michael Helbling]

To it on specific. But it's okay. You're a guest. You didn't know. Oh, Michael, what's your last call?

[Tim Wilson]

I was gonna say Michael's like, it's weird. It's like, is it only you who. I was gonna jump in and save you on that, Julie. Like, it seems weird.

[Julie Hoyer]

Like you never have to do one going off the script.

[Michael Helbling]

That's okay.

[Julie Hoyer]

Michael, what about you? What's your.

[Michael Helbling]

Thanks. As a matter of fact, continuing the trend for former guests on the show whose articles I like, we like Cedric Chin, who's the Main writer for commoncog.com they have a case library. So a lot of companies, they kind of go into detail on certain things and they just wrote this really awesome case study on Brooks the Running Shoe company and goes through kind of like their transformation and they were really doing poorly for many years and then got a new CEO and kind of re reinvented the company, kind of flipped their distribution channels on their head and like the vision required to kind of do some very counterintuitive things to reshape that company into the success it is today was a really fascinating read. And I, I think about that only because a lot of times as analytics people were not necessarily in the position to sort of like make those kinds of decisions for our businesses, but like, to know that that stuff exists and to encourage that kind of thinking is something really good for all of us to engage in. So anyways, I'm a big fan and there's lots of other great cases there, but that one specifically was just a really excellent read. All right. I'm sure as you've been listening, you've been thinking to yourself, wow, this Tim guy is so good at analytics, one might even say quintessential. How do I reach out to him and find out more or communicate with him in some way? Well, we'd love to hear from you here at the Analytics Power hour and you can reach out to us. The Measure Slack group is a great place for that. I think the TLC was mentioned and I think we're all there too, also on LinkedIn and we also have a YouTube channel, so you can check us out there as well. And so. Hey, Tim, Wow. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show. This has been a really great experience.

[Tim Wilson]

Yeah, it's been okay.

[Michael Helbling]

All right. Well, you know, I don't know who's. I don't know who's going to be in charge of sending you your speaker guest. So. Yeah. All right.

[Tim Wilson]

What.

[Michael Helbling]

Actually, as we wrap up, no show would be complete without a huge shout out to Josh Crowhurst, our producer, who does so much behind the scenes to make the show happen. Thank you, Josh, and thank you, Tim, once again for coming on the show. And of course, I think I speak for all my co hosts, Val, Mo, Julie, when I say, hey, no matter what those goals are or what those KPIs are or how you're setting up, remember, keep analyzing.

[Tim Wilson]

Thanks for listening. Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions, and questions. Questions on Twitter at analyticshour, on the web at analyticshour IO, our LinkedIn group, and the measuredchat Slack group. Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst. So smart guys wanted to fit in, so they made up a term called analytics. Analytics don't work. Do the analytics say, go for it, no matter who's going for it. So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say, go. Go for it.

[Michael Helbling]

It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've.

[Tim Wilson]

Ever heard for reasoning in competition.

[Michael Helbling]

All right, so let's just go.

[Tim Wilson]

A couple logistical things.

[Michael Helbling]

So, Tim, we do go through an editing process on the show, so we can stop and start. So whatever that. Whatever needs to happen, you know, if you get interrupted, whatever, you know, we can just.

[Tim Wilson]

I'm a lot more comfortable if I just keep going and just find my way back. Or don't.

[Michael Helbling]

That's just. Yeah.

[Tim Wilson]

End up somewhere.

[Julie Hoyer]

Rock flag and turds.

[Tim Wilson]

What the fuck was that?

[Mo Kiss]

Oh, wow, that's good.

[Tim Wilson]

Rock. What is Rock flag.

[Michael Helbling]

Rock flag. Yeah. All right, Tim, you're hammered it up too much.

[Mo Kiss]

At least he can commit to a bit, right?

[Michael Helbling]

Most guests just sit in stunned silence like, what the hell just happened? That's what they're thinking. They don't.

[Val Kroll]

No one's ever said it. Yeah, sorry.

[Michael Helbling]

Yeah.