Day: September 10, 2012

What to obsess over

What to obsess over:

The reason is that these numbers demand that you start tweaking. You can tweak a website or tweak an accounts payable policy and make numbers go up, which is great, but it’s not going to fundamentally change your business.

I’d have you obsess about things that are a lot more difficult to measure. Things like the level of joy or relief or gratitude your best customers feel. How much risk your team is willing to take with new product launches. How many people recommended you to a friend today…

What are you tracking? If you track concepts, your concepts are going to get better. If you track open rates or clickthrough, then your subject lines are going to get better. Up to you.

[Agreed. Now that measuring things is getting easier, deciding what to measure is important. In world where people espouse “measure everything” that firehouse quickly needs some arbitration.]

Source: Seth’s Blog

The only issue that matters

The only issue that matters:

The main thing to expect, in the short term — the next few dozen or hundreds of years — is rising sea levels, which will move coastlines far inland for much of the world, change ecosystems pretty much everywhere, and alter the way the whole food web works.

Here in the U.S., neither major political party has paid much attention to this. On the whole the Republicans are skeptical about it. The Democrats care about it, but don’t want to make a big issue of it. The White House has nice things to say, but has to reconcile present economic growth imperatives with the need to save the planet from ourselves in the long run.

I’m not going to tell you how to vote, or how I’m going to vote, because I don’t want this to be about that. What I’m talking about here is evolution, not election. That’s the issue. Can we evolve to be symbiotic with the rest of the species on Earth? Or will we remain a plague?

Politics is for seasons. Evolution is inevitable. One way or another.

[It is an unbelievable mess we’re making. As I kid I read Heinlein’s line that the meek will inherit the earth… because everyone will have left because of planetary depletion, overcrowding, etc. and found it cute. We’re a long way from being able to colonize another planet so this isn’t looking quite so amusing anymore. And of course, since this is exactly the kind of news no one is interested in hearing, no Party will discuss it. We’re such children.]

Source: Doc Searls Weblog