Making Inertia Expensive

A survey published by Harvard Business School in 2014 found that shoppers using a bag they brought from home spend more on junk food. I believe that all good and genuine insight should be like this: bafflingly surprising. They should trigger animated discussions and generate ideas about how the company could do to leverage this and think about broader applications to adjacent customer targets.

Last weekend, I attended a local music festival in Cardiff called Tafwyl (pronounced Tavoil; easier than you thought, right?). I noticed a small wind speed meter in the top left corner of the main stage. I immediately thought about the data collected and imagined how the organisers were committed to evacuating the scene if the wind speed was too high. The device was probably a requirement of their insurance policy. Instead of waiting for someone to say: "Hey, chief! The wind speed meter says it's at 30 mph. Shall we order The Famous Samanthas off the stage?" leaving the chief unsure. If, instead, they have a prior commitment to shut down the stage at 30 mph, they must execute the safety plan. Is that plan data-informed? You're goddamned right!

Having a commitment plan for action upfront has advantages. It prevents any goalposts from shifting further down the line. If nothing prevents you from defining how success should look, you will find that its definition will tend to match the delivered outcome. It's called the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. Shoot first, and paint the target after. I suspect that many stakeholders and clients lament the Digital Analysts' lack of business acumen as a thinly veiled strategy to wring control of who will grade their work. An initial steer and committing upfront eliminates the allure of cherry-picking the data that will make them look good no matter what.

People make decisions at an emotional level, but are judged by how rational their decisions appear. Dressing up them with facts and data is easier than letting them overrule gut-feel, and most get away with it

We should commit upfront to taking action when one or a few KPIs cross a threshold and what that action will overrule our default decision-making. The default is decisions based on emotions, but we judge and are judged on how rational our decisions appear to be. Although evolution has given us higher cognitive powers, such as thought and conscience, overruling our default decision-making process goes against the grain. It takes iron willpower to go with data, even when it goes against your gut feel. It's easier to collect facts and data a posteriori and disguise our emotional decisions into rational ones. I suspect that most get away with the latter.

An upfront commitment to change ensures that all decisions will be data-informed. But how does this apply to Digital Analytics? The discussion should start with a stakeholder or client stating what matters to the business. The analyst won't know what changes to recommend until after they analysed the data. Sometimes, there's no historical data either. The Digital Analytics implementation specialist must add code to collect new data. It will take time until sufficient data is available to avoid issues such as sampling bias.

Let's jump back into the stakeholders' and clients' shoes. They must commit upfront to taking an undefined set of actions. They can't cherry-pick the data that will make them look good, don't know much credit they can claim, and how much of the blame if the changes have negative consequences. Instead of a KPI threshold, there is a target value and a deadline. It's harder to commit to something like this.

Let's use the example of trying to lose weight. You set yourself the goal of losing 50 pounds, about 25 kg, in 12 months or less. You don't know what you must change in your diet and lifestyle, but it must stop or start happening. Someone else will make recommendations. That's very different to the wind speed threshold rule I mentioned above but similar to how we aim to see change happen in Digital Analytics. This is why we can see a lot of inertia from the stakeholders and clients.

Inertia never costs nothing. Let's make it cost more than taking action

The trouble with inertia is the perception that inertia costs nothing. Taking action costs more and comes with risks. We must operate within a framework that makes inertia more expensive than taking action. We can already leverage the fact that nobody has a monopoly on intelligence. Who would look with a lot of egg on their faces if the competition made the same changes first and stole the money you chose to leave on the table? It's called loss aversion bias and is twice more effective than touting a potential increase in sales.

You can add a clause in the upfront commitment stating that, although they are free to veto the Digital Analyst's recommendations, all parties agree to treat them as if the changes happened and resulted in success. It may seem outrageous to the clients and stakeholders, but they can make a business case against the recommendations and justify their veto. In a nutshell, we should switch from an opt-in buy-in model to an opt-out one where inaction is the more costly action. The same thing happened with organ donations, and the donations increased after making them work on an opt-out model.

Is your company after using data for impact or theatre?

Yes, I expect some Digital Agencies to believe they can gain market share by refusing to operate with an opt-out clause, muttering thank yous under their breath to the others who do. But which type of agency will have more impact and build a stronger reputation for results over time? Perhaps, as a Digital Agency, the first question to ask the clients and stakeholders is whether they are after impact or theatre. Nobody is judging; the latter will be cheaper, but one day, at the worst possible time, everybody will realise that the emperor has no clothes.

In the meantime, actionable insight should be bafflingly surprising and expensive to leave on the table without action. The customers bringing their bags feel like they deserve a reward for protecting the environment by limiting the number of plastic bags in their garbage. Instead of waiting for someone else to give them that reward, they feel they can reward themselves. Let's admit it: it's hard to resist when walking around feeling like you deserve a reward.

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