My Top 3 Quotes of the Year 2023

"Live with Agile & Lean", "Right principle, Wrong context", and "Change is the Constant" are the top three quotes I learned this year, which have significantly impacted my thinking and execution in projects and also life.

Live with Agile & Lean

"The online research shows that implementating chatbot solution will drive 5x higher conversion rate than sales agent. I can't think of any reasons why it's not working, let's pray and check the data next week."

It's great and essential for growth practitioners to be hypothesis-driven, with assumptions, which are formulated based on solid evidence and a clear thinking process, to solve the problems. However, that's just one part of the formula - Lean, which allows us to have a longer-term planning process to ensure we've exciting initiatives to try on and stay on track toward our ultimate target.

However, it's also crucial to be Agile, as the success rate of an experiment / new initiative can be as low as 8-33%. The context is different in every business and situation, and there are often numerous small details that can lead to failure. Therefore, we should always be ready to be Agile, taking first principles to drill down and keep iterating until we reach our goals.

We should wear both Lean and Agile hats, bridging the strategy and execution to make every action count toward the final goals.

Right principle, Wrong context

"Google Search Ads is performing much better than Meta, let's triple down & sharp cut the Meta!"

In principle, we should for sure allocate more budget to the channels bringing us the best results, and continue expanding as long as they deliver a positive ROI. However, we're missing out on some context here.

Google Search Ads is an easily saturated bottom-funnel channel, especially for businesses with weak branding and product marketing. A cross-channel and full-funnel strategy helps drive long-term success, avoiding issues like "Single channel reliance" and "Crazy low conversion rate”.

Even when thinking out of the digital media, any result with low volume is not representative enough, as there will be constraints to address at a larger scale. For example, for a logistic business, a bell curve may appear if blindly growing the demand with the lack of supply and worsening service quality.

So, "Right principle, Wrong context."

Change is the Constant

"When are we able to build a perfect growth engine to drive revenue itself?"

The answer is NEVER. Giant businesses might have the money and resources to set up great infrastructure to help make better decisions and execute at a much faster speed. However, the market keeps changing, imagining how different the world is now pre and post-COVID, say no one can overlook the business opportunities in e-commerce and online learning just as they did before.

What businesses are looking at also keeps changing, for example, VC-backed startups were optimizing for growth itself, investing large amounts of money in user acquisition and subsidy strategy. However, with a worsening economy, all businesses are on the same page, instead of mentioning a lot about the fancy vision, they've to prove their profitability first. This fundamentally changes how we run a business, from the pricing game to the basis of how we can solve user problems.

The only constant in life is change. Rather than worrying about how changes will dictate how your life will go, we should learn how to embrace ambiguity and push those changes in the right direction.

Professional and Personal Growth

"A great growth practitioner should have their own strong belief while always embracing the ambiguity. Change is the only constant."

These quotes greatly remind me of how to be both a visionary and competent growth practitioner, and also how I grow myself personally in an ever-changing world. Hope you find this a great read, and see you again next week : )