Sex & "Tags" & Rock n' Roll

Many companies are starting to obsess over something called "Digital Transformation", and very few have stopped to think about building a plan to "take care of" digital talent. And I'm not just talking about "retaining" digital talent, I'm talking about taking care of it and protecting it -take care of it. This post is a reflection on what I've learned from my obsession with measuring and improving my work in digital marketing.
Recently, the magazine Digital Business News, which I'm part of by invitation of the Advisory Board, asked me what my biggest learnings in the digital business had been in 2014 and the trends or challenges I foresaw for 2015. I'll leave the second question aside and focus on the learnings. My answer was quite simple:"The greatest of learnings is calm. In an activity where everything is being measured 24x7, having the composure to know what to look at and when to look at it is, in my view, the key for any digital marketing professional. Our activity never rests, and I believe it's up to me to know when to rest." I don't know if they'll publish it exactly like that, and that was my answer.
Over the last few years I've had the luck and the intuition to focus on 2 areas of knowledge that seemingly have little connection: Personal Transformation and the Digital Business. One of the learnings when it comes to personal transformation has to do with personal growth: detachment and the capacity for focus as paths to advance my purpose as a human being. As for the digital side, I've learned a passion for data, an orientation toward measurement and digital analytics as a continuous lever for learning and improving results (not as a capacity to report on what's been done, that's a topic for another post). If I put both areas of learning together, seemingly antagonistic as they are, I'd arrive at an answer similar to the one I pointed to above. To sum it up in one simple sentence. Digital professionals face a reality based on the use of tools and the traceability of each and every asset they create. Creativity taken to a new stage: Big Brother -Digital Data- is watching you! ... And now what's your choice, knowing that you could improve everything, at every moment?
From the digital side, the word I take away is**"tag". The possibility of tagging each and every one of your interactions, your digital assets -sites, blogs, apps, responses on Social Media, etc.- can take you to a new space in your digital strategy. The connection of data and the creation of data layers that improve a user's experience, even to the point of predicting behaviors and automatically improving your assets, is no longer science fiction. It's a reality. Practices like A/B Testing combined with navigation segments based on past behaviors and programmatic buying, to name a few, allow us today to move toward a new way of building relationships based on the exploration and exploitation of data, of analytics, of "Tags". And if you really do like the digital world, curiosity becomes a strong catalyst for continuing to test, research and learn. This dynamic generates such addiction that we could easilyswap "Tags" for "Drugs"**.And where's the limit? The limit is in your detachment. And this is where I connect with the personal part.
From the personal-growth side the one concept I take away is "focus". In my own case, giving up checking the data -traffic, sources, channels, conversions, attribution, daily data, hourly data, real-time traffic- of my work, is and has been an exercise in detox. For me, putting focus into practice has translated into an exercise in detachment: "I could be improving this blog right now, or that post, or this site, and I decide that I have another priority at this moment". And that doesn't mean I'm doing my job badly. And it doesn't mean my performance is poor. I simply decide to prioritize other aspects of my life. It's not easy for a perfectionist to give up continuous improvement. It's simply a matter of putting things in order, each thing in its place. And admitting that the only certain thing is that -given the same time zone- a day has 24 hours. I can carry out a productivity exercise -and God knows I have- and a moment comes when it's about choosing. I choose to be with my family or I choose to keep checking data and proposing areas of improvement. I choose a moment to do "nothing" or I decide to check this dashboard or that analytics suite. Focusing is being present at every moment in what I consider a priority. Put more simply, if that's even possible, being present.
By way of summary, here are 7 "takeaways":

1. Focus, focus and focus: In the offline world there's a saying about success in business:"There are 3 keys to success in a physical business: location, location and location." The same applies to the digital business, and now "location" gives way to "metrics": Metrics, metrics and metrics. And to have metrics, you need tags. Again, the power of "Tags". Persevering in tagging is only the beginning. And without this beginning, there's no continuity. Much less an ending.
2. Stand back, then look up close: Measuring everything means accumulating more and more dashboards on every digital asset and ongoing action. Once the information is laid out, I try to stay at a distance and only look closely when the overall view shows cracks. This connects with the previous point. You need dashboards, and you only need to look at them when the dashboard shows an alert. Extracting the key indicators and gathering them into a dashboard is the best action for avoiding confusion from data overload.
3. Trust: "In Tools We Trust". Trust, there's always some tool. When you want to monitor something or improve one of the digital levers, you need tools. If you're missing one, keep in mind someone has surely already spotted that need. The digital world has the advantage of connecting needs and opportunities in real time and globally.
4. Action, then perfection: If it takes time, it's a waste of time. The digital world is an iterative process. There's a well-known phrase that turns out to be a mantra in Silicon Valley: "Fail Fast, Fail Often". What matters isn't the failure, it's the ability to learn. It doesn't matter if it isn't perfect, what matters is going live. There will be time to optimize later. And perfect for whom? For the user or for you?
5. Do you create or report?: Measuring takes time, and analyzing what's measured does too. It's possible to have everything measured and do nothing with the data. If the data only serves to report and doesn't create new opportunities, we're throwing away the richest part of the data. A coach friend of mine once explained to me the difference between creating and reporting, and how the people who make a difference are more oriented toward creating than reporting. Do the same with data. And with your inbox, with your meetings, with your calendar; And with your life.
6. Learning is not an action. It's an attitude: Most of the changes and improvements I've implemented in my work are the product of listening. Curiosity leads me to read more than 2 hours a day of posts, tweets, articles, ... Every moment of the day is an opportunity to listen. It's not about planning learning, learning has no plans. It simply happens, if you have the right attitude to listen to it.
7. If you have passion, you already have more than half the work done: What makes the difference between a high-performing team and a team with exceptional, unrepeatable results? It's not the method, that's a necessary but not sufficient condition. What sets them apart is passion. Passion for continuing to learn, courage to find a way to improve on the mistake, curiosity to find something new, intuition to keep searching, restlessness to resolve the dilemma, dissatisfaction with today's result. I prefer to call it passion, and many emotions fit inside it. If you've been there, you know what I mean.

And now read the headings of the "takeaways" and tell me that the digital world and personal transformation aren't connected. Rather than "takeaways" I'd call them "take Always".

This post was originally published in http://bernardocrespovelasco.blogspot.com.es/

Bernardo Crespo is Digital Transformation Leader at DIVISADERO and a certified Ontological Coach through Newfield Network in Bogotá (Colombia). Degree in Business Administration from UCLM and final year of a BA Honours in Management and Economics, University of St Andrews. Executive Master's in Relationship Marketing, CRM and E-Commerce from ICEMD, and lecturer at various business schools in Spain. He worked as digital marketing director at BBVA España.

I'm currently dedicated to helping companies make their way through Digital Transformation at DIVISADERO.

I have discovered, and continue to discover, the beauty of play applied outside of play #gamification