Strands of Genius: SuperTouchpoints, Tokyo Observations, $100tn Disruption
Plus: metric madness!
Strands of Genius is a newsletter from the co-founders of Genius Steals, Faris & Rosie Yakob. They are award-winning strategists, facilitators, creative directors, writers and public speakers who get excited about working with smart people on interesting challenges. You should probably go ahead and hit reply so we can collaborate on something together :)
:: THE UPDATE ::
OH HAI. It’s March. How we perceive time is highly variable based on a few factors. It seems to speed up as we age and there are various theories as to why. As a percentage of your total life, each unit of time gets smaller the older you get. However, more important is usually how much novelty you experience. If things are always the same your brain tends to ignore them into the background until something new happens so the model has to change - learning.
Time flies when you are having fun, they say, because you are immersed in a moment and not thinking about time. This year there seems to be both an insane amount of insane things happening everyday and not much going on, at the same time, at different levels of reality. It’s disorienting. People feel stuck, looking for work is taking people ever longer, social and geographic mobility has radically declined. People no longer move and mix as they used to, which has had wide ranging effects. But also, phew hasn’t the year flown by and are we having fun yet?
OH BTW - since we no longer send the Friday email, we’re curious: do y’all miss the reports or nah? If so, we’ll include the good ones in regular editions and that. If not, no worries.
:: A HOT TAKE ON METRICS MADNESS ::
In marketing, data is/are everywhere—clicks, impressions, conversions, sentiment scores, and more. Metrics are our tools for making sense of success, but let’s be honest: it’s madness out there. We’re drowning in dashboards and overwhelmed by analytics. That's why this month's theme is Metrics Madness. (See what we did there?! We're not even sports people, but sports go sports!) The question isn’t whether we should measure—it’s what to measure and why.
Metrics are supposed to guide us, but too often, they become a trap. Vanity metrics give us false confidence. Over-analysis paralyzes us. And chasing the wrong numbers can lead us to forget what really matters. Quantitative myopia can blind us to what is really happening.
But when metrics are wielded wisely, they’re powerful. They uncover opportunities, sharpen strategies, and justify bold moves. The key is knowing which numbers tell the real story and which ones are just noise. Too few and you can be fooled into missing confounding variables, too many and they become impossible to use.
What do you think are the metrics that really matter?
Hedge-fund founder and wannabe management/philosophy guru Ray Dallio has one of his Principles about metrics:
This is the kind of advice we seem to see everywhere, because everything depends (of course.) But we end up with general principles like make good stuff that people like, do x better, make y better, be funny, measure better, etc, etc, always in beta, lol.
To be fair to Ray, his commentary is the typical smart (but possibly sociopathic) Silicon Valley/investment banker stuff:
In constructing your metrics, imagine the most important questions you need answered in order to know how things are going and imagine what numbers will give you the answers to them. Don't look at the numbers that you have and try to adapt them to your purposes, because you won't get what you need. Instead start with the most important questions and imagine the metrics that will answer them.
So, that’s smart.
Remember that any single metric can mislead; you need enough evidence to establish patterns. And of course the information that goes into the metrics must be assessed for accuracy.
OK…
A reluctance to be critical can be detected by looking at the average grade each grader gives; those giving higher average grades might be easy graders and vice versa. Similarly helpful are "forced rankings," in which people must rank co-worker performance from best to worst.
Oh, erm…. that is GROSS. We don’t like the forced rankings amongst co-workers. Sometimes metrics can be valuable but we also have to consider what it will take for us to get them.
Faris is delighted to announce he completed the Magic Numbers Data Works course and has been thinking a lot about data and such for a while, for clients and broadly. There are so many kinds of data, of different levels of robustness. Perhaps the most important thing the course teaches, beyond how to make killer charts than drive decisions, is that there are no easy answers in the data. It’s messy and you need well considered questions that will help the business move forward to investigate.
The course is great for everyone and Dr Kite will be guest curating strands with a special offer for you all if you are interested in completing the course as well… Stay tuned :)
:: THE LINKS ::
SUPERTOUCHPOINTS
New research report from JICMAIL, based in IPA Touchpoints, is about Supertouchpoint planning. It’s typically smart stuff, with good research, and commentary from Faris as well as Rory, Grace and Shotton. [JICMAIL]
OBSERVATIONS FROM TOKYO
We loved our time in Japan and especially Tokyo, and this piece from a immigrant resident captures some of the beauty and general flow of the quiet megacity, dense but rarely crowded.
A blanket taboo bans any behavior that might create any inconvenience to people around you, let alone—heaven forbid—open conflict. Kids get this ethos drilled into them intensively in school. The result is what you’d expect. There are no surprises. Everything and everyone is on time.
(Persuasion)
THE $100 TRILLION DISRUPTION: THE UNFORESEEN ECONOMIC EARTHQUAKE
“While Silicon Valley obsesses over AI, a weight-loss drug is quietly becoming the biggest economic disruptor since the internet. Here's why your job, investments, and future depend on understanding it,” writes Todd Gagne. He goes on to outline how so much of consumer spending (aka our economy) is built on impulses. And GLP-1 drugs are the first of their kind: they regulate impulse control. Analysts have predicted that 30% of American adults will be on a GLP-1 type of drug in the next 5 years. And yeah, there are going to be some great benefits — from weight loss to healthcare savings and maybe even reduced budgets for individuals for food and alcohol. But what does it mean for our economy and culture at large?! And what about the advertising industry, which relies on emotional triggers? What happens when those stop working?! (Wildfire Labs Substack)
:: MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE ::
Faris did this new talk at the ARF last year on measuring creativity and the difference between tests and copy research….
This week, we’re writing to you from Chattanooga, TN. We’re especially thankful for:
our new bird feeder (aka a succulent planter that is no longer home to the succulent due to re-potting) which has attracted so many Blue Jays and also several wood peckers, the Dusty Slay comedy show over the weekend, getting to hang with Erin & Eric, backyard hangs with friends, getting friends playing with clay, listening to Ringo and Summer and Faris on the banjo and violin and guitar, sun and working out with neighbours.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know. You can hit reply to this email if you’ve got anything to say, and we’ll endeavor to get back to you promptly!
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)
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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. We have a distributed team ourselves, an accounting team is based in Tennessee where our company is registered, our admin extraordinaire is based in Playa del Carmen, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
I like the reports, too! I always open and look forward to seeing them.
I like the reports. Linking to the best would be appreciated