The Analytics Practice
Seth Godin’s brand new book, The Practice, is awesome. It’s the most pragmatic guide I’ve read about how to make and ship creative work. He shows us how to “chop wood” every day and ship work. Seth’s Blog is a living manifestation of his Practice—he’s posted every day for over ten years. Each post is another swing.
Musician Peter Gabriel is a fan too, and agrees:
The Practice explains that what looks like a barrier is often a catalyst in disguise. Magic may not come from what we can see on the stage but from behind it, where the wood chopping happens.”
- Peter Gabriel
Does that mean he ships junk? No way. As he explained on Chase Jarvis’s podcast, many of his 7,000+ posts might have been just average, but each mattered. The great ones often surprised him. The point is to ship your work and learn. The wood chopping adds up: Godin’s published 19 best-selling books.
Much has already been written about The Process even though it shipped last week. My favorite is this beautiful trailer for the book, narrated by Godin and directed by Fernando Lazzari.
The Practice doesn’t just work for writers, artists, and musicians; nerds can be creative too. I took two swings this morning. You’re reading one, this blog post. My other swing was to use this small analytics application, shown below. At work, I’m responsible for hundreds of people. Although I do tons of Zoom meetings and do my best to listen, I tend to hear the squeaky wheels the most.
So I built this data visualization with Spotfire. It shows the work anniversaries of everyone on my team. It took just 5 minutes to make. Each week, I choose someone I haven’t heard from in a while and check-in: I ask how they’re doing, what I can do better, and I thank them for what they’ve done.
The tech community glorifies complex, shape-shifting analytics. This connect-with-my-team analytics app won’t win any awards, and that’s ok. It’s just one swing in the quest to be a better manager. That’s the artistic practice of management that Godin reminds us to ship each day.
