Old Habits Die Hard
by JohnSheridan
Copyright SocialMedia404.com
I put one of my motorcycles in storage for the winter, the other day. And part of that process is topping off the tank with fuel.
I’ve been riding for many years, and as any rider will tell you, when we go to the pumps, we always try to get as much gas in the tank as possible. Sometimes you may even see a rider fueling up while on the bike and leaning it from side to side, to try and fill any available air pockets in the tank. When you have a vehicle with a low capacity for fuel, you want as much as you can carry because you never know when you’ll see the next station. The fill up on this bike the other day, was $6.82. This is as much as I could get into it.
It was then that it struck me, how odd it is, I have a very different habit when I take a car in for gas. I usually purchase $20, $30, or $40 at a time. If I fill it, I round the purchase off to the nearest $5. Then, I look to see what volume of fuel I purchased, which is always a partial amount.
I began to wonder why I did this. I’m sure it is a habit I formed when I actually carried cash. I didn’t want to have change in my pocket, so I’d make sure the purchase amount matched the configuration of bills in my wallet. I still have this habit, even though I’ve been paying by debit card for years, and could not care less if the purchase amount is rounded, or not. No other purchase I make is ever right on the dollar.
Why, then, don’t I look to the measurement that tells me how much gas I’ve pumped, rather than the value of the sale? The car’s fuel gauge does not tell me “there is $17.22 worth of fuel left in the tank” yet I still look at it that way. The fuel gauge in the car measures volume of gas, not value. It matches the volume of gas I’ve pumped. Apples to apples comparison.
I used to have a VW Golf GTI years ago that had an on board computer. The computer would tell me how far I could go on the remaining fuel, based upon my average consumption since it was last reset. Good information, but I didn’t purchase the fuel using a measurement of length either. But, even without the computer, knowing both the amount of fuel I have, and roughly what my vehicle’s consumption rate is, I can calculate remaining distance. Nowhere in that equation, is the primary indicator (money) that I used to determine the amount of fuel I would put on board.
That’s dumb.
We tend to rely on habitually formed benchmarks, sometimes because they remain true, but more often I think, it is because we are comfortable with them, and have therefore failed to continually question their relevance. Even when, a more relevevant indicator is right before our nose.
In my experience helping organizations design and implement performance management systems, the same symptoms of implementation barriers are appearing in Social Media, as they commonly do throughout the rest of the organization. This topic is not new, but I am seeing more discussion happening, and still little direction appearing. As evidenced by these interviews, Market Sentinal’s interview with David Armano, and Jason Falls’ interview with Katie Paine, we know we’re looking at the wrong things, but we’re not sure what the right things are. Yet.
However you determine what indicators are important, and slice or dice them into something meaningful, remember the importance of the word “key” when put next to the word “indicator”.
The next post in this series will explain our approach to Social Media Measurement, which is woven into the fabric of our OASIS Best Practices methodology. We strive for a simplified view of measurement data available, so the understanding is clear.
Until then, I hope you look at the gas pump a little differently next time.
