Business By Numbers

Today I am drawing a comparison between the ‘art’ of painting by numbers and the ‘art’ of running a business by numbers.What do the numbers that drive your business tell you?  Which channel is bringing in most traffic, which promotion has resulted in most sales, how much the brand uplift, or God forbid, downturn has been as a result of the latest campaign.  As a mechanistic view of levers and pulleys the numbers can tell you which lever to press to uplift sales, share, brand or whatever in the next measurement period.  This is worthwhile and yet it worries me because it’s all too simple, and too near-sighted.

And I think that is both the appeal and the trap.  It makes things too easy and really the world ain’t like that.  We human beings are as complicated as it gets.  And that’s all businesses are in the end, a bunch of people selling something to another bunch of people.  To embrace the richness and complexity of what it means to be human, to deeply understand and to bring that understanding to a unique expression of what you can give the world through your business is to produce a masterpiece.

Do we want to produce a painting by numbers or a work of art?