#107 Analytics: from cost to profit centre (with Steen Rasmussen @ IIH Nordic)

[00:00:00] Dan: Welcome to The Measure Pod with me, Daniel Perry Reed. I’m a Principal Analytics Consultant at Measurelab. And of course, as always with Bhavik Patel, Director of Experimentation and Analytics at LeanConvert. We are just off the back of recording episode 107. We recorded this on the 10th of September, 2024.

[00:00:34] Dan: Bhav, we just had Steen back on the podcast. Now, this is your first time with Steen. He’s been on before a couple of years ago now. I’ll link to that in the show notes for anyone that wants to go back in the archives and listen to that one. But I think this was a good one. We, we challenged, we discussed, we conversed, we went through a lot of stuff. How do you feel coming off the back of that? 

[00:00:51] Bhav: Really good. I feel really bad in some ways though, because Steen is like my cuddly teddy bear guy that I like to hug. Whenever I see him, I give Steen a massive hug. So it was really hard to be on the playing the bad cop part of the podcast as I usually do.

[00:01:04] Bhav: But what I really respect about Steen is the fact that he has, really good views on the world and some of them are largely aligned but I think he’s framed them in his own way. It’s clear he’s arrived at a lot of his thinking through experience and his own sort of thinking time and and you know like however he’s got to but he’s got there on his own and I really like that because It speaks to me.

[00:01:28] Bhav: I feel like when I look back on my thoughts and how I’ve arrived here, it wasn’t, a lot of my thinking hasn’t been through just reading other people’s work, but it’s been about sitting there thinking about problems and thinking about why is this like this? Why is this like this? Should it be a profit centre or should it be a cost centre?

[00:01:44] Bhav: Actually, is it somewhere in between? And I think Steve has done a lot of that. And it was really interesting to go and talk, go head to head with him actually, for once on a very intellectual level. Whereas usually I just run up to him and give him a big hug. So it’s kind of nice to, to, to, to. Talk to him, you know, as an analytical equal instead of just like a big cuddly teddy bear. Sorry, Steen, if you’re listening. 

[00:02:03] Dan: No, no, for sure, I completely get what you mean. And and Steen I will see you next week at Measure Camp, and maybe I’ll take a leaf out of Bhav’s book and we’ll get into hugging terms, who knows? Well, actually on that, I normally ask at this point, Bhav, like, what’s going on in the world of Bhav?

[00:02:16] Dan: What do you want to plug and anything? But. I’m going to take over both of our slots on this episode because if you happen to be listening to this within the week that we released this episode we are going to be at MeasureCamp London, which is on Saturday, the 21st of September. So if you’ve got tickets, if you happen to listen to this show, and if that Venn diagram, if there’s any of you overlapping that please come find me and Bhav.

[00:02:36] Dan: We’re going to be doing a live podcast episode from Measure Camp London. And so come in, ask us questions, have a natter, or just come in and listen to us. And yeah, I think it would be good fun. We’ve never done a live recording before. We also don’t know if anyone’s listening, let alone turning up for it.

[00:02:51] Dan: So hopefully we’re going to have a really good discussion. And yeah, we’ll see you at measure camp on Saturday. We’ll be releasing that episode a couple of weeks later that will get in the feed somehow, somewhere. And if it doesn’t, don’t hold us to it because who knows what it will happen when we’re with but just as a one last opportunity, is there anything that you wanted to plug or talk about before we let people listen to the actual episode while they’re here?

[00:03:11] Bhav: No, I’m going to just let you guys crack on and listen to the episode. It’s a good one. I hope you enjoy it. 

[00:03:16] Dan: Well, thank you, Steen. If you are listening, thank you to everyone for listening through this intro. Enjoy the show. And for those that are coming, I’ll see you next week at Magic Camp. Enjoy.

[00:03:27] Dan: Steen, first of all, welcome back to the podcast. Believe it or not for those that have been listening for a long time, the first and only time you’ve been on the podcast Steen was back in November, 2021. So at the time of recording, that’s three years ago. Three, almost three years ago. So for those that don’t know who you are, Steen Steen Rasmussen please introduce yourself.

[00:03:44] Dan: Who are you? Where are you? What do you do? And where how have you got to a point of talking to me and Bhav about analytics on this podcast? 

[00:03:51] Steen: Well, I think the first thing is obvious. I’m a nerd and I’ve been a nerd for a long time. So I co founded the agency IH back in 2005 and was actually with first data driven agency in, in, in the Nordics, focusing on analytics and actually diving into data.

[00:04:07] Steen: But where I kind of stand out and why I’m sitting here today and that has been my path to fame has been kind of a focus on commercial analytics instead of just going in and looking at the numbers than saying, okay, all this gathering of data is fine, but if we don’t use it for anything, then it’s not really that interesting.

[00:04:24] Steen: Then it’s just a cost. And having this approach saying, when does analytics actually become value comparing to being cost is, is the thing that I’ve been focusing on. So, so, so that’s kind of my, well, very brief life story, right? Starting the agency doing that. And this day, I guess my, I have the fancy title of being director of data innovation. So, so yeah, Ooh, I know you’re. Yeah, I think it’s very close to you, Daniel. What’s your title? 

[00:04:52] Dan: Oh, I, I did have the analytics innovation lead for a little while and then I’m trying out a different title now. So I go through titles a little bit. I like the idea of being head of biscuits or, or coffee maker. And then the analytics is on the side, but I don’t know, job titles, job, schod titles, right? 

[00:05:07] Bhav: I feel like we’re heading into a, my title is bigger than your title. 

[00:05:11] Dan: No, not at all. Biscuits are way, they, they supersede any other job title. 

[00:05:15] Steen: Yeah. Okay. So, who can compete with biscuits, right? No, but so, so, so, but the data innovation part is really this day. It’s about the frustration of so much data being gathered that is not being used for anything. So it’s still being after all these days, we wake up screaming with a sense of deja vu that the data are still in silos. The state is still not being used for anything. And the state is still a cost and nobody knows how to analyse it.

[00:05:42] Steen: And if we hire 10 analysts and give them the same data set to analyse, then they come out with 10 different recommendations because we don’t have a process to actually do it. So that was the dark side of it. That’s kind of what I’m trying to change now saying, can we, with data innovation, actually.

[00:05:59] Steen: Provide some value out of this data. So actually pushing this and having a, an agenda of commercial analytics. So this is what I do now. I’m a travelling trickster. I go around the world trying to sell this message. Some people will call it an evangelist. Preacher or I don’t know, snake, old charms man, you decide but, but it’s kind of the, the, the message I’m sharing with the masses these days.

[00:06:24] Dan: So Steen, you have to tell us then before we go into any more conversation, how do you turn analytics from a cost centre to a profit centre? What is the answer when you go around selling your wares? What is the magic answer? 

[00:06:34] Steen: So the magic answer is, is analytics. Actually part of what we, what I gave you as foreplay for this session is in relation to seeing, reversing the thinking around analytics.

[00:06:45] Steen: So going from, it’s not about data gathering, but it’s about decision enabling. So going and talking to people first and saying, at the end of the day, we have some analytics end users. that have a need to make decisions. And that’s why we’re gathering all this data to make better decisions. But the hypothesis for years has been saying that if we gather all the data, we can make all the decisions.

[00:07:08] Steen: And the problem is that that doesn’t happen because when we gather all the data, then it’s not pointed in any direction. And the main assignment for most analysts becomes. Yeah. Janitoring, going around fixing broken data everywhere and just maintenance, right? So we never come to the point where we actually support the decisions.

[00:07:27] Steen: So, so, when we talk about it, it’s saying, talk it to fewer people, focus on what their data needs is, what data they need to make the decisions that they need to make, and then gather less data and focus there. So it’s pretty easy, easy, easy, right? 

[00:07:43] Bhav: I think it sounds nice, like in principle, but I think it’s still very abstract as a concept, right? So I was wondering if you could give an example of that, Steen, just for anyone who’s listening who’s, who’s still potentially confused to really just bring this concept of commercial analytics to life. 

[00:07:59] Steen: Absolutely. So, so in, so, so one of the classic things is we have we, we always try to teach other people in the organisation to use analytics and Maybe we don’t need to do that.

[00:08:09] Steen: So for instance, you have somebody who is responsible for SAO and yeah, so let’s go with SAO. And that person is making specific initiatives and focusing on specific landing pages. And at the end of the day, they need to know their decision is, should I crank up my activity around these keywords?

[00:08:27] Steen: Should I keep them steady or should I decrease the activity here? So that’s the decision they have to make. And that’s kind of the only input they need from analytics saying, so the traffic coming in here, should you crank it up? Should you maintain it or should you turn it down? And it could even be saying that the same decision can go to the paid media department saying, well, this is actually so interesting, so we need to pay more to get more in here.

[00:08:54] Steen: Does that make sense? So it’s actually decomplicating a lot of the processes to some very simple questions. So, so it’s, it’s about asking better questions. 

[00:09:05] Dan: Cue, cue, sorry, cue Bhav asking the question I know he’s about to ask, because I said exactly the same thing a couple of episodes ago, Steen, and Bhav said, 

[00:09:14] Bhav: I said, how do you define better questions? Like, what is the meaning of better questions? 

[00:09:19] Steen: Why did anybody hire you? They hired us as analysts because we’re here to make the business better. So better questions focused on making the business better. 

[00:09:32] Bhav: So, I’m going to keep challenging his team. Like this is, this is my favourite part. So when we say like asking better questions, how do you know, how does one know if they’ve asked better questions?

[00:09:45] Steen: They know every day they ask better questions if they can see a direct outcome between the objective of the companies and the data that we have gathered or the end questions that we can answer. So, so, so, one of my favourite examples is when somebody comes to you saying cool bath. I would like the customer journey for all the people coming in from this from how people buy on our website and you’ll say Most people say, well, I’m sorry, dude, I don’t have the data, but that’s actually not the right answer, right?

[00:10:18] Steen: The, the, the, the, the, the right question in that extent is saying, but I can set it off. It is important for the business, right? So if it’s more important for the business, it all ties back to if what, if what you want is more important for the business than what I, that I’m, what I’m currently doing.

[00:10:37] Steen: This is where I get commercials, right? Yeah, yeah, no, I get you. We’re all an investment. So when people hire us, it’s because they want to milk us for money or value. 

[00:10:46] Dan: But let’s say, let’s say you’ve got 10, 10 analysts working within a team. And one of them is a very junior analyst and they’re, they’re remits is around a specific campaign they’re running on on paid search. And that is a very inconsequential decision, but for them and for their remit for their world it’s a big decision and it makes a big impact on what they were hired to do. So what, what I’m, I then would question is saying that not everyone will be able to have a tangible impact on a business on the business level, but actually like, is that not?

[00:11:15] Dan: proportional to your scale or your scope. So if you’re the solo analyst, a big company, they’re spending millions of dollars a year on marketing, then for sure, it’s going to be business critical. But if you’re a team of a hundred analysts where they’re spending billions, but your role is to focus on this bit over here, what’s to say that you’re not doing a good job and making a difference and asking good questions, but your context you’ve given them is working within the boundaries of. The confines you’ve set up for them. Does that make sense? Is that still good? 

[00:11:43] Steen: It’s still good because it’s still the job you would have would still be tied into the bigger purpose of the company, right? So, so we, we don’t hire people for fun. I was really, I was delighted for years. There was a company in Denmark. They said they hired an analyst and his job description told us something we don’t know. And it sounds super sexy, but the value you provide by telling people something they don’t know based on the entire data set of analytics, the return on that can, might be really interesting, but it also might be a big pile of poop.

[00:12:21] Bhav: So I, I’ve been thinking about it, I don’t know if it’s just. Really coincidental or if it’s serendipitous, but I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about this literally this week Just over the last weekend. There’s a few things I want to touch on. So first of all, Steen, I agree with you. We need to stop framing analytics as cost centres But where I would disagree is that we’re never going to get them to be profit centres Right.

[00:12:46] Bhav: And I actually wrote about this a while ago. And the reason, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a middle ground. And actually what I, the way that I wrote my blog post or LinkedIn post, I can’t remember, I’ll try and dig it out. Is analytics not a cost centre, nor is it a profit centre, but it’s a profit enablement centre.

[00:13:02] Bhav: So what we’re doing is we’re enabling other teams to make profit or improve customer experience or whatever the, the thing you’re enabling is. And that then leads itself to what Dan was talking about, that You know, you’ve got a team of 100 analysts, they’re not all going to be working towards profit or revenue, but they’re going to be working towards some type of enablement, whether it’s improved customer experience, improved customer service, improved marketing spend, improved whatever it might be.

[00:13:25] Bhav: So I do agree with you, but I would say I disagree on the profit thing. I don’t think any team in the world will ever see analytics as a profit centre. 

[00:13:32] Steen: So I will push back on two accounts saying, so, when it comes to the enablement, it’s really back to my thing in relation to saying. We enable people to make better decisions in their area, right?

[00:13:45] Steen: So, so, so that linearity is there. It’s actually the same thing. So whether you’re sitting in a small area, you’re enabling other people to make the right decisions faster. And that’s kind of the promise of analytics back in the day, saying that we give you data so you can make qualified decisions faster.

[00:14:02] Steen: So, so, so the interesting thing when it comes to moving from a cost centre to a profit centre. A wonderful presentation from, from my end is Jan Vaal, who has the awesome title queen of crow. She was the head of conversion rate optimization for, for co op in Sweden, and she went in and there the first person she talked to in the organisation in relation to setting up targets and the measurement of value for conversion optimization.

[00:14:30] Steen: So together with the CFO, she went in and she helped him. They defined how you measure the success of cro. So, so, and, and, and by having him in the conversation from the beginning, he was validating the approach. And then it came out that one of the most important drivers of growth for co op in Sweden was conversion rate optimisation.

[00:14:56] Bhav: But conversion optimization isn’t analytics. So Through conversion optimization, what you are doing is you’re testing, you’re effectively a marketing team or a trading team or a product team. And you, you know, whether you’re, whatever your job title is, but I’m talking about pure, just from a pure analytics perspective, it’s, it’s hard to measure direct ROI, but what you can do is, and the way I used to do is I used to tell my team to hang their hats on the success.

[00:15:22] Bhav: Or failures of their stakeholders. So I believe in highly integrated teams as opposed to like centralised teams. And if your team succeeds, then you succeed. So it becomes less like, how do I make my work more valuable and actually become more unified. To be fair, we’re probably just arguing semantics here, but I just wanted to be a little bit spicy for you because I liked being spicy.

[00:15:44] Dan: Is this, is this not, is this not like There’s something about this which feels true. And I think a lot of people can relate, including myself, to this idea that you’re a profit enablement centre and actually the people that can turn into profit are other teams, other people, other accountabilities in the business and the organisation, whether it’s from my case marketing, whether it’s products, CROs, whatever.

[00:16:03] Dan: There’s a situation and Bhav last. You ran a session around how do we measure the profitability of analytics within an organisation and something that stuck with me ever since then is someone in the audience or someone in your, in your group which I was part of too. I can’t remember exactly what company they’re from, but they ran an analytics team within this.

[00:16:24] Dan: relatively well known brand. And they made redundancies and just scrapped the whole analytics team because essentially there was an ROI against it. So that might not be, and I don’t know any context more than that story. But what, what we’re saying there is, is that a short site of the analytics team for not pushing themselves up and making them relatable?

[00:16:44] Dan: Or is that maybe a short side of the rest of the business, not Actioning the stuff from the analytics team, because it feels slightly like hard to be in a position to say your success is at the mercy of someone else doing something when actually humans doing stuff is one of the hardest things to get people to do.

[00:16:59] Bhav: I’ll let Steen answer that one. He’s our guest. I’m not in the hot seat today. 

[00:17:06] Steen: So, since I wasn’t at your session, I will still try to answer it. Right. But, as I see it one of the things, right. So I have the huge pleasure of teaching at the IHM business school in, in Malmö that has unlike a lot of other places actually has classes that degrees that is be where you become a digital analyst.

[00:17:25] Steen: That is the, the, the outcome of their So there’s like every year in Sweden, they qualify 150 digital analysts that gets a fairly similar education. And one of the things that I try to talk to them about is, is going back in, in relation to what we talked about earlier and saying, okay, so can you somehow feel that you have provided more value to the organisation when you leave than, than your salary?

[00:17:52] Steen: Have you, have you actually done a, done a difference because otherwise you get bogged down with maintenance, you get bogged down with random reporting shit for other people, you basically just get, your, your day gets hijacked by somebody else, but you’re there to provide value and, and it becomes of course a subjective thing and perceived value, but do you feel that you actually create value during your day?

[00:18:17] Bhav: No, I was gonna say, it’s amazing that you think you, you, you say that thing. Cause I, I, I have the same belief when, and it’s not just for juniors, it’s for anyone. Let’s imagine when you join a company, the company gives you more than you give them, right? So if you imagine a timeline or time series day zero on the you know, point zero on the X axis is your day one over time.

[00:18:39] Bhav: You know, you’re in a negative, You know, you’re in the negative, the value you’ve brought to the organisation is less than the value you’ve gained, you know, because you’re ups, you know, you’re onboarding, you’re doing all sorts of things. At some point, you ideally reach a mutual benefit point where the value you bring is exactly the same as the value you receive.

[00:18:59] Bhav: And then the people who I believe will end up getting promoted or outgrow their roles are bringing are giving more to the to the organisation than you’re giving than you’re receiving in return and I and I always use that as a Because you’re right. It is a very subjective thing. But if you feel like the value you’re bringing is worth more than the value you’re getting back, then you know, you’re doing a very good job in my opinion.

[00:19:22] Bhav: And I think that analytics is a great way to think that is if are we bringing more value, but it is, you’re right. It is so subjective. And I think this comes back to now your point around better questions. And I know Dan, I’ve always, I’ve been challenging this before. this point, but like, you know, around what better questions are and what they mean.

[00:19:37] Bhav: But for me, a better question is, is something that is very clear. It’s, it’s, it’s clarified, you know, like we, there is clarity in that question. There aren’t any jargons in there. There’s no buzzwords or anything. And I give you an example of a bad question before we sort of talk about like what, you know, like, like how analytics can help make you, help you ask better questions.

[00:19:58] Bhav: And an example of bad question is how do we enhance the effectiveness of our strategy? That is a terrible question. Right. It’s filled with buzzwords. It’s not very actionable. It’s not very clear. So I find one of the ways where analysts certainly can do a better job is by asking clarifying questions. And maybe that’s what the difference between the, you know, better questions and whatever, you know, whatever, or bad questions is, is that you’re asking clarifying questions.

[00:20:23] Bhav: And you’re asking questions that lie in the big questions. So if you’re, you know, you’re talking about, and which is why, you know, like I said, the topic is quite, We’re talking about this today because I’ve literally been spending weeks thinking about this for a very specific reason. 

[00:20:36] Steen: So you get a home court advantage that’s cool. But, but I, I, I think it says so, but because it’s really interesting because one of the things that I’ve been pushing, oh, and I’ve talked to people is saying that it’s kind of cliche, but there is no such thing as a digital strategy. So, so, and this is kind of the better question saying, so for, for what we need to do with, with analytics and data in general is saying that the point of this data is that we need to support the overall strategy of the company and the role of analytics is going in and identifying where we can use digital to support this. And then right now, because a lot of analytics is placed in marketing, everything centric that we’re missing half of the value that analytics can actually deliver.

[00:21:24] Steen: If we start looking at at it from that perspective instead. So every year when, when the CEO launches the new strategy for the year, we need to do a workshop and say, okay, cool guys, what do we need to, what can we do to support this from a data perspective? What can we add to this? So this is for me a place to, to kind of going in commercially and saying, now we’re bridging the business.

[00:21:49] Steen: And it also makes it much more interesting for us to go to the CEO. If we ever get there and say, listen, boss, this is where we think that we can support you this year. And we can help you probably deliver on these things because it gives us one of the things that we miss a lot when it comes to analytics, which is targets.

[00:22:07] Dan: I had that, I had that exact conversation today. I was just like KPIs aren’t key. If you don’t have a boundary for success, if you don’t have a target, otherwise they’re just metrics. They’re just numbers. They’re just interesting. Right? Like I completely agree. 

[00:22:20] Steen: And it’s one of the things that I’ve been pissing me off with Google analytics for years is saying that we have never been able to put in a target right. There’s never been anything saying compared to what, so right. We have, right now we have some numbers and that’s fine, but are we way above where we’re supposed to be? Well, you can see that by pulling it out and looking at a Google sheet where you have ambitions, but you cannot enter it into Google analytics. So it could actually tell you how fucked you are. 

[00:22:45] Dan: Your French is very much excused. It’s all good. I always have a little smile when someone mentions Google analytics before me, because then Bev can’t blame me for bringing Google analytics up. But I think Google analytics is, is a nice little segue because a lot of what we’re talking about here, especially with marketing analytics comes back to tools becomes back to often Google Analytics and actually a lot of the.

[00:23:08] Dan: A lot of the limitations I found with analysts have been based on the technology they’re using, the tools they’re using, the interfaces they’re using. And Google Analytics is changing quite a lot around the interface and actually sort of changing the analysis that can be done from, from analysts. I’m just wondering if you’re seeing the last time we spoke was we were talking about.

[00:23:27] Dan: COVID and like how to do analysis post COVID and how that looks. But now that we’ve got some distance from that, and we’re now with just changing it onto GA4, now the whole GA4 thing’s come and gone and we’re all using it, have you seen any sort of big changes around that in terms of how. Marketing analytics is going because of the technology change or, or, or actually have we realized that technology doesn’t really matter and we’re still doing the same kind of stuff in the same way. I’m just wondering what your views are on the, the, the seismic shift, depends who you ask that GA4 has caused and the ripple effects that we found in the industry. 

[00:24:01] Steen: Yeah, but I think so. So honestly, I think the shift to GA4 has been like in Denmark for a long time, there was like, uh, dating. dk. Everybody would go to dating.dk didn’t matter who you are. And then suddenly people decided that they were kind of special. So there was farmer dating and beautiful people and people with dogs and singles. And it’s kind of the same thing I see in analytics now that there’s a fragmentation happening where people are going to.

[00:24:28] Steen: tools that are better suited for their needs. And it’s kind of a it’s a wonderful conundrum, puzzle, whatever that, but because Google goes in and offers a tool that is where you’re supposed to tailor more and moves away from a one size fits all. Then people start running about in a lot of other different directions.

[00:24:49] Steen: So instead of setting Google Analytics up the way that they could to target their own and improve, improve their own business, they will find other tools. So I’ve never seen the, well, I have seen the industry as fragmented as it is. I see the dominance of Google falling apart right now. And, and, and Google is not helping with the data quality in GA4.

[00:25:12] Steen: That there’s still so big issues that we’re there, their main audience is still the marketing people, but there’s still data quality issues that they’re not solving. So people are getting stressed. So, so, so I see fragmentation. I see people looking in other directions. So it’s an interesting time to be a tool.

[00:25:31] Bhav: But isn’t that down to the people who are implementing the tools? Because we talk about, you know, Google, the quality of data in Google, but that’s really down to implementation. Is it not? Why would we push down? It’s a bit like, let’s say, for example, more event based platforms like that have been around for much longer than GA4 have.

[00:25:50] Bhav: So amplitude, heap, you know, whatever. In order for you to maximise their effectiveness, the implementation of them has to be correct. If you put garbage in, you’re going to get garbage out. So GA4 in many ways is no different to what already exists, don’t you think? 

[00:26:05] Steen: Well, except that I think the challenge is, I mean, in my book and I, I love GA, I’ve been, it’s been what I’ve been using for a long time and I, I really try to, to, to support it all I can. But what I still see is that the product when it was launched was not finished. So they have kept changing the underlying data model. Inside it and they’re changing and adding parameters. And right now there’s a big not set issue of visitors or data coming in. And what you get is not your marketing data.

[00:26:36] Steen: It’s just a big bunch of data, right? So, and that’s a Google problem. That’s not, that’s not a vendor or implementer problem. That is actually something in the underlying tech stack. So, so from that perspective, I think because Google had to get rid of universal analytics as fast as they did to avoid more, more, more lawsuits and, and things around compliance, they, they, they had to move faster than they were actually ready to. So, and I think this bites them in the ass now to, to say it. And I think they’re working on it. I honestly believe that they’re really trying to fix this because They know the problem as well. 

[00:27:19] Dan: Absolutely. There are fundamental pros and cons for all tools. And that’s definitely a big con for GA4.

[00:27:27] Dan: I’m. Something that comes up when I talk about GA4, which, you know, happens often enough is that there’s, there’s that conversation, which is that there’s, it was, I don’t see it as much nowadays, but it was quite cool to hate on GA4. Like it’s a common thing to be like, I hate GA4, but actually, as you just described DeSteen, my interpretation is that Google is reacting to the changes in the industry with the legislation, with technology changes, browser legislation, app devices with ATT, all that kind of lovely stuff that’s preventing from working and Google has to react to develop new systems, new tools, new technologies like modelling, like non cookie identifiers, like other stuff to continue to even just keep a status quo. 

[00:28:09] Dan: GA4 is a reaction to an industry, but happening at the same time as the changes in the industry. And a lot of people are to blame. The changes in the industry on Google Analytics 4 because it’s happening at the same time. I’m just wondering if that’s something that you’re seeing as well. Is there, can we abstract changes within the marketing industry and the technology or are they so entwined that we can’t? Because I find what Google is doing is desperately trying to stay relevant in an industry that’s making it increasingly hard.

[00:28:36] Dan: Cause universal analytics in the same context would be shit now, if it was still around. I don’t think people would have a better time if Universal Analytics was still around. I find that slightly difficult to believe, but I’m just wondering if you’re seeing the same kind of thing. Is the sentiment directed at the tool or the changes in the industry?

[00:28:53] Steen: I think that the, the, the problem is that the sentiment is, is, is, Directed at the tool, but the tool is not the problem. The problem is like Bev said, it’s the implementations that people are like, they just, they said, okay, cool. With universal analytics, I could just do a standard implementation. Then I had a pretty decent data set and then I could just work with that.

[00:29:12] Steen: But with GA4, which is from, from my point of view, it’s if it worked perfectly, then, then it would be a massively superior tool to universal analytics if people set it up like it was supposed to. But it’s like people are just using to have like, so, so you get this very decent factory made BMW driving out which was one model.

[00:29:35] Steen: And then you get the formula one car that you have to tune and tweak and take into account the weather and all this type of shit. So, so, so to, to kind of be able to get the full value out of it. 

[00:29:46] Dan: Now for our long term listeners, it’s no secret that I like to run training courses all around Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and everything in between. Check out our full list of courses over at measurelab.co.uk forward slash training to see all the courses and workshops that we have available. Everything from learning Google Analytics 4 to Google Tag Manager, data visualisation, and short form workshops to cover small specific areas of interest, such as user provided data, generative AI for data analysis, as well as lots of other stuff.

[00:30:12] Dan: That’s measurelab.co.uk forward slash training for all the details, or you can click the link in the show notes, or if you’re watching this scan, this QR code now.

[00:30:21] Dan: is that, is that not just because of the time that universal has been around that universal essentially is the duct taped upgrades to classic analytics, which has been around for a long time. And so when you say things like. Standard implementation that has meaning that has a definition and resources, whereas GA4 doesn’t have a standard implementation because it’s just not had the longevity yet to have that defined and well defined.

[00:30:42] Dan: I, I find that GA4 is relatively easier to understand the event schema, and this is something you’ve been saying for years, Bhav, coming from a more product mindset. It’s just playing catch up. Google’s just playing catch up with the rest of the industries and with the rest of the world. I find it difficult to kind of what I’m struggling with and I don’t have a fully thought out example and I find it hard to blame or to point the kind of the direction towards implementation because implementation is implementation.

[00:31:10] Dan: It’s kind of, I’m setting up based on the best practices I know now and I don’t think a different implementation is going to change. The way that Google analytics for is collecting or using data to an extent that makes it from bad to good. I’m just wondering if like having partial data now, as we do as an industry, the fact that we have to have consent before we can track stuff or tie things together with cookies, that is the big thing that’s changed that people are reacting to not the.

[00:31:35] Dan: Not the fundamental, like there are issues with the UI for sure. But I don’t think that’s the key thing. I think the key thing is people are like, well, I can’t track everything anymore, and Google’s modelling all my data. I was like, yeah, yeah. Universal couldn’t do that. It was shit too. But like, the timing is coincidental.

[00:31:51] Dan: Not coincidental, but the timing’s aligned to a point whereby you are now seeing that with GA4 because it’s better. in different ways. And also you can’t track certain things because GA4 can’t do that. That there was, I couldn’t do it. I had to drop it. 

[00:32:04] Steen: But, but I think actually it’s an important point because man, it’s the classic situation, right? You come to a customer and you ask them, Hey, what do you want to track? And they look at you like you’re an imbecile. And then they say, Daniel, everything, I want to track everything. And the problem is that that’s no longer legal and it’s no longer feasible because everything is way too much and it’s going to cost you too much.

[00:32:25] Steen: And, and, and like looping back to what I said earlier, if you track everything, then you have to maintain everything. But if you’re not using it for anything, then it’s just like we talked about, then it’s just a massive cost centre of trying to maintain, pull in some data that you’re not going to be using for anything.

[00:32:42] Steen: I have like this so, so my GA four implementations will vary a lot depending on the company. So, that’s kind of, this is it. This is not a standard implementation. This is something where we can go and make something that is specific for your business to optimise your business need that contains a lot less data so you can focus on getting value out of it instead of gathering it. So that’s kind of why I say less is more when it comes to GFO and that rhymes and everything. That’s really beautiful. 

[00:33:13] Bhav: I mean, I think for me, this really leans itself towards having a measurement strategy in place and it kind of goes towards the idea. And I think you mentioned it in, in, in the notes when we were prepping, this is that there are missing skills within the analyst and then there’s missed.

[00:33:28] Bhav: So missing marketing skills or, you know, business skills or context skills in the analyst. And on the flip side, you’re missing the analytical thinking and the analytical skills on the stakeholders of the business people. And this is where an education piece needs to happen. And I actually think, you know, this largely for the role of the analyst, this is how they start to show value.

[00:33:49] Bhav: If your analyst is playing the yes man, yes, madam role. And they’re constantly just not pushing back and they’re not asking clarifying questions and not challenging. They’re not talking about what we should measure. And in fact, they’re asking you what you should measure. You’re going to end up in the situation where the value of analytics is negative in terms of the cost associated with it.

[00:34:11] Bhav: And so I guess maybe like my point around like analytics being a cost, a profit enablement centre also. In order to become profit enablement centre, you have to get to a point where you’re, you’re, you’re profit neutral. So the cost of the analytics is directly in line with the value that they bring. And maybe that’s where set up and things like that are going to be critical and maintaining your data and challenging stakeholders in terms of what they should be measured.

[00:34:36] Bhav: Because I agree with the challenge, you know, you measure everything. You’re going to end up in an absolute poop storm of useless data. 

[00:34:46] Steen: I had the pleasure of last year I did a masterclass for, on GA fall for managers. And then the core concept of the idea was doing a masterclass for people who never logged in.

[00:35:00] Steen: So, it was for the people who would be asking questions of the analyst. And it was kind of trying to make them understand the boundaries of what questions, what type of questions could they ask and what type of answers should they expect. So, so kind of trying to draw the lines there because if you have somebody who don’t understand analytics, they will ask questions that you cannot answer and it will make you seem stupid.

[00:35:25] Steen: Or they will ask you questions that are too trivial because they don’t know what questions they can ask. So, so I actually did a training for a client where I had, where, where the management group, they got like, like we talked about asking better questions, but that was related to what questions can you ask.

[00:35:41] Steen: And then for the analyst, it was the, the, the, the parallel workshop was giving better answers. So it’s because it’s really very much about communication. So like I say, it’s training, but sometimes it’s more communication training that it’s, it’s actually commercial or business training. 

[00:36:01] Dan: I completely agree. And I think this, this, this can’t go overstated, but we’re not vending machines, right. Is it, is the quote, the quote of the episode, we’re not vending machines. Like there’s a dialogue, it’s a communication, it’s a collaboration. But I have a question for you, Steen, and I almost resent myself for asking it.

[00:36:17] Dan: But does generative AI change that? So those kind of masterclasses where you’re, you’re speaking to kind of like business leaders or non analysts to ask, you know, potentially less mundane or more mundane questions, but still have access to the data, but without having to bother analysts to kind of like for them to say, no, like how does that change things?

[00:36:36] Dan: Because I’m, I’m starting to see it change things. And I’m just wondering if that is. Changing it across the board. Or if just we’re like you said, at the beginning scene, we’re the nerds and we’re playing with this stuff and we know it, but actually it hasn’t really propagated out yet thus far to the rest of the kind of business context.

[00:36:51] Steen: So I think that the I I see the dream in the thinking and I like it and I see a potential there, we actually, We built something for a customer that we called Askalytics, which is basically a generative AI based on your analytics thing. So instead of you, you going in and looking at the numbers, you basically have like a Google home and then you just ask it when you come in and then it gives you the answer.

[00:37:13] Steen: So it’s kind of, instead of having that, instead of having like anybody having to go in yesterday, so how was business yesterday? Hey, I’m glad you asked bath yesterday. We sold this and we did this. Was there any problems? Yeah, there were this problem. Okay. What should I do about it? So, and the problem is that every time.

[00:37:31] Steen: We come to the, what should I do about it? It starts hallucinating too much, right? So it can tell you what happened. It can analyse the data, but we’re still at a point where it’s not ready to help you. Well, I can give you seven different things you can consider, right? And that’s now the, when I see kind of the qualifying thing for the role of the analyst is actually being able to determine which, which part of this is, is, is good.

[00:37:59] Steen: Now challenges of course, is that. The more AI we put into this, the more we are desperately depending on the quality of data, because if something breaks in the gathering of data, then the AI just become massively stupid overnight because it’s not going to tell you saying, yeah, apparently your data layer broke yesterday.

[00:38:22] Steen: So today I can’t tell you anything. Well, maybe it can at one point, but right now it would just tell you based on the data it has. Oh, yesterday was horrible. Everything. We didn’t sell anything. Okay. Where do you go with that? Right. So, 

[00:38:36] Bhav: but I think this is where one of the, one of the, again, one of the things I’ve been thinking about and, and at some point I will write about, I actually did write a blog post about this.

[00:38:43] Bhav: It was called 10, 000 foot questions. And the idea is, And I’m going to use an analogy. There is a stone sculpture on, it’s, it’s a really nicely carved structure on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, right? Most questions that are asked much reflect pretty much that stone sculpture. They’re really articulate.

[00:39:03] Bhav: They’re really fine detail. They’re really like specific, but then you take a step back, right? And you look at actually the stone sculpture as part of the Arc de Triomphe and the view starts to get a And then you start, you take another view back and you see Champs Élysées, which is the big roundabout, and then you take a step back even more, and you see all of the Parisian landscape, and you realise that actually suddenly the stone sculpture is not even visible anymore.

[00:39:26] Bhav: And I think when we talk about Asking better questions and whether you’re asking chat GPT or, you know, whatever, we need to think about the type of question we’re asking and the outcome we’re trying to get to. So are we trying to, when we say, you know, what was sales like yesterday? Like that’s a very operational question, right?

[00:39:45] Bhav: It doesn’t really lead to any action and that could be okay. But maybe the better question asks to ask is where sales in line with expected sales. Or why did we miss sales? Why did we miss targets? Or even, you know, that’s and that’s still for me an operational question, but it’s a more targeted question.

[00:40:04] Bhav: It’s a more clarifying question. Then you take a step back and you might say, okay, the next question is rather than what is the conversion rate of this, of of landing page people landing on this page? That’s a terrible question. The better question would be what user journeys have are the most underperforming and how do we improve those user journeys?

[00:40:24] Bhav: And then you take an even bigger step back and you could be asking even bigger questions, which are things like, what is market penetration like in this region that we’re operating in? And actually, is there opportunities to grow and expand into other markets? And so you start getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and I don’t think even having the best question, the best data being fed into these big LLMs and things like that is ever going to, at least not in the foreseeable future overtake the ability for an analyst or a good stakeholder to ask the better questions. And that’s for me what I mean by better questions. 

[00:41:00] Steen: And I agree to the extent that I think and maybe it’s something we’ve learned by working with analytics, but in most cases, what we’re interested in is actually not how things went yesterday, before. We were just interesting saying, did anything deviate from plan yesterday?

[00:41:18] Steen: And if the answer is no, then, okay, fuck that. Then I have to look forward and I have to start looking into saying, so based on this, is there something I should be doing tomorrow? 

[00:41:28] Bhav: Yeah, exactly. And for me, that’s a better question. 

[00:41:31] Steen: Yeah, yeah, because, because in most cases we spend way too much time and I’ve been really cool people a lot, a lot about this is saying we spend way too much time having meetings about things that are in order.

[00:41:44] Steen: So let’s go through the numbers. We have the monthly meeting and yeah, okay, so let’s start with Alabama because that’s first in the alphabet. And then we go through all the states and then, okay, now we have to, well, we only got to Florida, but we’ll continue next week, but Texas is a burning platform. Okay but we never get there because we have to talk about how things are still fine in Alabama. 

[00:42:04] Dan: This this is one of my favourite, my favourite things, my favourite concepts is the term bike shedding. I don’t know if you’ve come across this term before but bike shedding is, is meant to, and I don’t know how factually accurate this is, this is just from what I’ve read.

[00:42:16] Dan: Bike, the term bike shedding comes from when a nuclear power stake in. Nuclear power station was being designed and built and the architects were having meeting after meeting about the design of the bike shed and not the actual nuclear power station itself. And they’re like, this is so insignificant compared to the rest of the building.

[00:42:34] Dan: Why are we spending more time talking about something less important? And actually, it’s become more of a, a word to describe focusing on less important stuff. And actually we should give more airtime to more important stuff. So exactly as you’re saying, Steen, it’s like, why are we bike shedding on this?

[00:42:48] Dan: Just focus on the important stuff and not go alphabetically, but let’s go based on importance. How about that for a change? 

[00:42:55] Steen: Yeah, yeah, I did a super weak talk where I can call the ant on the ass of the elephant. How in analytics we had a tendency to zoom so much in that we only could only, we had super good data on this ant.

[00:43:08] Steen: And we would tell people about this ant and it was really amazing, but we kind of forgot to zoom out like Bev talked about. We always only talked about the, the, the nostril of the statue, right? There was always the. Goddamn nostril that everybody was talking about because that was the only place we had decent data.

[00:43:25] Steen: So the moment we start zooming out, the image starts getting blurry and fussy and we can only see half the, half the, the arc of the triumph. And we zoom out and then suddenly Paris gets foggy and it’s like, okay, let’s, let’s zoom back in on that nostril where we can feel safe. Actually, one of the things you were talking about masterclasses the masterclass before, and in relation to having conversations, one of the things that, that I see as a change in the market, and this is of course, something I plan to explore myself is It’s these cohorts that I see people not focus and not being interested in going in and having a single off session, but people are much more challenged on a continuous basis.

[00:44:07] Steen: So they would much more, the learning process is much more iterative that instead of going in for three hours or five hours and, and going home with something, they would prefer to have it spread out over more time. So you have a conversation with more people over time about the problems. So you can actually explore them and come up with a solution. Does that make sense? 

[00:44:31] Dan: I couldn’t agree more. I literally designed a training program for Google analytics for over six weeks that kind of cohort experience because the, the kind of six hours, three hours, 10 hour intensive sessions, just is just information overload.

[00:44:45] Dan: And you only learn, you only learn by. Doing in practice and application. And by talking at someone for a length of time, people that don’t digest information, and actually it’s the only real way to learn. Like us, I worked with some learning designers and there’s a previous episode of the measure pod where we had them talking about learning design in analytics.

[00:45:03] Dan: But when we were talking to them, they made me realise it’s like people aren’t learning. People are absorbing information, but that’s not learning. Learning happens through. Application and trial and error and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I completely get you. The only difference is those Dean, although I agree with you and I think it is a better way of learning.

[00:45:19] Dan: Often people think of learning as a one and done thing. And so people often be like, I want to do a three hour training course, and then I have learned it. I have a certificate and I can put it on LinkedIn and I can move on with my life. Actually, there’s way more to it because like, they’re not going to be any Better prepared than anyone else.

[00:45:37] Dan: Maybe slightly, but the idea is they haven’t learned anything. They’ve just absorbed information. Maybe forgotten most of it immediately after. 

[00:45:45] Steen: And I think that the challenge of that is, is saying, if you don’t have a learning mindset, you get in a situation saying, Hey, Daniel, you took my course in GA4 last year.

[00:45:55] Steen: How much is that worth skill wise right now, 12 months later, what has happened to the tool was has happened to the world, what has changed because it’s. It’s not that sexy. Right. And that’s kind of a big complication in relation to learning is that things change so fast. That, that we might even have like things can change during the session. Okay. Now they change that. Okay. That’s annoying. Or between prep and you’re doing your course. 

[00:46:28] Bhav: My my son has a taekwondo class this evening and I like the idea of like, rather than a certificate, cause you’re right, Dan, once you get your certificate, like, oh yeah, done, I’ve got my certification, blah, blah, blah.

[00:46:37] Bhav: But what if like we had belts? Like your analytics, white belt, and then you make it all the way up to like your analytics, black belt. And even then you keep going to like your first down, second down all the way up to ninth down. And it takes over 40 years to get to that, to that ninth down. Anyways, it’s a dumb thought, but just food for thought.

[00:46:56] Steen: Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but every once in a while a black belt will jump out of a bush to attack you to see if you’re still up to your skills. Yeah. 

[00:47:02] Bhav: Or a ninja. Let’s say a ninja will come out and attack you. 

[00:47:05] Steen: Yeah, exactly. So, kind of saying, are you still in shape? Yeah. 

[00:47:10] Dan: Well I, I think that is a good place to end it on and wait for a part three in a couple of years with you again, Steen. So first of all, thank you so much for being on the pod. Before we jump into the rapid fire questions where we’d like to kind of just ask some quick fire questions generated by my handy AI assistant based on what they know about you. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about to plug where can people find you if they want to reach out to you or find IIH Nordic, that kind of stuff?

[00:47:32] Steen: Yeah, absolutely. I guess the easiest part is finding me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is kind of my, my, my main neck of the wood. The easiest thing is search for Steen, S T E E N and I I H. And that’s kind of the combination of words that will lead you to my doorstep. So I’ve even gone to the extent that I have a newsletter where I gladly divulge random facts about, stuff that I do on my life and everything. 

[00:47:55] Bhav: You know, Steve, listening to you say that it’s just occurred to me that the, the, the, the, the word combination that gets to me, gets to my profile is Bhavic and CRAP. That will take you to my that will bring you to me. I need to rethink my life choices. 

[00:48:08] Dan: I, I, I dunno what mine is. I, I mine such a generic name. I just wonder how people find me at all. Actually since I got married, I’ve now got a double barreled surname, which seems to be, there’s only one person with that. But before I was married, I just had a generic name that a lot of people seem to have, so I actually would be interested to find out those combination of words just done.

[00:48:26] Dan: We should have announced this, even though we record it after the episode, we should have announced this already, but we’re doing a live podcast episode from measure camp, London. So if you are listening at this point in this episode and you’re listening a week before measure camp, then come find us and ask questions and get me and Bhav put us on the spot. Ask us interesting questions around analytics and get your voice out on the show.

[00:48:49] Dan: Well, let’s jump straight into the rapid fire question. So what I like to do is well, I say I like to do what I’ve started doing, which has become a bit of a habit is programming as much as I can in about you, the topic of conversation and the kind of stuff I know around into our kind of personal AI system, which we have at measure lab and it’s popped out three rapid fire questions for you.

[00:49:08] Dan: So question number one. What is the biggest misconception people have about integrating marketing data with business planning? 

[00:49:15] Steen: You call that a rapid question? So the biggest misconception between integrating business planning and marketing data is that very often it’s pointing to different directions that it’s basically people not being able to communicate the different sides of things. Right. So you have somebody running in a very business context and somebody running from a very data context, and they have two different sets of agendas.

[00:49:40] Steen: So I could go into a long term and talk about how how their, the business goals will often be filled with confirmation bias and not raw data that we actually have a tendency to, to. Use data to qualify things that are not really qualified. I don’t know with you guys, but I have tried more than once having somebody coming up to me saying, okay, can you give me the data on this?

[00:50:02] Steen: I need this to support a business decision. And then they come and they get, they get the data. And then when they get to data saying, no, no, no, I cannot show this to the board, give me some better data. And that is a blatantly confirmation bias. But. We don’t think about it. So we give them the data and reality.

[00:50:19] Steen: What we do is we completely undermined the business trust in data. Because everybody apparently has a really good, solid data foundation for the decisions they make, except that it’s fake. 

[00:50:32] Bhav: I think on the flip side on that, sorry, I know we’re not in podcast mode right now, like, interview mode right now, this is rapid fire.

[00:50:37] Bhav: But you also, you also get outcome biases as a result. You could do everything right, and the outcome would, could, will still fly, you know, in your face. So I think there’s always that, that flip side as well, that you can also be subjected to outcome bias. So you could have done everything right, but the data doesn’t support that and that’s okay as well. 

[00:50:55] Steen: Yeah. But, but as long as you say that, that you have the, you relatively look at the data, because this would be like saying, yeah, I did everything right. But my A/B test it was only 10 percent who liked the other version, 90 percent apparently preferred this version, but I did everything right. So I’m going to go with the 10%. 

[00:51:12] Dan: Well, it feels like the seeds of a third appearance of Steen on the podcast here. I can tell, I can tell Bhav you’re, you’re holding your tongue so much with this. All right. All right. Question number two, Steen outside of Google Analytics, what’s your favourite digital analytics tool and why?

[00:51:28] Steen: See, now Bhav is going to get angry again, but we just today announced a partnership with Amplitude. Okay, good. So, so for us, it’s really about the change in the market that we can see a different demand and what we feel right now is that there’s another layer of complexity to most organisations, especially larger organisations, that isn’t that where they need another type of data and they need another type of approach to data and they have a more complicated reality.

[00:51:56] Steen: So, so I would say from, from, for me, right now, on, on one hand it’s amplitude because it, it solves more, more things. So it’s a, a bigger Swiss Army knife, but it also needs more thinking because once again, it’s, it’s, it’s the things saying a tool with a fool a fool with a tool is still a fool.

[00:52:19] Steen: So, so the tool is not going to do anything. It’s about really in a lot of cases, limiting people in relation to what are they going to use the tool for? And that’s the question that we need to, to align. We have a wonderful process where we actually go in and we ask people four dimensions of business questions before we even recommend them a tool.

[00:52:39] Steen: So because people come to us and say, Hey, what tool can you benchmark this tool versus this tool? Sure we can. But to do that, we need to understand your business needs. So it starts with the business. So, the tool is secondary. Sure I like amplitude a lot, but I would recommend it to everybody. Hell no I would recommend PIVX to somebody. I would recommend Google analytics, the free version to somebody and 360 to somebody heap to somebody. It’s about them. It’s really not about. 

[00:53:09] Dan: I like it. Last question, Steen. And then there’s a bonus one I forgot to tell you about. What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone looking to enter the field of digital analytics today?

[00:53:20] Steen: I think one of the things that I have been telling people is saying that don’t try to be the next Simo. Don’t go in and specialise in just one thing where there, when there, where there’s an opening for potential. If you want to, if you want to create a niche for yourself, if you want to first of Then you need to look at integrations.

[00:53:39] Steen: So you need to be the specialist of between Heap and Salesforce or between Amplitude and Adobe customer journeys. It doesn’t matter. That’s where the interesting bits are in relation to if you wanna be more. But the first thing you need to decide is saying are you a foot soldier, a captain, or a wizard?

[00:54:00] Steen: Because that’s basically the three roles that you have. I used to call it something less politically correct. I got my, I got a raised finger, but, but foot soldier is fine. You just want to do the grunt work. You get in there every day. You do analytics, you go home, you don’t want to mess about. You don’t want to be the captain that makes the decisions.

[00:54:17] Steen: So you, you’re, you enjoy being an analyst. Captain goes in and becomes moves up and wants to go up with the rank. Want to be something more. It’s fine. It’s a career choice. It’s an ambitious career choice. And then and then you have to wizard the wizards is something outside the organisation. It’s the Mark Edmondson’s it’s the CMOs.

[00:54:38] Steen: It’s the people that are. Outside the regular structures where they have special courses to teach you how to manage people that are more important for the organisation than you are. So it’s the persons the captains can live without, but you cannot manage them in any traditional way because they’re just out of the, outside the regular structure because they provide a way of thinking. That is beyond the normal. So decide where you are. Everything is fine. And it’s just finding your shelf and then going for that. 

[00:55:14] Dan: I have to thank you, Steen, because I think I’ve promoted myself from head of biscuits to analytics wizard. So that’ll be on LinkedIn soon enough. Thank you for that. Last question, Steen, and then you’re free to go. What do you like to do outside of work to wind down, to escape from analytics? 

[00:55:30] Steen: So there’s the, the, there’s two dimensions. And then one of them is actually apparently so I like to read comic books, I use comic books a lot in my way to also do presentations. So I try to focus on the narrative in relation to presentations.

[00:55:46] Steen: So I like digesting stories like that. I rarely watch television because I feel too passive. And then when I have the time of all horrible things, I sometimes dungeon master in traditional role playing games. And it’s one of the things that helped me with it. It’s helped me with thinking on my feet.

[00:56:09] Steen: So, because it’s something where you actually go in and you have to come up with a plausible answer to a random action by somebody else. So, so it has helped me tremendously as a consultant doing this because when, when you can have prepared everything and then people decide to do something completely different and you still have to make it sound plausible, what happens next? So the credibility to, to tell a story on your feet is, has helped me a lot, and I find it massively inspiring. 

[00:56:42] Bhav: I mean, you’ve just done a full 360 on this on this podcast, Steen. You started off by saying you’re a nerd, and you’ve just finished by saying you’re a nerd. You’re an actual nerd, right? Like when people say they’re not, they just mean, Oh, I’m a data person, but I’m sure you’ve gone like full. No, I love it. No, I don’t. I love it. I think that’s what it does.

[00:57:00] Dan: I understand fully seeing I’m a recent D&D player myself and I love, I love it. It’s awesome. I love what you said about having passive mediums. I can’t, maybe this is some other disorder, but I can’t sit still for very long.

[00:57:16] Dan: And so playing video games and doing things like that is actually way more entertaining for me and I can switch off than I can watching TV and film. I’m not a good reader. Comics have never scratched that itch, but I completely understand. So thanks for sharing all that. I think that’s it. You’re off the hook.

[00:57:31] Dan: So thank you so much for round two, Steve Rasmussen. And yeah, I can already tell Bhav was writing some notes about round three, so I’m sure that’ll happen sooner rather than later, it’ll be in the next three years, at least. 

[00:57:40] Steen: Okay. You can pull me in at the live session for a question. 

[00:57:43] Dan: We’ll come in, ask us, ask us some really hard questions. Think about what Bhav would be stumped on and ask him live next week. 

[00:57:51] Steen: Yeah, I’ll try. Okay. Take care guys. Thank you. 

[00:57:56] Dan: That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening. We’ll be back soon with another episode of the measure pod. You can subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to this on to make sure you never miss an episode.

[00:58:04] Dan: You can also leave us a review if you can on any of these platforms. We’re also over on YouTube. If you want to see. See our lovely faces and our lovely guest faces while we do this as well. Make sure to subscribe to the measure lab channel to make sure you never miss an episode as they come out. If you’ll leave us a review, that’ll be hugely appreciated.

[00:58:20] Dan: You can do that on most of the podcast applications or that is a form in the show notes, you can leave feedback directly to me and Bhav. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you on the next one.

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