Cory is the Chief Executive Officer at BlueConic, a leading customer data platform.
I love this time of year because it’s gardening season. We typically plant at the end of May and in late June, depending on the volatile New England weather, and start to see the seedlings take root and grow. This year, we’ve got lettuce; several tomato varieties; different types of hot peppers; cucumbers; and strawberries. I find caring for the garden very soothing. I read once that if you verbally encourage your plants, they grow better than those that you don’t cheer on and much better than those that you actively disparage, so I enthusiastically root the little things on while I water or prune.
I wasn’t always into gardening (tell me you’re a grown up without telling you’re a grown up) but part of why I’ve learned to love it is because, as the one and only Dame Helen Mirren says, “Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of them.”
Indeed, gardening has taught me a lot–specifically:
Plan ahead. I create a diagram in the spring of what I want to plant and where they need to go based on their requirements for sunlight and space. That way, I know the right number of seedlings to get and where they need to be planted.
Companion planting works best. Not all plants like to grow near each other while others thrive. Tomatoes and basil, for instance, love growing as neighbors. Tomatoes and cucumbers do not. Radishes, though, do enjoy a cucumber friend, but don’t care for cauliflower. Who knew?
Daily care is required. I like the repetition of gardening; the daily ritual is soothing and predictable.
Feed the soil, not the plants. Pouring plant food on their leaves doesn’t help them; you need to make sure the soil has the nutrients so that the plant can be strong from the roots up.
Squirrels are the enemy. Agents of chaos, squirrels can ruin a good garden—even before it has produce to eat. They’ll dig up the baby plants and pull off the leaves for no good reason (at least, not good as far as I’m concerned).
The bounty is best enjoyed together. While I admit that eating a tomato or a strawberry straight from the vine is excellent, I much prefer sharing with friends and family and enjoying the success with others in the community.
Every harvest offers new lessons. We tweak our garden every year based on learnings from the prior year. For instance, I’ve given up on broccoli. I just can’t get it to grow despite my best efforts. Meanwhile, I’ve found a spot where lettuce thrives so I grow that multiple times per season.
One cannot control the weather. Wish though I could.
I’ve also come to realize that gardens are a perfect embodiment of James Clear’s assertion that systems are better than goals. In his book Atomic Habits, he argues, “Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.”
A garden is a system; thriving plants is the goal.
Similarly, as plants are to gardens, so too is competitive advantage to first-party consumer data. Companies that have an effective system for collecting, unifying and activating consumer data to drive growth will achieve a competitive advantage over other companies that want that outcome but lack the system to achieve it.
One system that companies are increasingly turning to is a customer data platform (CDP) because they need to:
1. Survive third-party data deprecation and thrive in a privacy-focused, first party-data world.
2. Make operational agility an institutional discipline so that you’re stealing market share while everyone else is reeling with panicked despair.
3. Transform the customer experience without conforming to the limitations of your existing (read: old and inadequate) tech stack.
In full disclosure, my company offers a CDP, but working with hundreds of customers has given me a firsthand look at the outcomes that result from a consumer-first, data-driven system that combines people (resources, skills, org structure); platform (CDP plus other tools in your tech stack); and performance (impact, value and return based on performance and operational efficiency).
And as it turns out, gardening has taught me a lot about CDP best practices too.
Plan ahead. Your strategy drives your use cases which drive your roadmap. Planning ahead makes a world of difference.
Companion planting works best. The data must align with your goals; don’t just put all the data into the system and then try to figure out what you’re looking to accomplish with it.
Daily care is required. A CDP—and data strategy more generally—aren’t a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. Your consumers are changing constantly; so too is the data about them. Stay on top of it.
Feed the soil, not the plants. It’s easy to prioritize vanity metrics but you must focus on the real transformation, which comes from operational metrics like team efficiency, productivity and scalability.
Squirrels are the enemy. You know the squirrels in your organization—those chaos agents who don’t mind disrupting the roadmap or insert themselves into decision-making and then refuse to accept the consequences. Protect yourself from the squirrels.
The bounty is best enjoyed together. Evangelize the impact of CDP as early and as often as possible. Better still, create a playbook that can be shared with other teams, business units or regions to help them prepare and get going even more quickly.
Every harvest offers new lessons: Keep progressing beyond the early wins. It’s common and easy to get the first use cases up and running and then stall; don’t get stuck. Use a steering group and use case backlog to always be moving forward.
One cannot control the weather. Or the economy.
Happy growing.
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