Bill Schmarzo v2: Critical Thinking, Decision Making, Economics

Cold Open

All right, we'll count down. You ready? In three, two, one.

Jeff Frick

Hey, Welcome back, everybody, for another episode of Turn the Lens with Jeff. Fick. We're excited to have you today. And we're excited to have a guest back who's actually been on a few times when I was looking at the calendar. It's been years and years, literally. So we're excited to welcome in all the way from Iowa, he’s Bill Schmarzo, you know, him as the dean of Big Data, but his official title is Customer Data Innovation Lead for Dell Technologies. Bill, great to see you.

Bill Schmarzo

Has it really been that long? Jeff?

Jeff Frick 

I looked, it was the very, very beginning of 2021. So we were kind of coming out of the 2020 COVID year still kind of in it. I think vaccinations were kind of early light on some vaccination activity in terms of development. So, yeah, it's been a long time. Wow. How the world changes in two years.

Bill Schmarzo

That is so true, isn't it?

Jeff Frick 

It is. And you know, it's interesting just to kick it off. There was a there was a piece of research that came out I saw yesterday from Pew, and they asked people, what is their awareness of the AI in their lives? And there were six kind of categories think that they queried people about the fitness tracker chat bots, product recommendation engines, music recommendation engines, an alert on a security camera, like a nest that it actually does something if it sees somebody. And then the last one was email spam filters, and it was not high awareness of the AI in their lives today, you know, is not high. So, you know, it's really interesting to then contrast that with, say, GPT three, which, you know, is one of these catalyst media events that really drives, you know, kind of a mass and I don't know, acknowledges the right word, but awareness of these things. You know, you think back. Time move fast. What do you what you know what is go through your head.

Bill Schmarzo

It's interesting that you say that. Jeff So so I've been back in Des Moines now about eight or nine months, I guess, and I was very fortunate in the first six weeks I was back, I was invited to the called the Central Iowa Crossroads event. And the idea behind this crossroads event was get 100 plus people from different senior level positions across corporations and government and, you know, nonprofits and etc., etc., and bring them together and to brainstorm the impact that each of these trends would have in Iowa across 45 different variables. And some of them are like, you know, clean water and green energy and the aging of America. And they're they're all it was interesting to see where people put these things from a perspective of real. I mean, what's happening today and impact on Iowa. So that was kind of the criteria right here. Classic two by two was, you know, is it real? And what kind of impact does it have in Iowa? Here's a surprising point for me. Less than 12% of the people in that room, senior executives, had it in the upper right hand corner. They didn't think it was real or they think it's going to have an impact on Iowa. And I was like, I asked my table. I said, how many people here use the GPS to get here?

Well, a lot of people raise their hands. Said, really? Okay, how many people use like, you know, Netflix or Spotify or app? It was just I was doing a level of awareness was it struck me as being first of all, people aren't aware and they don't think it's going to be relevant to their for their professions.

Jeff Frick 

And even if they use it every day, right? Even though it's they're using it every day.

Bill Schmarzo

Every day to help them make better decisions. And it's just I mean, maybe the good news, Chad, is that, like you said, it raises awareness that this thing's kind of around us.

Jeff Frick 

Right? Right.

Bill Schmarzo

But it's just like if if you're not aware of it, then how can you think about weird? How can I use this in other places to be more effective, to be more relevant, etc.? So yeah, I the level of awareness of A.I. in our country, especially when you get away from like Silicon Valley, it's shockingly low, right?

Jeff Frick 

Well, you jumped ahead a little bit, but I want I had a one of my bullet points, you know, since you have moved away from Palo Alto, you back in Iowa and used to fly over flyover countries to teach all the time. And, you know, you've spent a lot of time in factories and actually in flyover country before COVID. So COVID hits, everybody stops. Now, you move back to the Midwest and you can actually travel again and your teaching is picking up again. So, again, maybe you answered it, but more specifically, kind of the the context and the feel of technology in Iowa versus sitting in Palo Alto and kind of the reality of where it sits and how it's impacting people or how they think it's impacting them versus when you're sitting here in Palo Alto and, you know, you're just you know, you're kind of right on the bleeding edge.

Bill Schmarzo

It's it's interesting, Jeff, because I know within a 12 month span, I've seen both extremes. And I don't want to I don't want to pick on Iowa too much because there's obviously there are organizations here who are making use of it. You know, John Deere is doing a lot of stuff about autonomous tractors and such. So it isn't like it's devoid. But, you know, in Palo Alto, in the Silicon Valley, everybody talks about it. It's like a you hang out on the Starbucks and you hear, you know, three or four different people brainstorm with somebody else about their latest AI based products they're going to build. It's just it's it's kind of striking. And to be honest, Jeff, this was part of the motivation to move back because I thought, like, this is a chance for me to go do something. If this is my last rodeo, then by golly, I'm going to make it something that I really, really want to do. And so part of that was coming back here and trying to figure out how what can I do? I have got a lot of stuff I can share and give back. But what can I do to raise the awareness not only of I within the state of Iowa, but also help people understand, educate them about where and how to apply it to really drive meaningful value.

Jeff Frick 

Right. Well, the other thing that I want to talk about that's changed since last we spoke, and I think it'll change again tomorrow. And that's kind of the the compression. If you will, it seems like, of cycles. The velocity and kind of the the amplitude, it seems just like the amplitude of the curves getting higher. The compression between cycles is getting higher in terms of this ongoing change. And whether that's, you know, whether that's the weather, whether that's finance, whether that's banking, whether that's education, you can, it seems like you can apply that to a lot of things. So that, and today's the slowest day that technology will ever move for the rest of our lives. Right. So, it's really kind of, you know, we continue to just speed this cycle and people need to be using these tools to help them, you know, keep up.

Bill Schmarzo

So very, very interesting point there, Jeff, because the cycles are speeding across so many different dimensions. It's not just technology, it's society, it's culture, environmental. It's political. There's all these different dimensions of our society that are all operating at much higher frequency than before. And we come primarily, many of us come from sort of a traditional command and control structure where you wait for some of the top to make a decision and then we all sort of act on it. So a decision then we wait, sort of a batch-centric world, right? We're making batch-based decisions in a real time world of dynamic changes. And there are there needs to be a shift in the mindset of literally everybody about how do we think about what's going on in our society. You know, I just I can't wait for somebody else to make the decision. Maybe I have to make the decision. Maybe I need to own making that decision with respect to things that are important to me, whether it be on how I make financial investments or where I go to college or what jobs I take. It's just as you said, it's like in turmoil and we are not trained. Our education system does not train us for that.

Jeff Frick 

Yeah, no, it doesn't. And so let's transition, right? Because society tries to catch up. Government tries to catch up, regs try to catch up. And one of the things you've talked about, we've talked about it before, is kind of the blueprint for the A.I. Bill of Rights. And I know you want to talk about the ethical concerns, and we're going to get into that. But, you know, I printed this out and I read this thing and it's beautiful, but it almost seems nonsensical in terms of your in terms of, for instance, to know that there's A.I.. There you go. That's why I put it up, that there's a AI in the recommendation that you're currently receiving. I mean, we just talked about the fact that people don't understand that their Google Maps is powered by A.I. I mean something as simple as that. Seems pretty crazy. And haven't even got it into explainable A.I., you know, what are the factors in It's super complicated math and it's training all the time and it's changing from day to day based on new inputs and outputs. When you think about the data privacy and Data Bill of Rights and they're trying to get control on, you know, kind of law of unintended consequences and what are people using that data for after the project that it was originally assembled for. I mean, there's a real lot of challenges that were kind of probably lagging in terms of being able to deal with them.

Bill Schmarzo

Well, I think the A.I. Bill of Rights is Jeff is a great example. I mean, this is really,  think it's great if somebody put something out there. But but it's not actionable by, you read this. It's like, okay, there's there's no action to it. There's, how do I measure, how do I monitor, how do I manage, how do I optimize? So you have this sort of very highfalutin A.I. Bill of Rights, and I don't mean to dis on it because it's a starting point, right? It's you know, it's but they're it's insufficient. When we start thinking about how are we going to manage, monitor, optimize A.I. to make certain it's doing what we need it to do. And so, you know, if this was me. What I would be doing is figuring out what are the KPIs and metrics across a wide, diverse set of stakeholders that we need to start enforcing or monitoring and measuring in order to make sure our AI models are considering all these different variables. We know if you're a social media site and you optimize and clicks, likes and share, you're going to get confirmation bias, very severe confirmation bias. Well, you know, if you're optimizing on financial metrics, which by the way, tend to be lagging indicators anyway, you're going to end up with all kinds of crazy crap. So there's there needs to be a level of of not just awareness, but a commitment to take this A.I. bill of Rights down to an actionable level to start thinking about, well, what are the measures and variables metrics around which we as a society think are important. I wrote this. I think I told you we talked about this three part blog I wrote on the economics of ethics. Now, I'll tell you right now that that blog is probably, you know, insufficient, probably wrong. It needs a lot of help. But the bottom line is, if we don't understand how to measure and codify ethics and put that into our A.I. models, we're going to end up with all kinds of unintended consequences from our A.I. models. And so we've got to start as a society, having those kinds of conversations and knowing that the answers are not going to be easy and they're not going to be perfect. And we're going to have to sort of as a society, you know, slog our way through this.

Jeff Frick 

Right I wonder, I want to get your experience from going through projects with customers, because two of the things that are really important as part of this is one is definitions. And the one that triggered this was one of your write ups, talked about, you know, should we prioritize around retaining our best customers, which begs a really big question. What is a best customer defined by? Right, right, right. So there's the vocabulary. And then the other thing I think people try to avoid is forced prioritization. I mean, if you are making a decision on a feature A or B, you have got to have some prioritization on those attributes that you value that's going to decide whether you put A first or B first. And I think people really have a hard time forcing themselves to say, Hey, you have to prioritize these attributes because you can't satisfy them all. You know, how can we take some of those lessons in terms of your projects and apply them on a maybe a more broad application?

Bill Schmarzo

Well, if we think about how the AI utility function works, right, the variables and metrics around which I am trying to optimize, the definition of the weights, and how we define the weights is everything. Now the the model is going to continuously learn and and adapt. It's going to it's going to modify weights based on what the desired outcomes were and what the actual outcomes were, right. They're going to predict, they're going to measure. You're going to use back propagation and stochastic gradient descent to kind of continuously modify your your AI utility function. But you, you have to look at bringing into your model AI utility function, variables that conflict. Right. Because if you don't, this AI model's is going to find that one optimization gap is going to drill down and, you know, auger right into the ground with it. So we have to put in things like, well, we need to be able to improve health care and economic growth. It isn't health care or economic growth. It has to be both. Most of the decisions that we make as as humans, you know, we're all based on tradeoffs. You know, we want to go decide where to go eat. Well, I want to go here, but the kids want to go here. And I only have money for this. And they think of all the variables you go through to decide, well, where are we going to go eat tonight if we go at all? So we we have to as you said, we have to prioritize. But it's like more of as weights, that I'm going to give this a slightly higher weight than this, but the model is going to eventually going to change based on how you define your desired outcomes. What it is you want to achieve? What are the KPIs, the metrics against which I'm going to measure success and then it's going to constantly look and say, well, I thought this was the right, I made this prediction, the action was this, I'm going to tweak. It's constantly, the model is because the model is never right. Somebody described it as Denny the dumb torpedo. Right. Or the dumb missile. It's going towards a target. It's saying not on target. Not on target. It's always adjusting itself for the wind and everything else on target. It's not on target until it hits the target. And that's kind of what's happening here. These models are going to constantly have to mix and match and change. The only difference between the dummy missile is that the target's constantly moving, right, it's not like the target's there. As soon as you think you're out, it's constantly moving. So as a group, going through a process to not only identify the variables and metrics against which all the different stakeholders are trying to measure their desired effectiveness  to their desired outcomes, but having a process like you say, in prioritizing and weighting, well, which ones are most important? That, that is where the human comes in right? That's where humans have to play that role. They can't be the A.I. models that decide the weights. We'll end up with terminators. It has to be on us.

Jeff Frick 

I don't like to talk about temporal things. ChatGPT4 came out and they're already saying it's, you know, screamingly better than chat yesterday, which just reinforces the concept of, of exponential curves. Right. Which people can't grok in the speed at which this stuff is really taking off and that we've got to have people that are, you know, constantly measuring like you say, against KPIs, is this what we want? Is there is, and you've talked about an input data versus output data and really focusing on those input data pieces to make sure that is driving to the output stuff that you're hoping to get at the end.

Bill Schmarzo

It's almost easier to start with the outputs, what it is, what are the desired outcomes, How are you going to measure success across all the stakeholders? And then backing into the inputs, which is almost kind of like future engineering? What are the features I need to have in my model in order to achieve those outcomes and achieve those KPIs? So it's almost easier to think backwards forward than it is to go. You know, these are the features. And then I hope I can get those kind of desired results right as the hope. Hope is only a strategy in the cosmetics industry.

Jeff Frick 

So I love the used that in one of your other shows, my boss used to say that all the time, 'Hope is not strategy' Like. okay, okay, okay. Well then, I am curious with all the shows that you did, I mean, you've been on a boatload of podcasts. I mean, what's kind of your global take away from the depth of those conversations, the breadth of those conversations, the level of curiosity, the level of, you know, kind of hearing what you're saying because you do, you're and congratulations. I mean, you're doing a boatload of podcasts these days.

Bill Schmarzo

Thanks. Thanks. I think there's there's a shift underway. I think there is growing awareness. The level of questions that I get, I think are more humanistic, more holistic. So I'm I'm encouraged. I also do lots of lectures and I like doing lectures to universities because I love to see the kinds of questions that the students ask, because that tells me a lot about what's on their mind and maybe what I need to start explaining better in my presentations. And overall, I think there is a growing awareness that maybe this is because I see things through rose colored glasses is I think the conversations really are more about economics than technology. Let me explain what I mean by that is that, when we start thinking about data and analytics from an economics perspective, we're going to get into a value conversation because economics is about value creation, distribution. It's about value. And we start having that conversation about value. I think more and more people feel empowered. They can have a voice, they can understand that versus talking about data and things like your data governance and data management, things that make people sort of fall asleep and, or the analytics stuff, which is a you mentioned the beginning is mathematically like the mathematics behind ChatGPT is stunning. It's absolutely stunning what they can do. But that stunning mathematics doesn't mean anything if we can't translate math models into economic models. And so the idea that we, end of the day, these technologies are here to serve us, not here to manage us. And so really I'm starting to see more and more people are getting more comfortable with the idea that a generative A.I. capability, How does that sit? I got a whole toolbox of tools I have. Which are the right tools to use in what situation? Now I rely very heavily on the data science telling me this is the best tool, best tool like this, and I'm not going to challenge them. I'm not going to quit on them. But here's the outcome I'm seeking, here's the KPIs, the metrics. Tell me what is the right set of tools to go after that? And by the way, there is no one tool, it's typically a combination of different kinds of algorithms are bringing together. They're slicing together. supply chaining them together, whatever. Right. So I do think there is a growing awareness and a growing empowerment among students who think about, 'Yes, A.I. is a tool, and here's how I can use it.' Now, there is there's a gap between the people who, been in the marketplace or the workforce for a long time who don't have maybe the kinds of training or awareness. And then there's a gap. People below them who, you know, I'm not talking about grade school students, though. I do think teaching data literacy in grade schools is probably a pretty good idea. So we've we're doing a great job at the college student level. We've got to find a way to trickle that down to, I think, you know lower ages students. We got to find a way to upgrade everybody in the organization, across the country. Everybody is impacted by this, as you said earlier. Right. If you use a GPS system, baby you're using A.I.

Jeff Frick 

Right. Well, a couple of things you trigger there. One is you talk a lot about economics being, you know, kind of creation of management of value. The other thing that I remember from my economics classes is economics about scarcity, right? And that's what drives supply demand curves and all these other curves, right? There was always this trade off and data has fundamentally changed that game and in a huge way. And I know we've talked about valuation on balance sheets before and the fact that they don't get it and, you know, you don't destroy it and you can use it at times and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's it's completely different. But I think it's interesting about the ChatGPT Right. Where the big potential is the democratization of access to the tools to people, to your point that that haven't been trained, but, but have the questions and have the curiosity and kind of know where to go. Now they have a new tool that's a little bit more powerful than their calculator to apply. And that's where it gets exciting, right? Because that's an innovation happens and more people have access to the tools.

Bill Schmarzo

So there's, I'm sure you've read the the Kissinger Eric Schmidt piece in The Wall Street Journal where they talk about their concern with chat is a disconnect between knowledge and understanding that we are that people also have knowledge, but they haven't earned it. There's actually a great quote. I can't give it to you. It's in my latest blog from the movie Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum talks.

Jeff Frick 

About I've seen that one. I've seen that one referenced.

Bill Schmarzo

Yeah. So this knowledge is not understanding. And I think what what I find really game changing about ChatGPT is I think it's going to transform how we value education and how we value people that we're, that people who just memorize and regurgitate knowledge aren't nearly as important as people who know how to apply knowledge. If we're going to get into an age where application is more important than regurgitation, which, by the way, I think has fundamental ripple through our education system, right? Because we have education that teaches memorization. So there's this knowledge versus understanding challenge right in front of us that ChatGPT just just laid right in front of us and one is not the other. So I think there's going to be ramifications that are going to benefit people who really think about, how do I apply these technologies from an economics perspective, I keep coming back to economics. But I want to I want to go on a point you a really interesting point you raised about scarcity. Do you mind if I go back there for a second?

Jeff Frick

Not at all

Bill Schmarzo

So I agree with you that scarcity of data is just not there, right? It's readily available. It can be reused blah, blah, blah. But what about the insights? What about these? The scarcity of these codified insights? Think about them as scores that, that's not really a scarcity. That's actually very, if I can build a better credit risk model than the person over here, that gives me an unfair advantage in trying to figure out who gets loans, what kind of terms they get, what kind of rates they get, that that's not an abundance thing. That's total scarcity. And so while while data itself is a very abundant asset, everybody's got it. It's not the data that's really interesting. It's those predictive behavioral performance insights, those predictive behavior performance propensities on what what customers are likely to do in what situations that is very rare and worth a lot, a lot of value in my opinion.

Jeff Frick 

Well it's always application right I mean oil in the ground is oil on the ground until you use it to do something with it. So yes, but I think was very different as the oil in the ground can only be used once. And that's right. Obviously, where the data is significantly different. So let's talk a little bit about education, because, you know, there was another article that got a lot of buzz right, with the Wharton professor that basically told his students that you need to use generative A.I. tools in the completion of these courses to force them to use the tool, just like we used to use calculators, or we still, I don't know, do I still have, calculators on my phone now like everything else is on my phone. But really to do more. Very good, it's not an HP something or something, though, come on.

Bill Schmarzo

It's a Casio, it cost me, the reason I have this here because it cost me a $1.99. And my point behind this is, if my career, my job was based on calculation of square root, this thing just replaced me.

Jeff Frick 

Well, it's it's also interesting because the HPs that originally came out that did the complicated stuff for hundreds and hundreds of dollars and it was Casio, the cheap ones, and suddenly everybody had a basic little calculator that could do square roots and stuff. And yeah, I think the the, the, the scary part about people maybe not being qualified to have the tools is so over balanced by the opportunity, you know, for the democratization because a lot more the people that do, are going to do it for good things and discover and discover new things. It's just it's just a very different way to have access to this information. And it's funny, you know, the education, they were built under system where all they had all the knowledge could be in one place. I mean, like literally all the knowledge about a topic and all the people that knew everything about it could literally be in one building. So that's a model that's not there.

Bill Schmarzo

Yeah, it's it is it is a real interesting education ramification. I actually ask my students use ChatGPT when we do our thinking like a data scientist process because they're researching companies around what you're going to try to build. You know, these these analytic models for and we got to understand what their business initiatives are and who their stakeholders are. And, you know, if you're asking ChatGPT 'Hey, John Deere, what are their top, top business initiatives' let ChatGPT tell you, you know, I would also say is find out the sources. Ask ChatGPT, what are the sources for this because I want to make certain that you know that the sources are something credible. The Wall Street Journal or Barron's or not from some Whack a doodle who sits in the middle of nowhere dreaming up crap. So you, you have to you really have to instill a critical thinking, in people are using ChatGPT and that's that's a good thing to have but if you, we shouldn't shy away from using it we shouldn't ban it. That's a that's a great way to guarantee it's got to be used inappropriately. All right. Let's so let's make sure we teach them how to use it effectively.

Jeff Frick 

So I'm curious with your kids, now, because, you're college kids that you teach. A lot of them now have grown up in the time of having a mobile device with access to information at their fingertips. Have you seen that manifest itself in your conversations with them in terms of their critical thinking or their use of data? Or do they drop references that they looked up or they feel confidence in? I mean, how has, you know, it's so different? We spent a lot of time in the library looking up data and writing reports and putting references and links. In fact, I used to go to UCLA. They had the best library because they had every single book in the psychology had ever been written. How, you know, what do you take from them, I know you love them and I know you learn a lot from them. You know what? What some of the the things you come back and tell Caroline about when you get home from from class.

Bill Schmarzo

Usually I'm exhausted. Three and half hour class on a Thursday night just I'm exhausted. But  what I see is that there's a tendency to take at face value whatever it comes up. So you ask it a question and it gives you an answer. And you think it comes from Walter Cronkite. So you believe it. This is why I say, tell me the sources. Check a reasonable test. Give me something,, peer review it, so to speak. Find other, two or three sources that confirm what you find. So a lot of, I love ChatGPT  because it gives you a hint as far as where to start. It's almost never 100%. Well, probably can be, but inside the kind of question we use, but it's only giving you a hint. And then from there you have to use your own judgment, your own experience, and more research to figure out, well, tell me more about this. It's this research it further, but it helps to jumpstart a lot of conversations that then they have to apply critical thinking skills to think, you know, what are the key business initiatives, Who are the stakeholders, what are the ramifications? So I again, I, I see that they are eager to use these tools. They're not scared of anything. But if we don't give them a framework around which to think about how to use this, if we don't teach, for example, critical thinking, what we we really need to start instilling critical thinking at an early age. So people they hear something. You go, does that sound reasonable? Let me let me check the source. Let me let me double check that. Yeah, just basic stuff.

Jeff Frick 

The trust is interesting and, you know, Edelman does a big paper on trust every year. They've done longitudinal thing for years and years. And what's interesting about trust? Just to pick on Tesla for a minute, You know, people climb in the back of their Tesla and take a nap while it's going down the freeway at 60 miles an hour. So what I think is interesting is this kind of inherent trust that technology's going to work. And maybe it's because it has worked so well most of the time. I mean, people don't even understand the magic behind a cell phone call from either a remote location or like in the middle of a conference floor with all those people and just what is going on in the background. So they trust it inherently, even though maybe they don't trust the company or they don't trust that people are taking care of their data. But it's this weird kind of presumption that of, well if it says self-driving, I'm just going to hit self-driving and take a nap.

Bill Schmarzo

Yeah, Yeah. It's. Trust is an interesting thing. And we've seen this way back early days when people would take spreadsheets and they would mung the, they would they would change the numbers and then present them as like, 'Oh, it's in a spreadsheet. It's got to be right', right, right. What? Show me the source of that data? It's interesting that the, and I don't I don't have an answer on this Jeff, but there does seem to be another, one needs to understand the the the criticality of the decisions you're making, the costs of being wrong, in order to figure out is it worth trusting the data or not. Now, I don't have a Tesla, but I don't think I would let it drive self-drive by itself because the costs of being wrong, I'm going to die or I'm going to kill other people, right? So to me, there's there needs to be a process around, how do you make an informed decision, and just, we could go rat hole on the whole COVID vaccination stuff. There was evidence out there that certain people were dying from this thing and certain types of people. And yet we, people didn't think clearly about what data do I, they  didn't have a decision framework for making a decision. They they turned to whatever their favorite TV, radio, print thing was and whatever that random person said is what I'm going to believe. So we have, as a society a real challenge with trust. And we we don't know. I'll get back to this. We don't know how to think critically. We don't know how to challenge authority. You know, maybe coming up in the, I wasn't a child of the sixties, but I was close. Right. And, you know, don't know, don't trust anybody over 35. And my answer would be, don't trust anybody who's got a podcast right, or a blog. Double check it, right. All right. Is that they're lying all the time. But I'm just going to make sure that they don't represent one view. So anyway.

Jeff Frick 

But I think it's interesting, right? Because it was, right. That's that that's the nature of college kids are supposed to be cynical, right? They're supposed to be challenging the status quo. They're supposed to be thinking about things differently. And yet sometimes if it comes through it, maybe it's a function of the vehicle, comes through the phone or whatever, Oh, this must be true. And it just it's interesting where we choose to just accept and where we choose to challenge. And and I would imagine critical thinking has to be huge part of your thing.

Bill Schmarzo

We don't, But Jeff, we don't teach decision making. We don't teach anybody. We don't teach problem solving at any really young age. We don't teach decision making how to make informed decisions. We we don't teach that.

Jeff Frick 

All right. I want to shift gears a little bit. And it's it's really in regards to communication and community. You have really I mean, you've been a speaker forever. You've been teaching for a long time. You've written lots of books. But in the last couple of years, you know, you've really increased your presence on LinkedIn and not to pick on LinkedIn, but you spent a lot of time there and you post almost every single day, if I'm not wrong, pretty, pretty close. I'm just curious in terms of your experience, in terms of community and real community and what that feels like and what it smells like, what it would touch in it tastes like, and then engagement and how that world both contributes to you and what you're trying to do professionally, what you're trying to do academically, and then what you're trying to do because you're Bill Schmarzo and you care about people.

Bill Schmarzo

So I find that I'm very lucky in the sense that there's a lot of really, really super smart people who follow and engage with me, people with a wide range of experiences and wide range of expertise. And I, when I post something, my job is to I feel like it's to nurture a conversation. You know, I don't try to shut people off. I, I'm still learning this stuff. So people have different perspectives to me is very important. And I find that, you know, 99.5% of the people I engage with are very productive. They're trying to share ideas. There's this sense of we're all learning together, #BetterTogether kind of stuff. So, you know, maybe I have because of what I've been doing, I've got a really community of folks who are brilliant and share stuff and everybody has a voice. And I try to encourage and every now and again you get somebody who's kind of cynical and I find that the best thing to do is to ignore them. Right? I don't want anybody to block them. I don't want to cancel anybody because you never know where the best ideas might come, because I certainly don't have them. And so I, I like to encourage conversation. I post a lot, There, my articles, my blogs are long. I think it's really hard. The intention of my blogs is I give it to my college students to read. I want them to, it's like it's like a homework assignment. So, you know, there are four or five pages. It's, you know, that's Schmarzo writing It's dry as hell. I mean, come on. So dense. The fact that the fact that people are willing to read this and then add to it, I am so grateful. I'm so lucky they're willing to contribute and then that the community sort of just builds very quickly and it's people throwing more ideas out there. So, you know, it isn't anything that I did on on purpose. It just sort of, the community evolved because people wanted to have a voice. They wanted to feel like they had a place they share ideas. They wanted to have a place where they could have constructive debate, where somebody who had a different view could come and say, no, I see it this way, and not have somebody say, Well, you're an idiot, blah, blah, blah. But you could say, Well, tell me more about your rationale. So I yeah, yeah. Jeff, I've been lucky.

Jeff Frick 

Yeah, but your not all lucky, I mean, you helped shape it, you know, you put the catalysts out there, you put some thoughtful research behind it and you put in and you share all these great frameworks, right? For people. Like I said, a lot of times it's just frameworks. People need frameworks. This is like, tell me how to do it and I'm happy to do it. I just don't know where to get started or I don't know how to prioritize or I don't know how to do which thing first.

Bill Schmarzo

That may be my one superpower, Jeff, is maybe I do think frameworks, I'm just a framework kind of guy. I'm always it, to me, it if I can't implement what I'm writing about, then don't bother writing about it. So I'm a very pragmatic, maybe that's the Iowa kid in me, right? I want to make sure that it can be applied, you know, applied, which is why this, the economics of ethics. I created that that template. So okay, let's try using this. Right. I don't feel it. I mean, change it. Modify it, tear it apart, make it better. But the bottom line is, make it better, right? So I maybe that's part of it.

Jeff Frick 

Well, let me get you on one of those real specifics. And that's your favorite thing you love to talk about and that's customer journey, which you took us on a Captain Crunch journey last time we spoke. But, you know, I had Martina Lauchengco on from Costanoa Ventures. She just wrote a book called LOVED, a Product Marketing Book. And her data point that I want to share with you is 70% of the buying decision now for most people's buying journey, depending on who you listen to, is done before they get to your front door. So, you know, the data collection, the analysis, the, maybe sampling, some stuff, talking to some friends, reading some reviews, not only on the product and the application, but also the company. And maybe I'm checking, you know, are the employees happy, that the you know, the variability in the customer journey is increasing also dramatically. I know that's a huge part of when you're doing your exercises and trying to really hone in on the value and where you can make improvements in the process. How we kind of square that circle, this crazy variability. And now there's so much information sources from a customer, from a customer informing point of view, right? There's so many more places for them to go to get information. So which you control, many that you don't.

Bill Schmarzo

Well, what I love about the Journey map is the first step in the process is awareness. So if you're a theme park and you're trying to, you know, get customers, trying to get customers to come to your theme park, like you said by the time they come to your theme park, they've already been. They're making the decision before you ever talk to them. And so how do you impact awareness? It is an awareness and accessibility issue in many cases, which is why I love the very first part of that journey map is, you know, customer has an intent, right? The customer, if you could understand the customer intent, then you have a chance to influence their awareness and direct them your direction. But if you don't understand their intent, you'll have no opportunity to manage, monitor and optimize what they're trying to do. And so we don't spend enough time trying to understand, 'Well, what is our customer trying to do?' They you know, they want to go on vacation. Okay, that's a great start. But think about the number of options. Yosemite, right? You got that. You go to you go to a baseball game or a basketball game or to a beach somewhere. There's just almost an endless number of options if I want to go on vacation. So how do you make sure you understand the customer's intentions, what their desired outcomes are? So I even know whether that's someone I can, if they want to go to the, if I'm a theme park and they want to go to the beach, I get some theme parks I could probably do that. But you know, if they want to go to a baseball game, they're not coming to my theme park, right? It's just so the the journey maps are a very powerful tool because it forces you to really start with the customer and their intent in mind, their desired outcomes and how they're going to measure success. And when you do that, that journey map becomes just this golden vehicle for helping you to make certain you understand What am I doing to make certain that customer has the right experience? What am I doing to make sure I have all the right componentry and all the other things that just, it just drives everything. And oh, by the way, it isn't just a customer who has a journey map. If you're at a theme park, your technicians have a journey map, your operators have a journey map. There's all kinds of other people who have journey maps along that process and mapping those journey maps and finding those linkage points between those maps is, that's, those those are force multipliers. So that's where things get very interesting, right?

Jeff Frick 

I can't help but think as you're talking about that and we talked about education in terms of, should we be done with average, Should we take average out of all the books?

Bill Schmarzo

Gosh Yes!

Jeff Frick

And just go with, confidence. You know, confidence levels with a range. And, I don't know, maybe really focus on, you know, more meaningful things than average? It's just like 'eye yay eye'  if we haven't moved past the age of average now we never have.

Bill Schmarzo

Well your great point right, average. Well first off no one's average. I just, there's no one who's actual average. So if you're trying to serve average, you're actually serving  nobody. But like you said, the average, if you look at variances. Right, and standard deviations, you have to think, you have to train on some really fundamental leverage of statistics so that, you know, if my shooting averages, you know, the three point range is 41%, that's great. My variability is between, you know, 40 and 42. That's even better, if it's between 20 and 60, it's like, yikes, right?

Jeff Frick

Tough to plan

Bill Schmarzo

Yeah. So you got to understand, the variations in their, average doesn't mean anything if you don't understand variation. And I do think if you make decisions based on averages, at best, you're going to get average results.

Jeff Frick 

Right? And to your point, it's always about trying to increase the probability of the relationship of these things that if we do this, they're going to do that. But it's not necessarily ever a direct, direct connection. It's all at the end of day, probabilities and confidence levels.

Bill Schmarzo

Bingo's probabilities and confidence level. That's what we should be teaching that. So people think about, you know, what's the probability this customer is going to do this. And that gets back to understanding, if I'm building probabilities into my models, what are the cost of the false positive and false negatives? Do I understand what it costs to be wrong? Is is that probability sufficient or do I need to figure out a way to improve my probability before I make that decision? So I do think probabilities and confidence levels are a much better way to train our our thinkers, our students than average. Which doesn't mean anything,

Jeff Frick 

Right. Even just adding mode and median to, I mean, I've got average in most of my spreadsheets, right? But now I'm adding mode and meeting just just those two simple things, I should probably add standard deviation, adds so much more information. to a set of data as you start to have more these indicators, you know, these windows.

Bill Schmarzo

And if your goal is to make more informed decisions, you should know that your standard deviation to figure out if I'm going to make that decision. And here's where it sits on this. You know, 95% confidence, 98%. Right. Whatever those levels are. So again, it's probabilities and confidence levels. So you can make more informed decisions.

Jeff Frick 

All right, Bill. Well, it's always fantastic to catch up and congrats on the move and things, looks like you're settling in very well and you spend lots of time with all the kids at school and gobs of podcasts. You got to update your own website though, so that you've got the laundry list of podcasts. You've been on, so I could find them easier for my research.

Bill Schmarzo

Yeah, well, my, daughter does that and she's busy finishing grad school and got a job, so I've, Pops has fallen down the pecking order for doing my stuff for me.

Jeff Frick 

All right. Well, thanks again, Bill. It's always a treat and great to catch up.

Bill Schmarzo

Great. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Frick 

Alright, he's Bill. I'm Jeff. You're watching 'Turn the Lens' with Jeff Frick. Thanks for watching and listening on the podcast. We'll see you next time. Take care.

Cold Close

Awesome, fun. Yeah, we'll see how those picks do, huh? UConn I have going a lot further than most people. I think UConn is a sleeper.

‍

‍