things you can sensibly do if you don’t have data
It would be really so helpful if you – newcomer to the scene, start-up in a phalanx of legacy orgs, candidate with no name recognition – had sharp, trustworthy, comprehensive, tailored data on your market and your impact and all the little tactical pieces of your operation. You’re no fool! You don’t want to make decisions based on vibes and hope.
When you’re scrapping at the start, you might not have that data. Often that data is expensive to get. Often it is jealously guarded by legacy players. Often you have it, but it’s a few buckets of bits awash in a mixed sea of them. You don’t have the time or the team to filter it.
What to do? A couple options to consider:
Get some data with a small-scale experiment. Track what’s happening for a week or a month. Give yourself some standard of comparison for what comes next. This data will be incomplete and shaggy with caveats. Still better than vibes alone.
Use values instead of vibes. If you don’t have data that obviously steers you and the data you can collect from a short experiment is too fickle to act on, return to the core reasons your venture exists. What are the characteristics of your team and your work at their very best, ie, achieving their mission against the odds? Choose a next step that most tightly aligns with those characteristics, those values.
-eric
