6th Day of Christmas

6th Day of Christmas = Six Deep Dives


In the actual song, it is "Six Geese A Laying".


We've all witnessed geese, flying five hundred feet above us, in that classic "V" formation.


In 2011, I heard from many of you.  One thing surprised me.  Compared with when I started MineThatData, I can honestly say that many of us are flying above the surface, in a classic "V" formation.


In other words, we're not on the ground floor, doing the actual work.  Instead, we're up in the sky, all in formation, doing the same thing.  We aren't in the trenches.  We have become great at all singing in unison that "Blackberry Devices are Dead" or "Amazon is Driving Down Prices" or "Free Shipping Will Be Table-Stakes".  


Heck, I sat with an Executive last summer ... this person issued a 2,500 word thesis on the future of Amazon and commerce ... but when I asked the Executive what this meant for his business, he drew a blank.


We're flying in formation, in unison.


We're not on the ground floor, doing deep dives about our own business.


Maybe we don't want to be accountable for what happens when we do a deep dive about our own business.


In 2012, schedule six deep dives ... and I'm not talking about micro-managing the search manager about long-tail keyword bidding strategies ... no, I 'm talking about actual strategy.

• "What do we do when the USPS no longer exists as a functional delivery service in 2015?"
• "What would we do if Google obliterated Natural Search?"
• "Describe what you'll do on a tablet device in 2015, and how do we manage the resources we need to do this in 2015?"
• "What does our expense structure look like if we offered free shipping 24/7/365?  What would annual sales look like?"