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a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel, traditionally one year for every seven years worked.
“she’s away on sabbatical”

Some people take these types of sabbaticals and wander into the sands of Marfa, TX to find their spirit animals, or travel to Bali to backpack and change their lives. All are fantastic options if you can make them happen.

However, my sabbatical was more of the quit your job, balance your finances, have a supportive partner, stay put and take time off type.

The top question I am getting from friends, family, ex-colleagues, and even during job interviews is “How does a sabbatical work and, seriously, what are you even doing with your life?”

I’ve been working for the last 21 years straight with no meaningful break. Why should only academics get a break? After COVID-19, selling a house, moving into a new house, plenty of home projects, helping to sell my last agency, rough clients, working at the new company, and being a new Dad, it was time to refresh my life, work, and brain.

It was time to focus on some true north objectives in my life and develop some new personal FAST goals along the way. So how does that work?

For me it’s simple. Lean into things you love, while you can spend more time.

1. Being the best Dad I can be. People love to tell me that 0–4 are some of the most important years of any child’s life (what about the rest?) and I have actually been listening. I’ve been taking this time to make sure I drive my son every morning and pick him up every afternoon, and I’ve been blessed to put down my phone and not worry about meetings/emails/teams messages/slack DMs/RFPs/WBS codes/LinkedIn connects to sell me email lists of Metaverse/WEB3 B2B clients (EYE ROLL). Instead, I get to really pay attention to every moment of every day I have with him and my amazing wife. Part of being there is being healthy as well. I’m running/swimming more, and I’ve cut 80% of the meat out of my diet (for climate change reasons and my own health). Since I quit my last job I’ve lost seven pounds and counting.
2. Learn. I’m very motivated by learning. So I was excited to be accepted to the Terra.do Climate Change school and I’m currently immersed in their ten-week program. It’s been fascinating to learn the physics, chemistry, and computer modeling behind climate change science and how to communicate something so severe to your friends, family, and the general public. (Or even the trolls on Twitter some days). Weekly classes, homework, and labs are part of the program and have been eye-opening in my own climate change journey. I want my next job to be in part of this world. I also signed up for the Hustle Fund Angel Squad to learn how to be a better angel investor. It’s been great to go through their program, see live pitches, and understand how GPs (General Partners) make investment decisions.
3. Lean into Fundraising. I’m on the board of a pretty unique nonprofit here in Austin, TX called Multicultural Refugee Center (MRC). They have a wonderful revenue split of 50% philanthropy and 50% earned revenue. We operate a textile manufacturing business and a farm. All where Refugees, Asylum seekers, and Immigrants (RAIs) get paid a solid wage and receive health care benefits. Part of my sabbatical has been leaning into fundraising, helping them target donors, and helping them track down social impact investors as well. Know folks who would support this cause? Please drop me a comment.

So what’s next?

I don’t know yet, and that’s the beauty of this moment in my life. And if you go this route you won’t know either. But that’s the experiment.

Coming from an experimentation background, these are all exciting hypotheses to me. And I’m running the experiments above to figure it out.

If you can, take time off. It can be the kind where you go into the desert and imagine your spirit animal is telling you to create an algorithm that makes the world a “better place.” Or it can be the kind where you just relax and rewatch The Wire, or it can be what I described above where you lean into things you enjoy that take a little time and effort.

Time and effort you wouldn’t have if you had a full-time job. But if you have the opportunity to take time between your next job and the one you have, do it.

If anyone reading this wants to know more about Terra.do, The Hustle Fund, or MRC please contact me. If you are trying to sell me a list of Metaverse-related B2B sales emails on LinkedIn, please just stop before you start.

Organizational distant dangers take many forms. On the one hand, we put off dealing with issues that are important but not urgent because dealing with the inevitable power struggle is just too hard. A common example is an executive team that delays setting clear investment priorities. Or a team that doesn’t take the time to thoroughly work through roles and accountabilities across the business, market, and function matrix. On the other hand, we tend to jump to solving what looks urgent, when a slower approach might be better. An example is adopting technological trends in response to the fear of being behind competitors, instead of iteratively testing over time.

The late Elliott Jaques (1989) created a useful framework for designing leadership work in large organizations. One aspect of this multifaceted framework is managerial focus across time. His belief was that the top leadership level of the company should have a decision horizon in years. Executive time together should be focused on making a few, big decisions that would have long term business impact (acquisitions, new markets, new product lines). Conversely, front line team leaders should be empowered to make many decisions but with an impact horizon only for the coming weeks or months (staffing, work schedules, project timelines). In other words, the executive team should make fewer, bigger decisions while the front line is enabled to make many, fast decisions – within clear bounds – without having the escalate.

Fewer bigger decisions for executives means more focus on assessment problems in depth. A startup CEO I worked for printed out bumper stickers that said, Love your problems, not your solutions. Problems are the fulcrum for good solutions. Ideas are plentiful, but well understood problems are rare. We believe that deep understanding of root causes of issues and the implications of options is at the very heart of senior leader work today.

Understanding the problem starts with diagnostics. An organization assessment will help you:

1. Define the problems to be solved and their root causes.
2. Surface good ideas.
3. Identify resistance and differences in perspectives.
4. Create shared understanding.
5. Start the change management process.

Let’s look a little closer at our first bullet, how we define the problems to be solved. A robust problem statement is not just data, or opinions, or pain points. It is an articulation of the organization arrangements that are creating a system that leads to unproductive behavior and outcomes.

According to Kates, Kesler and DiMartino effective problem statements are:

• A clear statement of what you are “solving for.”
• Provide insight, not just a replay of symptoms.
• Include strengths and are not all bad news.
• Provide a clear point of view backed by data.

We use the Star Model to ensure our problem identification is holistic and takes a systems view.

We listen to the voice of the organization and identify problem themes. What are we hearing as issues, regardless of the questions we ask? Why are these problems important? How do we know – how is it measured? Who is affected by it? Where does it occur? When does it occur?

Leaders who want to speed decision-making lower in the organization should spend more time aligning on high-impact organizational issues. The solutions will then create the clarity to empower those on the front line. So, we advise:

• Slow down to speed up – spend more time as a leadership team focused on fewer, bigger topics that will have impact over a longer time horizon.
• Use the STAR model as the basis for a robust organization assessment to find ways to create the clarity that will empower your employees.
• Love your problems, not just your solutions.

Need help with this at your organization? Shoot me an email or grab me on Twitter. I’m happy to talk.

Why pursue this DPO?

There was a ton of thinking and planning that went into this campaign including a way to democratize the normal investment process. This structure was not about just asking for investment, but expanding who gets access. We wanted to make sure that investors didn’t have to be accredited to be a part of this raise. There are nonprofits that go out and offer debt, but it’s often only available to accredited investors. We wanted to be able to bring in both a large institutional investor like one of our technology company partners such as Microsoft alongside a retail investor from our nonprofit user community ? We believed that the DPO could accomplish that.

It’s also hard to raise non-restricted donations at the level we needed which was $11.5M to invest in new technology and serve more organizations globally as well as better serve existing organizations. We also looked at a CA-state based DPO. That wasn’t ideal because it was too limiting. We have community all over the world. With the RegA Tier 2, we can’t easily fundraise globally but we can work with investors across across most of the 50 states in the U.S.

How did the approach develop?

Rebecca Masisak, our CEO, was the real visionary behind this and soon the DPO became a real opportunity for main street investors to participate. We received a lot of help from our advisors as well as our outside legal counsel, Cutting Edge Legal Counsel (https://www.cuttingedgecounsel.com/). It was great to have a partner that was so knowledgeable and supportive of the vision for this raise.

How is the status of the fundraising?

We launched in November 2018. We are now 80% there with $2+ million left to raise over the next few months. We did temporarily pause fundraising for a portion of 2020 due to the pandemic. It felt inappropriate to actively fundraise when we and other organizations were trying to rapidly pivot to support the community in such unprecedented times. Instead our team focused on fundraising for a COVID resilience and recovery fund which offset the costs of nonprofits quickly pivoting to fully remote work. (https://page.techsoup.org/en/covid-19-ngo-recovery-fund-2021)

Since restarting the DPO fundraising in earnest, we have been delighted by the response. We have also adapted our approach and are now hosting online events including participating in Impact Finance Center’s investor clubs. We’ll be participating in another IFC investor club event on July 21 from 9–11AM pacific time and that virtual event is open to retail and accredited investors alike. And anyone interested in learning more about the investment terms can go to SVX US to learn more.

Who else is doing this? Any great successes?

We believe that TechSoup was the first nonprofit to qualify for a SEC Reg A/ Tier II Offering in order to fundraise in most U.S. states. We hope that we can share lessons with other nonprofits so that more organizations can explore these types of fundraising strategies. Some others we see doing great work to democratize investment for community impact are:

• East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative. EBPREC: https://ebprec.org/
• Downtown Crenshaw Rising: https://www.downtowncrenshaw.com/, https://www.downtowncrenshaw.com/the_plan
• Seed Commons https://seedcommons.org/
• Jen Astone’s Transformative 25: https://iciaptos.com/the-transformative-25-part-2-of-2/

People who know me, know I love a quick +/delta? What’s going well? What would you change?

+

• The Diversity of investor types is incredible!
• We are already deploying capital and completing projects including a technology platform upgrade.
• The partnerships with our platform provider, SVX US and our legal counsel has really proven that it’s important to work with partners that have shared values.
• We have learned a ton about engaging community differently than ever before.

Delta

• We assumed that a lot of our foundation partners would find us to be good candidates for their Program Related Investments. We’ve found that investment criteria for PRIs doesn’t lend itself well to general operating and infrastructure needs like ours and the decision-making timeframe is quite lengthy..
• Family Foundations that don’t have a long process to invest are way more open to exploring moving more of their endowments towards impact and feel like the 5% return on the Risk Capital Note is competitive for a fixed income product .
• We would like to engage RIAs and DAFs more. Thinking more about a bigger investors/LP education campaign next time. (Due diligence education, legal fees, taxes, etc)

Failure to commit to continuously enhance the user experience across the entire user journey will put companies way behind.

In our last two Accenture studies, the price has been a primary influencer on customers’ likeliness to stay with a service. In 2020, although price is still important, experience has become a more significant driver of brand connection and perceived value.

So what’s driving this experience? And what enables this experience to constantly adjust to consumers changing behavior? We firmly believe that it’s building a true culture of experimentation that solves customer problems and solves internal business problems. On that note, I’m proud to launch a case study that I co-authored called:

Rocket Fuel for Winning Experiences in the Streaming Races.

I was also proud to lead the client work from an Accenture perspective. Our client was a major North American video streaming service, launched over 10 years ago, with over 25 million North American subscribers. They anticipated a period of high growth with a rise in subscribers and sought to scale their user experiment volume from 50 to 200+ per year.

Our team won the work and after using our Problem Solution Methodology, we defined clear customer and business problems, this led to us co-developing an overall strategy that defined a roadmap for creating a culture of experimentation, creating the process and governance, helping the client define the data and experimentation tooling approach as well as an implementation roadmap to go do the work. We also helped cut through organizational politics and ended up re-aligning their team with a new executive sponsor and creating an experimentation center of excellence. We worked across people, processes, technology, data, and culture to enable a true team that could scale. So what did we enable with our work?

Interested in working with us to grow experimentation or change your culture? Let’s talk.

By Matt Policastro and David J. Neff

Establishing distinctions between conventional analysts and data scientists at varying degrees of organizational data maturity.

We are asked about this quandary over and over again in our consulting work with all types of organizations. Data is now a fundamental business asset and its requirements have slowly reshaped organizational roles and specializations. Where the act of data collection was once laborious and intentional, advances in software have enabled the measurement and metrification of almost every aspect of business and consumer activity.

Organizations and roles tried their best to adapt, or die.

However, the goalposts for successfully extracting value from data collection, management, and analysis only continued to move further down-field. Traditional analysts often weren’t able to navigate massive, complex data storage systems; software engineers weren’t equipped with the domain expertise to develop robust statistics or business-relevant insights.

In response, data science—and data scientists—emerged as a multidisciplinary bricolage rooted in three core competencies:

• Statistics and analytics. Extracting meaning or value from sets of data.
• Business and domain expertise. Translating between technical realities and business goals and constraints.
• Computation and information systems. Developing software solutions to otherwise intractable problems around the storage and processing of data.

Due to the sweeping breadth of these competencies, the role of a data scientist has tended toward more ambiguity than the traditional analyst or engineer, causing confusion in some of the organizations we’ve encountered.  However, in many organizations, the data scientist has adopted a generalist scope with a consultative approach to navigate technical environments and to negotiate evolving business needs. 

That’s a good sign for your business and culture. That said, we’ve seen that how an organization manages this shift depends a lot on where it is in its journey to becoming fully data-driven. 

In moderately data-mature organizations, the lines between analysts and data scientists are straightforward and skill-based: data scientists perform an analyst’s responsibilities in technically-complex or loosely-defined contexts. As these organizations recognize and realize their new needs, we tend to see data scientists being distinguished from analysts in several ways:

• Projects take weeks to months instead of hours to days.
• Data comes in unstructured, disjointed, or messy formats rather than ready-to-analyze sheets and tables.
• Methods are specific and directed (e.g. context-appropriate statistical tests and techniques) rather than out-of-the-box or plug-and play (e.g. online tools and built-in calculators).
• Datasets are measured in the millions or billions of rows rather than the hundreds or thousands.
• Computer programming is required for deriving insights and value instead of general-purpose software.

Of course, these distinctions vary between organizations, but the common wisdom remains the same: when an analyst can’t do it you should hire a data scientist. Furthermore, whenever we discuss this topic with the human beings actually doing the day-to-day work of data, they are often very open to these distinctions (leaving organizational politics at the door for the moment) and often share united objectives and FAST goals. This results in clear role separations and management strategies—in theory.

In practice, the lines are much blurrier. The processes and personnel supporting data-driven initiatives have grown ever-more specialized. As such, data practitioners operate in many different subdisciplines—processing and pipelining, tracking and instrumentation, machine learning and artificial intelligence, presentation and visualization, to name only a few—and data science has become an ungainly label for such a broad swath of data-oriented business practices. 

This lack of clarity has often translated into “special projects” which fizzle out more often than not. Hiring a gaggle of PhDs from academia without giving them a clear mandate has been the folly of many of the organizations we’ve worked with. 

So what should you do inside your own organization?

As we’ve seen (and if you look deep inside your own org), the now-clumsy distinction between analysts and data scientists is becoming a point of contention inside mature, data-driven enterprises. Analysts are doing more work that feels like data science and vice versa—these combinations are driving uncomfortable conversations around management structure, career advancement, and compensation.

The reality is that data practitioners aren’t tidily arranged around the three core competencies of data science—they live in a much broader and fuzzier space of intersecting skills and capabilities. And, to make things even more confusing, fully-matured data organizations require baseline data literacy from every employee—rendering moot almost all of the distinctions we listed above. 

We believe the new managing principle for data-driven organizations is the spectrum—not binary—between exploratory and confirmatory data questions:

• Confirmatory. Conventional analyst role. Extracting value from challenging, complex, but ultimately well-mapped data sources using common tools and techniques to maintain consistency throughout the business.
• Exploratory. Conventional data scientist role. Discovering value by discovering and defining unknown or unconventional data sources through a technically diverse, machine-augmented toolbox.

Fully-mature, data-driven organizations are less concerned with the measurement and management of metrics—they organize and thrive on the generation and refinement of knowledge. There is still plenty to be done to translate this principle into how roles are defined, titled, and managed, but this approach re-levels the playing field for all data practitioners and ensures they are working on the questions which are right for them and their level of technical ability.

So what do you think? Leave us a note in the comments.

I was honored to host this on-demand webinar with one of my favorite clients, Jill Brown Thomas, Head of the Optimization program at Wolverine Worldwide. In this webinar I interview her about the work we did together changing culture and building a testing program across 12 very different brands. From alignment on people, to building process, to buying technology, to changing and establishing new culture, Jill discusses what works and what doesn’t, and what the future holds for Wolverine’s Experience Optimization Journey.

You can grab the slides or watch the on-demand webinar.

• How to unify best practices across a portfolio of brands.
• A new model for uncovering what’s important to test called Problem Solution Mapping.
• The importance of changing culture through education and certification work.
• How every team (from marketing to eCommerce to product) should have two roadmaps. One powered by validated and prioritized customer problems, and one powered by validated and prioritized internal problems (people, process, tech, data, strategy and culture).
• New use cases for running experiments that move the needle.
• How by solving customer and business problems, they unlocked a true experimentation team that worked better with internal and outside partners.

I just got back from ShopTalk in Las Vegas where over 8,000 retail, eCommerce, VC and brand folks gathered to hear from executives of some of the world’s biggest brands on the latest trends, failures, and technology and to be assaulted by “AI-powered” drink serving robots and vending machines that were there only for show. (Which is a shame, I really would have bought those Ricola, CVS!) I wanted to provide a quick recap so I took a quiet 15 minutes amongst the clanging slot machines to provide you the fast five.

1. Omnichannel is omnipresent.

And you thought you heard the world personalization a hundred times last year at ShopTalk or Shop.org!  Not only did omnichannel get mentioned 200 times a day, have its own track, and almost every booth we passed had the word added to their signage. This really had a fracturing effect on the term as it became embroiled with technology solutions from large and small providers. And while there are some great technologies out there to enable omnichannel (BOPIS, shipping lockers, easy returns) it really should just be focused on the actual problem set customers have. See #3 for our thoughts on that. I did appreciate the Google Retail booth which attempted to showcase all their omnichannel partners with mini demos from Trax to their shipping partners.

2.  The store of the future is still in the future.

Trust me. I’m a MAJOR nerd for the store of the future technology and realizing the dream. Who doesn’t want the grocery store to show up in front of your house? Proving that mall owners are not just resting in their graves, the folks at Macerich BrandBox showcased rotating/changeable retail space of the future. But they don’t have one actually launched yet. However, what is actually happening is simple smart tech from folks like Kroger/Microsoft to fix universal online/shelf pricing. Or computer vision using already existing loss prevention cameras. Or Accenture using VR to test merchandising. These incremental changes are starting to take hold, moving us closer to where we want to go. However, the folks at Soma had a great reminder that we should be talking more about the store associate of the future, instead of the store of the future. They are doubling down on training store associates, equipping them with tech and even giving them their own landing pages so customers can shop trends alongside personal, store based recommendations.

3. Meet me where I am, and hurry up already.

This is really how we should be thinking about omnichannel personalization. Why don’t you try asking the customer what they want? And then providing it for them? Seems easy, but of course, it’s not. From returns to search to ordering by voice (Amazon and Google), a wide range of speakers took the stage to talk about this topic.  Some great examples were 7-11 and Sam’s Club not chasing the nirvana fallacy of cashierless shopping, but instead slowly changing the customer experience. Sam’s Club scan and go seems to be a big hit in their stores. But, David, you ask, don’t I still have to have that person check my basket before I leave? You do, but they are equipping them with technology to check the basket even faster. I also appreciated Crate and Barrel adding more interior design associates who can help you get your house looking great. Oh, and they will 3D map your living room to help you make the right choices. Also when it comes to voice, will every brand have to have an Alexa app to make it worth their time? Doesn’t that just lead us to the same place we are with apps?

4. It’s the Experience…and everything is an experiment.

Everyone is waking up to the power of the online and offline customer experience. From selling red staplers to high-end fashion, tons of folks presented on creating authentic customer interactions. Have you seen Planet 13 ? They are not just building a superstore (with high-security mind you) they are trying to build an attraction that will lure you away from the Vegas casinos with a restaurant, production facility with tours, event space for bachelor/bachelorette parties and more (depending on local laws). Also, I was introduced to the Camp experience in NYC. Which is a summer camp for kids with retail attached, where you have to buy a ticket to attend. Even legacy mall folks are getting into the act with swimming pools, ski slopes and nighttime DJ sets. The question is…does that actually build trust and relationships with your customers? And how are they testing that? It does seem that an experimentation mindset was driving the brick & mortar and pop-up rollouts. We heard that with BrandBox. We heard that from the Tapestry CEO in reference to brick & mortar. And we also heard that mentioned by Neela Montgomery, CEO, Crate and Barrel.

5. The VC Fallacy.

The CEO of neighborhood goods took the stage and talked a lot about the VC fallacy. People are so excited to back this new crop of DTC startups that they pour in money and encourage them to open their first retail stores. Their CEO talked about how he thought he could go from 0 locations to one open store in six months. As any retail CEO can tell you (including my wife opening her second location) that’s just not reality. Building physical retail is rough. With permits, construction, electric, plumbing, staffing all being real-world problems that aren’t magically solved because you are a startup. On the same VC slant, I personally recommend attending the yearly VC panel. This year it featured Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures, the one and only Aileen Lee, Founder & Managing Partner, Cowboy Ventures and Nicole Quinn, Partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners. All who had an amazing perspective on up and coming CPG and DTC brands and trends.

Finally, I will leave you with two fun things. Have you seen DogSpot? It’s airbnb for your dog while you shop. But for your dog.  The other is an amazing quip from John Evons. He’s the VP of Keens shoes, but every day he wears Amazon private label shoes in his office to remind his team of what the future could hold….
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In my day to day consulting work with Fortune 500 companies I see the same set of problems arise from the grave like some sort of corporate zombie. These problems present themselves as people, process, strategy, data, and cultureover and over again.

As my friends at Dynamic Yield like to say, “The problem is, with too much weight put on the technology behind personalization and not enough on the foundations needed to build and scale a successful program, organizations are finding themselves stuck in the trough of disillusionment phase on the Gartner Hype Cycle.”

Using the innovative SVX impact investment platform, TechSoup intends to raise $11.5 million through a Direct Public Offering (DPO). TechSoup connects civil society organizations and changemakers around the world to the resources they need to design and implement technology solutions for a more equitable planet.

The TechSoup DPO, which includes three tiers of debt securities investments, marks the first time the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has qualified a nonprofit to raise funds nationally through a Regulation A+ / Tier 2 offering.

With investment minimums as low as $50, it is uniquely structured to engage with TechSoup’s community, including the nonprofits they serve, the technology companies they support, and those who have supported TechSoup for 30 years.

I put in $500.00 (wish I could do more) and intend to get a 2% return on my investment. I don’t intent to stop donating, but I love that they have this an option. I’ll keep everyone in this space up to date on what my returns look like and if you have a social impact company that’s working on affordable housing, please email me.