expertSEM

Today I went out to lunch with Jared and I suggested the fried rice with duck and shrimp. He stated he never had duck but what the heck let me give it a try (it was good).

I was trying to think of my tip of the week and thanks to Jared I’m going super simple. So here is the tip. Try something new.

This applies to all facets of life. For example, I think I’m the only person that grew up in Baltimore and never played lacrosse. This year thanks to a friend convincing me to give it a shot I now have a real love of the game and its one of the things I look forward to the most (also checking people is a good form of aggression release).

Alex Porter and Ben Focht

Applying this practice to work is sometimes a little harder as we tend to get stuck in our ways and our way of thinking.

We’ve hired on a few young and very bright folks around here recently and I’ve asked them to take a look at some of our data and let me know what they think. Low and behold a whole new way of looking at data and some interesting ideas on optimization. Now I know I didn’t try something new per se, but I think this counts. Having someone new to a project puts a fresh set of eyes and ideas to it and can produce fantastic results.

The world of online marketing moves quite quickly, so there is no dearth of new ideas to test out, so here’s a challenge. By next week try one thing new. Maybe’s its a new software, or a new optimization tool, or a new reporting structure. Maybe its as simple as speaking with a completely different person about their persective on a project, maybe its wearing flip flops to work.

Feel free to let me know what you tried and if it was successful.