On Monday, I went to a Chinwag meeting on measuring social media. This was 2.0 cubed: I found the meeting through 2.0; Chinwag is very much 2.0 (check their job board); and social media (Facebook, etc.) is 2.0

The meeting was held in the basement of Slug n Lettuce on Waldour Street, just up from China Town. Being just after the Chinese New Year, I got to see Gerrard Street festooned with Red Lanterns. Great pub, but not such a great place for a meeting. It was physically difficult to circulate and the acoustics are terrible. Networking by shouting.

That said, there were five speakers, if I recall, and Jim Sterne had flown over from California to chair.

It was interesting. The audience wanted to talk to the dynamic nature or social media and Jim, I thought, was batting us down.

Here is a quote from a book on complexity theory and management that captures, what I thought, was the sentiment from the floor

” . . it is not enough for managers to adjust their behaviour in response to feedback on the success of their actions relative to pre-established targets; they also need to reflect on the appropriateness, in the light of unfolding events, of the assumptions (the mental model) used to set up those actions and targets,”

A metric that provides feedback tells us about yesterday. We need metrics that encourage double loop learning - that change the questions we ask. Metric suppliers need to be brave enough to interpret the data they collect, do a bit of scenario planning, and initiate conversations which enhance marketers understanding of what consumers want.

15 years ago, double loop learning might have been what Professor Ralph Stacey of University of Hertfordshire called extraordinary management. Today, double loop learning is ordinary management.

What the floor was interested in was feed forward. Not whether you achieved sales. But whether you can monitor in real time what consumers want. And take part meaningfully in a conversation with them.