When you build software, you add little hooks into the code so that, as users open a window, tap a picture, upload a file, the code tattles on them, sending some of their data to another company’s server. Log data is sowed; reports are reaped. This is known as “analytics” or, if there are people with advanced degrees involved, “data science.”
I cofounded a software company, like a doofus, so I attend a weekly analytics meeting. I nod at the Zoom camera and say things like “Not surprising to see that drop-off” or “Promising, but let’s keep our focus on the people who aren’t engaged.” My cofounder runs “product”; I’m loosely in charge of “the funnel.” The funnel, in case you are blessed not to know, is an inverted triangle with horizontal stripes. The top of the funnel, the first stripe, is the stuff that brings in visitors—advertising, YouTube tutorials, LinkedIn posts, newsletters, blog posts, all the endless churn of content. Some fraction of those visitors sign up for the newsletter (that’s stripe two), and a fraction of those sign up for the product (three), and a fraction of those turn into customers—conversion! So it’s not really a funnel, more of a juicer.
In our analytics meetings, we measure the human juice as it dribbles in: pages visited, sign-ups, actions taken. We talk about how to squeeze more. We behave ourselves and don’t track the people who ask us not to track them. We say things like “Team, 98 percent of our beloved users never click the gray button. Have we considered red?” No one ever says, “Eileen in apartment 4A is saving links about fentanyl—let’s tell her insurer.” They’re good meetings. I’ve done them for years. But this past summer, something felt off.
The summer was very warm. I don’t need to tell you, do I? One of our managers came back from vacation and told us that they rarely left their hotel because it was too hot in the daytime. Birds and humans alike changed migration patterns, sometimes to route around floods and fires. Protesters questioned humanity’s endless focus on growth; arrests were made. Climate Week came and went, presumably leaving 51 other weeks without climate.
As the leaves turned, my wilted brain figured it out. Here I was, looking for growth—how to get from 10,000 users to 10,001—while outside the company, people were marching about how it was time to focus on absolutely anything else. I tend to agree with them. Our startup has a small carbon footprint, so we’re not the problem in that sense. But was growth the right metric, the only metric, for us to obsess about?
My mind drifted to a book called Lean Logic. It’s a big red book. I took it off the shelf and skimmed through it. It’s the life’s work of a British economist named David Fleming, published after his death in 2010. Fleming was of his time—big into predicting peak oil and very against nuclear power—but the book is a one-person hypertext of surprising depth, and it is very helpful framing as things get a little worse. (The whole thing is available for free at Leanlogic.online.)
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