This time of year is my favorite because it is horticulture season. Typically, we plant between the end of May and the end of June, depending on the unpredictable New England climate, and observe the seedlings taking root and growing.
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This year, we have lettuce, various types of tomatoes, various types of chili peppers, cucumbers, and strawberries. I find gardening to be very relaxing. I once read that if you verbally encourage your plants, they will grow better than those you don’t encourage and much better than those you actively denigrate, so while I water or prune, I enthusiastically encourage the little things.
I wasn’t always interested in gardening (tell me you’re an adult without telling me you’re an adult), but one of the reasons I’ve grown to enjoy it is because, as the one and only Dame Helen Mirren once said, “Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That is their appeal.”
Indeed, horticulture has taught me a great deal, particularly:
Plan in advance. In the spring, I construct a diagram of what I intend to plant and where based on their light and space requirements. Thus, I will know how many seedlings to acquire and where they should be planted.
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Companion cultivation is the most effective. Not all plants flourish in close proximity to one another, while others do. Tomatoes and basil, for example, thrive in close proximity. Cucumbers and tomatoes do not. However, radishes appreciate the company of cucumbers but dislike cauliflower. Who would have known?
Daily maintenance is necessary. I enjoy the daily ritual of horticulture because it is soothing and predictable.
Feed the soil rather than the vegetation. Pouring plant food on their leaves is ineffective; the soil must contain the nutrients for the plant to be robust from the roots up.
Raccoons are the adversaries. As agents of disorder, rodents can wreak havoc on a garden even before it bears fruit. They will unearth the young plants and remove their foliage for no apparent reason (at least, none that I can discern).
The bounty is best appreciated by others. While I acknowledge that eating a tomato or strawberry directly from the plant is delicious, I much prefer to share with friends and family and celebrate the success with others in the community.
Each harvest imparts fresh teachings. Each year, we modify our garden based on what we’ve learned from the previous year. For example, I no longer consume broccoli. Despite my greatest efforts, I simply cannot make it grow. In the meantime, I’ve discovered a location where lettuce flourishes, so I cultivate it multiple times per season.
No individual can control the atmosphere. I wish though I cannot.
I’ve also realized that gardens perfectly illustrate James Clear’s claim that systems are superior to objectives. In his book Atomic Habits, he argues, “Goals can provide direction and even propel you forward in the short term, but a well-designed system will always prevail in the long run.” Important is the presence of a system. Commitment to the process is the determining factor.”
A garden is a system whose objective is to grow healthy vegetation.
Similarly to how flora is to gardens, first-party consumer data is to competitive advantage. Companies with an effective system for collecting, unifying, and activating consumer data to drive development will have a competitive advantage over those that desire the same result but lack the system to achieve it.
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A customer data platform (CDP) is a system that companies are increasingly turning to because they need to:
1. Survive the deprecation of third-party data and prosper in a privacy-focused, first-party data world.
2. Make operational agility an institutional discipline so you can capture market share while your competitors are in a panicked state of despair.
3. Transform the customer experience without being constrained by your existing (read: outdated and insufficient) technology infrastructure.
In full disclosure, my company offers a CDP, but working with hundreds of customers has allowed me to observe firsthand the outcomes of a consumer-first, data-driven system that combines people (resources, skills, organization structure), platform (CDP plus other tools in your tech stack), and performance (impact, value, and return based on performance and operational efficiency).
Moreover, horticulture has taught me a great deal about CDP’s best practices.
Plan in advance. Your strategy determines your use cases, which in turn determine your road map. Planning in advance makes all the difference.
Companion cultivation is the most effective. The data must align with your objectives; you cannot simply load all the data into the system and then attempt to determine what you want to achieve with it.
Daily maintenance is necessary. A CDP and data strategy in general are not set-and-forget endeavors. Your consumers are continuously evolving, and so must the data you collect about them. Stay on top of the situation.
Feed the soil rather than the vegetation. It’s easy to prioritize vanity metrics, but you must prioritize operational metrics such as team efficiency, productivity, and scalability, which represent the true transformation.
Raccoons are the adversaries. You are familiar with the “squirrels” in your organization: those agents of disorder who don’t mind disrupting the roadmap or interfering with decision-making and then refusing to accept the repercussions. Guard yourself against the rodents.
The bounty is best appreciated by others. Promote the impact of CDP as quickly and frequently as feasible. Create a playbook that can be shared with other teams, business units, or regions to assist them in preparing and getting started even faster.
Every harvest offers new teachings; continue to advance beyond early successes. It is common and simple to get the initial use cases operational and then stall; to avoid getting trapped. Utilize a steering group and case backlog to ensure continuous progress.
No individual can control the atmosphere. Or economics.
