Magic over metrics

Okay, here’s the thing. We live and work in a time where nearly everything gets measured. And that’s fine. Clicks and likes and shares. Number of units produced, number of takeoffs and landings, 800 billion served. It’s important that we measure things because it gives clients some understanding of what is working and gives us permission to keep doing what we do for them.

But do you know what’s more important than things you can measure? Things you can’t measure. Like art. Like love. Like calm. Like goodness. Like tension.

For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to lump all of those unmeasureables into one word: magic.

Arthur C. Clarke, the author of many science fiction classics, including 2001, once wrote:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

What he meant was, when something is not understood it appears to be magic. Hand an iPad to a person from Massachusetts in 1692, and the only conclusion they will come to is that you are some kind of witch. (And they will want to burn you at the stake, so I recommend against using any time machine you may acquire in this way.)