Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – Einstein
Listen to what the genius said and you will be more comfortable dealing with ambiguity. Einstein said here can be applied everywhere in our life but probably most appropriate in our field: web analytics. Essentially we are people who are supposed to count everything related to the website: page views, sessions, visitors, on and on. The web 2.0 only adds more of such objects to our list: RSS, video, user generated contents, on and on. This list will never end and as the technology innovates, people’s curiosity will only get bigger and bigger.
So next time when your manager asks you to count for the # of trillions of metrics, be sure you quote what Einstein said. And you and I should really focus on critical few things that can be counted (measurability) and that really count (relevance).
And I am having the job to do to define what those things (read it as KPIs) are for my company.
