Let’s play a little game of what if

You have the choice in building your organization; you can:

A. Recruit and hire some of the world’s best analytics, customer insight, marketing and testing team members.

B. Recruit average team members but provide them with superb technology and processes.

Many industry pundits would agree (including myself) that you must invest in people before tools. But is it just talent that is required or having the man hours available to get things done that matters?

A. For example, imagine you had a testing team consisting of some of the best in the industry (you could hire Tim Ash, Avinash Kaushik & me) to run your analytics and optimization team. However, if your organization is like most organizations we could only test 2-5 things a month. Don’t get me started on why this happens.

Or

B. Your team had the processes to eliminate many of the traditional bottlenecks and was able to knock out and complete 30-50 tests a month using better processes & tools (yes, these exist today). Of course, these tests would still have to be intelligently designed not just random tests (and this comes from learning appropriate process).

At the end of 2 years which team do you think will drive more incremental revenue, team A or B? Should your goal in your organization be focused on talent or on being agile?