Environment: How to Thrive, Not Just Survive

If I were interviewing with a company for a new web analytics position, one of the most important things I would explore in the interviews would be the health of the organization’s analytics or optimization environment (the second key factor shown in Figure 3.1). Even if you have mad analytics skills and a solid strategy, you can still fail due to factors completely outside of your control.

Sometimes experienced action heroes don’t realize how much environmental factors have contributed to their past successes. They feel as though they have the Midas touch at whatever company they join, only to learn, as my friend Peter did, that some internal obstacles are too great to overcome on their own.