A little validation

Years ago:

I was the CRM director for a nonprofit that produced a lot of large events, often on short notice.

At our evening event meetings, each department head would report on their areas, including important details like how many hotel rooms we had used, how many airport pickups we expected tomorrow, no-show counts, banquet seating, and more.

At one of my first meetings, the event director turned to me after all the reports and said, "Okay Allen. Validation?"

I said, "Well, I really think you're doing a great job, Frank."

That got a laugh.

But what Frank wanted was just a sanity check -- do the numbers line up with what we have in our systems? Is anything wildly out of kilter?

Frank understood that in a fast-moving operation we couldn't expect 100% accurate numbers at every moment. But we needed to have a general impression that we were reasonably on target.

Today:

A client of mine said to me, essentially,

I probably can't identify everyone who's interested in our upcoming program.
But I think there's good reason to believe that this group over here clicked through to read our announcement about it.
How can I easily identify most of those people so I can highlight it again to them in an upcoming mailing?

She had already done some data validation of her own -- knowing that 100% certainty was neither possible nor required.

Now she was looking to leverage that information into increased attention on the program.

Perfect.

Imperfectly, uncertainly, perfect.

Because a little validation goes a long way.

All the best,
A.