suppose you're in the meeting room and you're the product guy and you'll make this case. Indeed let us not optimize for the presently advantageous local maxima lest it come back to swallow and end us. How is this communicated? And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this -- to even bear through a temporary downward period with the understanding that fundamentals must be respected?
As long as their top priority is next quarter's result, you can't. You may get small wins here and there, but nothing fundamental will change unless they have a long term vision. When I say "long term", I'm talking 10 - 20 years, not 1 year.
They didn’t build the iPhone or even like Google Maps and Google Images by walking into the meeting room with data. They instead said “what if maps were as easy as we’ve made search”
Of course it becomes a problem when no one even to the CEO level has lost vision. Never put the numbers guy in charge.
It can go both ways, of course: Mad Men is full of examples of stupid business ideas that went spectacularly wrong. And while it wasn’t the focus of Mad Men, the real world is full of examples of business that went the metrics way and were successful.
But IMHO, if I was the CEO of a social media company, I sure wouldn’t focus on A/B testing and engagement metrics.