Battle of Cultures in Experimentation with André Morys

[00:00:00] André Morys: first get organizational or executive buy in for a change. Make the change visible, make people understand the way the culture is currently and how it has to change . Maybe show them what's the pain you're currently struggling with and how could the organization deal with it?

Get a mandate for the change, but don't fight it with data without the mandate that will backfire. 

[00:00:41] Slobodan Manic: Welcome to no hacks.show, a weekly podcast in which smart guests talk to you about better online experiences. This episode is about the battle of cultures in experimentation and optimization and what you should do to win that battle. And my guest is the CEO and founder of Conversionskraft, the leading German business optimization consultancy, where he focuses on behavioral economics, neuromarketing, game theory, social psychology, and consumer psychology.

He is also a university lecturer, a published author. And a public speaker, he's on a personal mission to share his knowledge and insights on how to create better optimization hypothesis and deliver higher uplifts in e commerce optimization. And there's also the whole growth marketing summit thing we'll talk about later.

Andre Morris, welcome to NOVAC's show. A pleasure to have you as a guest.

[00:01:23] André Morys: Thanks for having me. It, it sounds amazing. If, if, if I listen to your words, I'm amazed by myself.

[00:01:28] Slobodan Manic: That is you. That,

[00:01:30] André Morys: it, is it is that? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

[00:01:32] Slobodan Manic: that's all I've heard. Uh, so, uh, two very influential optimizers, uh, Craig Sullivan and Tom Vesseling also praised your sense of humor and comedic timing.

[00:01:40] André Morys: Oh my

[00:01:41] Slobodan Manic: really

[00:01:42] André Morys: No pressure . No

[00:01:43] Slobodan Manic: no, no, no. So comedic timing and stage presence. That's almost like standup comedy, right?

[00:01:48] André Morys: Okay. Okay.

[00:01:50] Slobodan Manic: question, do you have a favorite standup comedian?

[00:01:53] André Morys: No, I'm not that much into comedy to be, I, I, I think I'm that generation born in the seventies. We, we, we watched movies like the naked gun or life of Brian. That was hilarious. But if you watch it again now, you think, Oh my God, why was that funny? I don't know anymore.

I don't know. Not life of Brian. You can watch that ongoing. It's always fun. Yeah.

[00:02:13] Slobodan Manic: I just spent the holidays in Serbia and watched the movies I saw as a kid. And there's so much wrong about that. There was, the things we used to laugh about are just embarrassing right now.

[00:02:23] André Morys: Yes. Yes.

[00:02:24] Slobodan Manic: So, getting to the main topic, the battle of cultures in experimentation. Let's talk about what experimentation culture is first.

So could you just walk me through that?

[00:02:34] André Morys: Oh, I mean, experimentation culture completely relies on the effect that you learn faster with a high amount of validity, uh, compared to a classical or traditional approach of decision making. So, basically, it, it gives you two advantages. Uh, and as I said, one, the validity of your decisions is higher. So.

If you ask, ask somebody who's really experienced, uh, and highly skilled for a long time, and you say, what's better, A or B, and they will choose, and they will have a certain ratio, how, how, how many times they, they make the right decision, um, compared to, um, data driven experimentation, uh, which, which basically has, has a much higher validity, okay.

This chance to pick the right winner increases. So, let's say an expert is able to make 60 percent right decisions. With a proper A B testing approach, you might be able to increase that number up to 90%.

[00:03:37] Slobodan Manic: Mm.

[00:03:38] André Morys: are making better decisions. That's, that's the idea of experimentation. Uh, and the second is it's faster because if you rely on, on expert opinion or leadership opinion or highest, uh, person's paid opinion, yeah.

Um, Then it takes a time you will create comedies and people will discuss and should we do make this that way or that way? And that completely slows down, um, uh, product development processes and, and, and whatever processes people will discuss a lot with lower quality of making the right decisions. So that's basically decision.

making by experimentation. Uh, you, you will make a lot of mistakes, learn from them and, and yeah, be much faster.

[00:04:24] Slobodan Manic: Right. And how does an organization go from lack of this approach to completely, completely adopting it, or at least partially adopting it?

[00:04:33] André Morys: I think it's important to understand the truth. Where are we right now? So what's the current situation? And I, I'm not a history person, right? But, um, As far as I understood, we come from something that is called industrial revolution back in the 80s, 50s, whatever 19th century, uh, when people started building steam machines and, and, and, and, and going from workshop to bigger construction halls to bigger companies, they asked themselves, how are we organizing our companies?

And they had a look at military said, well, oh, that's working. These are. Yep. The only organization structures with hundreds of thousands of people that are working And now we go from 15 to 1500 people. Let's do the same. So this is how it all started 150 years ago And this is where we still struggle with.

We have, um, hierarchy in our organization. We have bosses that tell us what to do and to become a boss, you need to excel in, in decision making. If you do something right, people will look at you saying, wow, this guy, he, he, he's clever. Uh, we had a problem. He solved it. He's doing the right thing. So you get.

Uh, a praise for doing the right things. And, uh, if you continue to do that, you will later get a, uh, a promotion and you continue, you get an, uh, an ex promotion and you end up being a boss because you always made the right decisions. And now today I explain experimentation culture. We come with a completely different approach that says.

Hey, you guy, you made the right decisions for 20 years or even longer. We praised you for that. We promoted you for that to management position. You're now vice president, whatever. But man, uh, luck is not on your side. Today we do it with experimentation and data. So we need to get rid of you and everything you've done in the past 25 years.

So, so basically that's, that's a clash of cultures. We have a traditional. Um, culture, uh, that is top down with bosses telling us what to do, setting the goals, knowing everything better. I exaggerate a little bit, but basically that's where we come from. And now we have a bottom up approach with expectations that is, you don't have the right to decide something.

Clients will decide, data will, is the foundation. Yeah, that, that's a

[00:06:59] Slobodan Manic: Okay. Okay. So it's the old way of thinking and the new Well, not even new. I wouldn't say that experimentation based approach is that new, but I guess it's

[00:07:08] André Morys: it's not that new. No, absolutely not. But if you, if you implement it in corporate culture, it's

[00:07:14] Slobodan Manic: Mm. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

[00:07:16] André Morys: That, that's why I talk about, uh, digital natives. You know, the companies that are really doing great on exploitation, usually they are digital native companies. So, so, so Google, Amazon, booking, Facebook, Airbnb, whatever you name them, Uber, these companies started in a digital era.

They, they never had another situation. So for them it was obvious that if you had to make a decision, you do, you do it with data. But if you started 200 years ago as a high street. brick and mortar store retailer, you didn't have the opportunity to test things, to experiment. So you had to be right. And this is why this, this culture is so deeply implemented in us and tells us being right is the most important thing.

And now with experimentation, we say, Whoa, to, to being proved wrong as fast as possible. That's the new thing. And so

[00:08:10] Slobodan Manic: find what's right. Exactly.

[00:08:12] André Morys: Exactly. So we need a kind of humbleness now that removes us from the position that bosses are decision makers that are able to make decisions with a high validity. They're not.

[00:08:25] Slobodan Manic: So if I say ego is what creates the friction here, is that correct?

[00:08:29] André Morys: Finally, but you know, uh, if you call it like this, I would say it is, uh, it is pointing the pathological, Uh, factor towards a single person,

[00:08:44] Slobodan Manic: Okay.

[00:08:45] André Morys: and that's not the case. It's the system. It's where we come from. It's, it's, it's a tradition, the history that, that, that brought us here. That's why I think, first of all, it's important to understand why it is like it is.

And you simply can't tell people after 25 people, uh, 25 years, well, we have something better to make better decisions. You can't do that. You can tell them, well, I can, I can help you, uh, even improve your decision making with experimentation. But don't, don't fight, don't fight the hippo.

[00:09:20] Slobodan Manic: Don't fight. Well, you, you will lose exactly that. There's, there's no fighting the hippo, any kind of hippo, I guess. Uh, uh. I mean, don't they kill the most people in the world every year of all

[00:09:30] André Morys: Most dangerous

[00:09:31] Slobodan Manic: something insane like that in

[00:09:33] André Morys: I had, uh, for my, for my talk at Conversion Hotel, I, I prepared like three fun facts people don't know about hippos. And one is, um, if, if they make sounds, you can hear them for like two miles away. They're one of the loudest animals. And,

[00:09:50] Slobodan Manic: heard a hippo

[00:09:51] André Morys: yeah. Second, they produce their own sunscreen.

Did you know that?

[00:09:56] Slobodan Manic: Nope.

[00:09:57] André Morys: Yeah, their skin produces a red fluid that is like sunblocker. Amazing, isn't it? And the third thing is they can identify or separate friend from foe by the smell of their tongue. Isn't that

[00:10:12] Slobodan Manic: Wow. Wow. I mean, wow. But they don't do experimentation well. Let's

[00:10:18] André Morys: No, they don't. And

[00:10:21] Slobodan Manic: uh, another, another thing that we're going to talk about is Like, I mean, we are in the midst of battle of Cultures or even a relu, hopefully a revolution, right? Because if we all switch to, let's see what the right way is versus this is how we've, we have been doing it for 50, a hundred years.

Like, I think everybody wins. Why might, you said we, we might lose the battle because, 'cause we peaked the wrong weapons. Is, is what you wrote to me. So why is that the case? What are the weapons?

[00:10:48] André Morys: I think, first of all, because we still pathologize, can you say that? I don't know. I'm not a native speaker. Because we pathologize the person. We point at the person, say, you're wrong. We now have a better system. And we try to replace people that have more power. And we try to do that with data. We say, I prove you wrong.

You said, let's do it like this. I made an A B test. You're wrong. Here's the data. Of course, it won't work. The power of, of, of, of a boss somewhere in the hierarchy is always higher. Um, sure, data is a strong currency in, in, in, in companies, but, but you, you can't fight the culture with data. Uh, it's about, uh, behavior.

How do people behave and why is it important? So my My claim is first get organizational or executive buy in for a change. Make the change visible, make people understand the way the culture is currently and how it has to change and why. There lies an opportunity in this change. So maybe show them what's the pain you're currently struggling with and how could the organization deal with it?

So this is why I say always first, uh, look for, for a buy in, uh, and, and then try to change things. Get a mandate for the change, but don't fight it with data without the mandate that that will backfire. Yes.

[00:12:14] Slobodan Manic: in some cases, even so, uh, the right approach to win this game or battle or war of cultures is to really try to help the old way thinking and then try to aid their decision making versus just try to prove them wrong, right?

[00:12:30] André Morys: Yes, it's about understand the system, how it is and change it. Basically, if it says step one, don't fight. Yeah. How, how to win the fight? Don't fight.

[00:12:40] Slobodan Manic: Don't talk about the fight club.

[00:12:42] André Morys: Yes, exactly. Uh, How to win the game, don't fight, understand the current system, understand the stakeholders, make the pain visible, get buy in for the change you need, and then, as soon as you have a mandate to change things, then start working on it, and if you do it the right way, and if you align the What you want to accomplish with the, with the goals of the organization.

I'm not talking about metrics like revenue. I'm talking about strategic goals. You know, every person in a top management position has already, uh, drilled down their, um, challenges towards certain areas. So they will say. Well, we need to improve customer loyalty. We need to change our brand perception. We need to change infrastructure, logistics.

We need to expand internationally. So these are typical challenges a top management has. Top management will never say, well, we need to do more AB tests. Never happened, because these are their strategic goals, but your way of working with this cultural change, um, will help them achieve these goals faster and easier.

Uh, that, that's the, that's the move. Uh, so don't fight them. Don't tell them how important A B testing is. Explain them why you could, uh, facilitate the processes. Why you could Raise the, the validity of decision making why you could enhance the speed of decision making with a B testing, but they're not thinking and in dimensions like a B testing or experimentation.

They simply don't care.

[00:14:27] Slobodan Manic: right. And . Well, sadly, uh, uh, one thing that I've noticed, I, I don't have 26 or 27 years of experience in this field like you do, but I have a few. One thing I've noticed is that. Most decision makers, they think about building something, building a feature, building a website, and then A B testing. Is that wrong or should A B testing be part of the journey from, from date, from the planning, basically, Johnny Longden was on this podcast recently.

And he said that, uh, experimentation as a feature of web development is when it becomes the most powerful. So when you, when you're actually thinking in terms of how do we build this properly versus just planning for six months ahead of work and then figuring out if it's right or wrong, do you think that is, that is the right approach as well?

[00:15:12] André Morys: I, I think it's. It's important to understand that everybody who's making decisions is suffering from what we call confirmation bias. So every person wants to see the truth that is already in their mind, uh, in the outside world. So I always Seek for data or symptoms that kind of fosters my existing beliefs.

So if I, as a decision maker, have the strong belief that we need feature, uh, X, Y, Z, you name it, then I will see, um, symptoms or indicators that I'm right everywhere. And, um, this is a big problem. I think confirmation bias in decision making is a big problem because it makes people build things that maybe nobody needs.

So yes, you're, you're right, um, it's important to prove your assumptions as early as possible. That's why we have concepts like the, the, the, the minimal viable product, um, uh, and, and product and agile product development. So we need to prove our assumption. Is there, is there a problem? Of our clients that we can, we can solve.

So like problem solution fit, if we created a feature, is that something the market wants, uh, product market fit and, and so on. So of course, the earlier we try to validate our assumptions, the higher is the chance that we are able to eliminate confirmation bias. Um, but it's hard. It's hard. Once people decided, well, that's fancy.

I want that. It's hard to get them to think otherwise.

[00:16:56] Slobodan Manic: I've had a decision maker, uh, come to me and say, we want to build this. Can you AB test if it works? Like without even knowing it was not, it's worse than it sounds worse than it was, but without even knowing if that feature is needed, like they had a vision of this is what we want, want to have.

Can you AB test to prove that we're right? Like basically that, that was the test.

[00:17:19] André Morys: and that's why I think it's important to, to, to understand we need a cultural change because confirmation bias is something we are not aware about. It is, it feels natural to have an idea and to be. Uh, completely excited about this idea and that you want to build it as fast as possible. Uh, so testing your assumptions as early as possible is something that I would call counterintuitive.

So you, you need, uh, another force that makes you stop and say, Well, yeah, it's a great, it might be a great idea. Let's test it. I need to be more humble. I learned that many of my ideas failed. So let's test it. That is not something that is, that, that is intuitive. So most decision makers, uh, will, will, yeah, kind of fall in the confirmation bias trap and we'll say, well, we need that build it.

And then, then we have product teams that build it fast, uh, and, and don't

[00:18:18] Slobodan Manic: Exactly. Like you said early in the episode, they get promoted and promoted and promoted. And then they think, I'm right all the time. I didn't get this far because I was wrong. I know what I want. And like, I mean, it's a battle. It's a war. It's really a war of mindsets, maybe not cultures.

[00:18:34] André Morys: Let's call it, let's call it forces. And if you, if you pick the wrong weapon, uh, for example, test result,

[00:18:43] Slobodan Manic: hmm.

[00:18:44] André Morys: uh, you might end up being really frustrated, uh, not moving things forward. If you understand the reality and pick the right weapon, change management, stakeholder management, executive communication strategy.

Well, then you might have a really good chance to change something for the better.

[00:19:05] Slobodan Manic: Adjust my work. Exactly. So let's talk about growth marketing summit. I'm really, really excited. Uh, will there be organized football matches? They're going to, to, to, to any of the games because

[00:19:18] André Morys: I learned that, yeah.

[00:19:19] Slobodan Manic: Yeah,

[00:19:20] André Morys: Um, we, we still think about it. It's hard to get tickets and I have to, to

[00:19:26] Slobodan Manic: draw. There's a lottery.

[00:19:27] André Morys: pick. Yeah, we have to pick the, the date, uh, based on the availability of the venue, which is the old opera house in Frankfurt. Usually there are not many slots available. So I think we, we picked the date two years in advance and we were not aware that there is, uh, this football, what is it?

European

[00:19:48] Slobodan Manic: European, I think, and I think, I think Serbia is playing two games pretty close right around that date, so

[00:19:54] André Morys: Yeah. So yeah, better. Yeah. Better, uh, get your tickets from, from the UEFA website as

[00:20:03] Slobodan Manic: Uh, yes, there's a lottery, I think, there's a draw in January or something like that. I have a few friends who are in the draw and have me on their mind, so hopefully I get a ticket, but It's going to be amazing. So let's talk about the event. When did it start? What is, this is edition number

[00:20:20] André Morys: that's a good question. It should be, we started in 2010. Uh, so.

[00:20:25] Slobodan Manic: right?

[00:20:26] André Morys: Yeah, as we call it conversion summit and, and, and then we had Avinash Kaushik, uh, being on stage and say, well, um, conversion rate is not the right metric. So why do people call it conversion rate optimization? Everything that contains the word conversion is no, he's very honest, brutally honest.

And we said, well, he's right. We also don't like that. The, the name. So we changed it from conversion summit, uh, to growth marketing, uh, summit. Uh, and he also destroyed our logo because he said, I hate funnels and everybody who uses funnels. Damn it. We had a funnel in the logo, but he was right. He was right.

I'm really thankful for him. And he's a great speaker. I, I always, uh. Uh, yeah, really appreciate it, uh, when he was there as a speaker. So yeah, since I think 2017, uh, rebranded to, to growth marketing summit. Uh, we started really small with like 250 people somewhere in the basement of, of a, of an old, uh, um, hall.

It was a nice, uh, venue, but we realized there are many more people. That want to learn about growth and, and data and customer centricity and customer experiences. So yeah, we kind of tried to establish a conference in that mashup long before it was named like this. And yeah. So this is that. That must be like the 13th edition.

Mm-Hmm.

[00:21:50] Slobodan Manic: That is very impressive. And, and the old opera house, I, if you haven't seen, I'll share the video of, of the recap of last year's event to everyone listening. If you haven't seen that video, you will be blown away because I was, when I saw that with the, with the drums and everything, it was, it was absolutely crazy.

Uh, one of the former guests who was a speaker, a presenter, uh, said that there's events and then there's growth marketing summit, like, because Literally said the way Andre treats the speakers is just hasn't experienced that anywhere else. So it sounds pretty amazing. So why should someone from Europe or us, let's say, or anywhere in the world, why should they visit Frankfurt on June?

Was it 19th or 17th? 19th, right?

[00:22:35] André Morys: It's June 19th. And, you know, when we started, you know, I was on the road as a speaker myself for a long time and I visited many conferences, most, most of all commercial conferences. So there are commercial companies that try to earn the money by putting together sponsors and speakers and attendees.

And I realized usually these conferences, you, you hear some talks from the sponsors. The lineup is. Yeah, selected nicely, but usually if you have one, two, three good talks that are inspiring, you're happy. While 60, 70 percent of the talks might not be that good. Um, so basically my, my, uh, bet was if I, visit that many conferences.

I just pick the best speakers and create a much better lineup that is inspiring much more. Um, so that's how we started. I, I said, well, if, if, if there's one, two, three speakers that are not so relevant, I already doubled the amount of inspiration. compared to other conferences. That was my bet. And then I learned people don't just come because of the speakers.

They come for networking. if a couple of hundred, like seven, eight hundred people meet in the old opera house and they have similar jobs, they talk. So we learned we have to make much more coffee breaks so people can talk and network and exchange it. I usually say every person of this audience has conducted, uh, dozens of A B tests.

So you have a walking database of thousands of winning A B tests. Just ask the people what worked for them and you will get tons of inspiration. So that's the second factor. And the third factor, of course, everybody hates dull hotel conference rooms. So with the old opera house, we tried to have a really Inspiring a venue, um, a professional production.

So people can really have like an entertainment factor that there should be nice food, great wifi reception and power outlets on the table, whatever, all the details. I thought, well, it, it should be a great customer experience that we deliver because we are customer experience people. And yeah, that's how we did it.

[00:24:49] Slobodan Manic: Exactly. You cannot, you're not allowed to mess that up if this is the line of business you're in. Uh, yeah, I will share that video. I'll put it in the episode notes because that recap was absolutely mind blowing. I have never seen a conference like that. I really haven't. I mean, maybe, I mean, the video editors did a great work, great job with it as well.

But, uh, the drums in the opera house, it's just out of this world. So, uh, how can people get their tickets? It's growthmarketingsummit. com. That was the

[00:25:15] André Morys: Exactly. It's growthmarketingsummit. com. We are still in the early bird stage. So if you hurry up, you still get it with a big reduction. I think prices go up until 8, 900 euros. Uh, if, if you, if you buy them too late, why is it like that? Because as a conference, uh, organizer, we need some, let's say, uh, security.

So if we have people booking the tickets early. Um, we have to pay a lot of bills for us. This is a no, no win thing, right? We, we, we just use the money we get from the tickets and it all goes into the production of the event. So, uh, but of course it's, it's like a 400, 000 euro budget or more and, uh, we have to pay a lot of bills.

So we happy for everyone who, who gets their tickets as early as possible. And this is how we, how you benefit, uh, you get cheaper tickets if you buy early.

[00:26:11] Slobodan Manic: I got mine. As soon as I heard about

[00:26:13] André Morys: Ah, brilliant. Thank you. It's you.

[00:26:16] Slobodan Manic: absolutely. So, uh, no, there, there must be a lot of people, but yes. Uh, so I I'm very excited. I'm looking forward to the event and meeting you in person there, obviously. Uh, and I want to thank you for being part of no hack show, part of this podcast and

[00:26:28] André Morys: You're welcome.

[00:26:29] Slobodan Manic: The battles and wars and cultures in experimentation and optimization. So to everyone listening, I'm sure you learned a lot today. Uh, I'm sure you learned how to talk to hippos, if nothing else. And the fact that they're the loudest animal and, and they produce their sunscreen, which, Hey, you, you never stopped learning, right?

And thank you very, very much.

[00:26:49] André Morys: welcome.

[00:26:50] Slobodan Manic: Uh, uh, and, and to everyone listening, please consider rating, reviewing, and sharing the episode. And I will talk to you next week.

[00:26:56] André Morys: Thanks for having me.