42. My new favorite number.

So this is me happy. My team has scored a really big win. We delivered a 42% increase in a key customer demographic. Forty-fricken-two-percent. It feels good no matter how many times I say it. 42%.

So why is this project different? Why did it yield great results? The client was smart enough to let the team do great things. The color, the design, the grammar - none of these things hit the mark with the client. But these things all connected with the audience.

Smart client. Had to argue with "higher ups". Had to argue against the norms and in favor of success.

The copy writer interviewed audience demographics. The photographer took time to get to know the audience models featured. The designer dug deep into their mindset. Content strategist took away clutter. Project managers documented practices and ideas.

We worked as a team. The site launched, decent numbers, but we met right away and went through the numbers live in google analytics. We did a pre-mortem (thanks Guy Kawasaki) and found small things that, if ignored, would be the fails. And we all worked together to resolve and re-test.

Contrast this to clients who don't like this color, or that line or - we've all had someone ask us to make the logo bigger.

My job now is to exploit this win (along with a couple other recent projects). If I don't pull and present meaningful metrics then it is my fault the next time a client shouts me down. If our group doesn't take the time to meet and talk about high's and low's in retrospect - and then tie those experiences to data, then we are the blind squirrel that found a nut.

See, winning doesn't happen when you get lucky. Winning (and I mean on the client's behalf, because if they don't succeed, neither do we) happens before the project. It is knowing and understanding what works and what doesn't.

Winning is practicing pitching in your car on the way home. It's conversations with peers. It's finding geniuses (thanks Halvorson and McGrane for always answering) who are big enough to share knowledge. It's listening to clients complain about their project that fell short - listen to that more intently than any praise you receive. Mistakes are the easiest way to learn because they are always nearby.

In short, today was good. Tomorrow shows promise, but only if we examine, obsess and discuss each component of every success and every failure. And everyone should read Weinshenk's "Neuro Web", it's fun and informative.