Ever heard the one about the fox and the hedgehog? The fox knows many things. The hedgehog knows one big thing.
Archilochus wrote that 2,700 years ago.
In a nutshell, the fox chases everything at once — a hundred small moves, no single theory of the case. The hedgehog has one idea and runs everything through it. Isaiah Berlin made it famous by sorting people into piles with it.
The hedgehog sees twelve locations, twelve numbers on a report. The fox sees weather in one market, a spike in visits in another, a couple walking away without a word. Friday you’re the fox on the floor. Monday you’re the hedgehog sitting at your desk looking at the numbers.
Nothing changed but your point of view, and both were right.
The opposite is the story about the blind man describing an elephant by touch. To him the trunk is a snake. The ear is a fan. The leg is a tree.
All wrong.
A weekly report alone is a hand on the elephant. So is a Saturday on the floor. So is what a store manager knows, and what the P&L tells you.
The fox and the hedgehog are both right because they’re the same person looking at things from different points of view.
And there is alway an elephant in the room you can’t see.
Cheers,
Jerry
P.S. Revenue per visitor is one of the few numbers that reads the same up close and from far away. Every location has one. Almost nobody can tell you theirs, because it needs a visitor count their not keeping. We’ll pull yours — trakwell.ai
