What Spotify Wrapped tells us about evaluation

Yesterday morning, the year’s Spotify Wrapped dropped. It also happened to be one of my days on carpool duty, so I got the chance to hear four 14-year-old girls excitedly talk about their results. Being an unrepentant data guy, I started to draw parallels between their conversation and nonprofit evaluation, which inspired me to write this post on what Spotify Wrapped teaches us about data and evaluation.

For non-Spotify users, Wrapped is a yearly summary every user receives in December about their listening habits. It covers your top artists, songs, how much time you listened, how your tastes have changed over the year, and more, all over a graphically pleasing presentation while your favorite songs play in the background. You can find people posting their summaries all over social media, and it always generates buzz for a few days. But how does that tie to evaluation? I thought of four main connections in that car ride.

1.      Data often surprises us.

The main topic of conversation in the car was surprise, or even disbelief, about some of the results: “There’s no way that was one of my top 5 artists!”; “I didn’t realize I listened to that song so often.”  Seeing it all in black and white (and red and blue) confirmed some patterns (a lot of Chappell Roan and Zack Bryan), but also illuminated some preferences they never even knew.

This happens all the time with data and evaluation. Some of what we find when we perform evaluation will confirm what you already know, and it’s good to “prove” that. And a lot of the value will come from uncovering things that are under the surface—impact you didn’t realize you’re making, perspectives your clients have, or an issue lurking below that’s going to get bigger if you don’t address it.

2.      We focus on what’s more recent

Teen’s preferences can evolve quickly. The girls were a little shocked about the music they listened to in the first half of the year, and that it was still showing up in their results. It was still a fun nostalgia trip— “I remember in February I was obsessed with that song…” and it provided perspective on everything they had listened to, and how much they’ve changed.

We all have recency bias and tend to focus on the newest information that comes in.  At the pace nonprofits move, it’s easy to lose track of what happened 6-12 months ago. But it’s still important, and being able to process and respond to trends requires a longer time horizon. Having a year or longer’s worth of data, analyzed and turned into actionable information allows organizations to make better decisions.

3.      What gets measured gets done.

In 2023, my Wrapped had Taylor Swift as my #1 artist. I like Taylor Swift, but she would not be in my top five were I in complete control of my Spotify. Instead, it was counting all the times my kids asked to hear Taylor in the car. Well, this year, I wanted a Wrapped that reflected my tastes in music, so I made sure to listen to “my” music when I was alone and had them use their phones in the car when we were together. I also want to be the kind of person who explores new music, so I found myself going out of my way to listen to different artists so I could get the “number of artists listened to” number up.  In other words, knowing I was being measured changed my behavior.

Peter Drucker said “What gets measured gets done”—I’ll add the proviso that only if people know it is being measured. Evaluation creates incentives, and it cuts both ways. If you’re not measuring important things, your team won’t always do them. And if you are measuring unimportant things, you’re incentivizing your organization to focus on bean counting instead of what really matters. Align your data and evaluation efforts with your mission and your critical impact, and the best work will get done.

4.      People can care about data.

My biggest takeaway was this: Four 14-year-olds had an enthusiastic 15-minute conversation about DATA.    It got them excited, led them reflect on the past year, and maybe even tweaked their listening behavior for next year. All because of a short, fun presentation about their music tastes.

Everyone can get excited and interested about data—your board, your staff, your stakeholders—if it is directly relevant to them, and is presented in a compelling fashion. The best evaluation work meets people where they are and relates the findings to their work in an engaging manner. And once they are engaged, positive change can happen.

If you want to have a conversation about how you can use these principles to strengthen your organization and grow your impact, I’m always happy to talk data at paul@bcnonprofit.com.   For now, I’m going to go listen to some Peter Gabriel.