Offensive vs. defensive data analysis

“What broke?” shouldn’t be your only data question.

This post is brought to you by Loops, balance both defensive and offensive moves with AI-Powered insights that drive breakthrough business growth. Join growth leaders - Monday.com, AB inBev, ClickUp and others - and try Loops today!

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Co-written with Tom Laufer, CEO @Loops, ex. Head of Growth & Analytics @Google.

Most teams use analytics like a fire extinguisher - only pulling it out when something's on fire.

It usually goes something like this: A metric drops. No one knows why. Management goes into full panic mode.

Everyone drops everything. Analysts scramble to diagnose the root cause. Feverish Slack messages fly, dashboards are ripped apart, fingers are pointed, hot fixes are filed. Everyone’s in full firefighting mode until the numbers stabilize.

Sometimes this chaos lasts for days, blowing up everyone’s carefully planned quarter.

And half the time? The metric just bounces back on its own - no one has a clue what just happened (just writing this makes me anxious).

This is defensive analysis: reactive, chaotic, and all about damage control.

Defensive analysis is necessary. You need to know why your conversion rate dropped 20% overnight. But when this is the only way you use data, you're stuck responding to problems instead of steering toward opportunities.

Enter offensive analysis.

Offensive analysis is proactive. It doesn’t wait for a crisis. It digs into what’s already working - and finds opportunities to improve it even further. It asks:

• Which cohorts or segments are outperforming the rest - and why?

• Who completes this step successfully - and how are they different?

• What features are sticky for high-retention cohorts - but ignored by others?

This kind of analysis surfaces hidden opportunities. It fuels experimentation backlog. It turns data into growth initiatives. It results in the step function changes to the business and the biggest wins.

Tom puts it well: “Defensive insights are the table stakes for protecting the revenue you’ve worked hard to earn. But offensive analytics - those are what drive the biggest growth. The teams that win aren’t just reacting to problems; they’re spotting the next big opportunity and turning it into a competitive edge. That’s exactly why I co-founded Loops - to help teams do just that.”

Yet most companies do little to no offensive analytics - unless their current growth levers stall out or it’s annual planning season and they need to validate a hunch. That’s far too reactive to sustain meaningful growth. The best time to do offensive analysis? When things are going well. That’s when you have the space - and the leverage - to turn small insights into big wins.

“Do defensive analysis to not get fired. But do offensive analysis to get a promotion.” -Darius Contractor, CGO @Otter.ai, ex. Head of Growth @Drift.

Why offensive analysis gets overlooked

Most companies don’t invest in offensive analytics because:

• Urgency wins: Defensive fire drills always get attention.

• Teams are stuck in never ending defensive mode: Some companies don't have automated process for defensive root cause analysis, so they spend too much time to manually understand why KPIs are changing.