Henry Ford left us much more than cars and the highway system we built for them. He changed the world’s expectations for work. While Ford gets credit for “inventing the assembly line,” his great insight was that he understood the power of productivity.
Ford was a pioneer in highly leveraged, repetitive work, done by relatively untrained workers. A farmer, with little training, could walk into Ford’s factory and become extraordinarily productive in a day or two.
This is the cornerstone of our way of life. The backbone of our economy is not brain surgeons and master violinists. It’s in fairly average people doing fairly average work.
The focus on productivity wouldn’t be relevant to this discussion except for the second thing Ford did. He decided to pay his workers based on productivity, not replacement value. This was an astonishing breakthrough. When Ford announced the $5 day (more than double the typical salary paid for this level of skill), more than 10,000 people applied for work at Ford the very next day.
Instead of paying people the lowest amount he’d need to find enough competent workers to fill the plant, he paid them more than he needed to because his systems made them so productive. He challenged his workers to be more productive so that they’d get paid more.
It meant that nearly every factory worker at Ford was dramatically overpaid! When there’s a line out the door of people waiting to take your job, weird things happen to your head. The combination of repetitive factory work plus high pay for standardized performance led to a very obedient factory floor. People were conditioned to do as they were told, and traded autonomy and craftsmanship for high pay and stability.
All of a sudden, we got used to being paid based on our output . We came, over time, to expect to get paid more and more, regardless of how long the line of people eager to take our job was. If productivity went up, profits went up. And the productive workers expected (and got) higher pay, even if there were plenty of replacement workers, eager to work for less.
This is the central conceit of our economy. People in productive industries get paid a lot even though they could likely be replaced by someone else working for less money.
This is why we’re insecure.
Obedience works fine on the well-organized, standardized factory floor. But what happens when we start using our heads, not our hands, when our collars change from blue to white?
(Excerpted from Free Prize Inside)
April 21, 2008
is the buying part.
I watched some shoppers leave a clothing store in NY the other day. They seemed wan and a little sad. The same shoppers, when they were waiting in line at the cash register, seemed thrilled. Fast heartbeats, lips trembling in anticipation…
April 20, 2008
My friend Chris told me about a diet he used to use to lose weight. He would eat what he wanted five days a week and fast two days a week.
No, that doesn’t work.
The parallel to marketing seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?
April 19, 2008
You can’t hire that guy because he’s not as good looking as George. And you can’t believe that speaker because he doesn’t present as well as George. And that guy? He’s short. Short? Well, shorter than George. And you can’t trust him to make good decisions because his skin is much darker than George’s.
You can’t date her because she’s not as good looking as Jennifer (whichever Jennifer you want to set as the standard). And her? Well, she stutters, and Jennifer doesn’t. And Jennifer herself, of course, is not nearly as smart as George.
Jennifer and George may be extraordinarily good looking movie stars, but you don’t get to work with them. By buying into a standard of expectation for what’s normal (or great or very good or trustworthy) we shortchange ourselves every single day.
Organizations (bosses and teachers and colleagues and buyers and sellers) that manage to get past the George expectation have a spectacular advantage. They’re willing to take great ideas and great attitude and great effort wherever they can find it, regardless of what it looks like.
I was talking to someone at the Federal Reserve this week. He explained that in our electronic age, his relationships often start on the phone or by email. And they usually go extremely well, moving things quickly toward a happy conclusion. Sometimes, though, these folks meet him in person… and realize that he doesn’t look a bit like George (he’s black). Understanding that people are judging you—looking for a shortcut in the story they tell themselves—is the first step in telling them a different, better story.
Even better, over time, once it becomes clear that George isn’t so normal after all, we won’t have to worry so much about that story.
April 17, 2008
Whether you run a hotel or a retail store or a parts supply store, things change when you find out the Pope is coming for a visit.
The fresh flowers get delivered, the beds are made a little tighter and your best staff are waiting out front. Everything is a little bit cleaner and shinier. Maybe, a few staff bring in their kids to sing a song or two.
The thing is, everyone enjoys this extra work. It’s fun to stretch a bit. It doesn’t feel quite as much like work when you’re doing something special.
You probably guessed the punchline: The Pope isn’t coming to your place of business this trip. He won’t be reading your blog or calling your customer service line either. Sorry for the confusion. Go ahead and rent out that room or give away that table you were saving.
But since it’s so much fun, why not do it for someone who isn’t the Pope? Like your next customer?
April 16, 2008
This morning at 5:05, I drove away from my house outside of New York City. I flew out of White Plains on USAir… and it worked.
At 7:25 am, I was at the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. (No, my meeting wasn’t at the White House, it was next door, but still). No hassles, no affronts, no work stoppages, no FAA inspections, no surly overworked attendants, no lost items or near arrests or runway tie ups or traffic jams.
A few years ago, this was normal. Not worth remarking on. Today, it’s a friggin miracle.
What it takes to be remarkable changes every day. Which means you have to change as well.
April 15, 2008
Most power occurs because one side is better organized than the other. Labor is usually less well organized than management, criminals are usually less well organized than the police and customers are always less well organized than producers.
The internet promises to change that. It does it occasionally, sort of randomly. Sometimes, users will rise up and complain (as they did at Facebook). Or voters will organize online and hurt (or help) a politician or candidate.
Wikipedia works because so many contributors figured out how to self-organize into a group that produced something far more useful than a traditionally organized document.
I think we’re at the earliest possible beginning of the changes we’re going to see because of this sort of grass roots coordination.
Simple example: the Starbucks in Larchmont, NY keeps their thermostat at 64 degrees. And the stores in Breckenridge, Colorado keep their doors wide open all winter. If you’re raging mad about energy waste, you could say something. And nothing would happen. But if customers organized and ten people said something or a hundred people said something… boom, new rules.
The system doesn’t know what to do with a movement.
The Acumen charity seminar is officially sold out. Thanks to everyone who signed up.
Here are two more upcoming events, including one in my old home town:
For Buffalonians! Entrepalooza 2008
And a very cool conference in Boston with Joel in September: Business of Software.
April 14, 2008
At a seminar at the local library, someone asked, "how do I make a lot of money blogging?"
My guess is that at last week’s seminar, the one on growing orchids, no one raised his hand and said, "how do I make a lot of money growing orchids?"
Sure, people make money growing orchids. Some people probably get rich growing orchids. Not many though. And my guess is that the people who do make money gardening probably didn’t set out to do so.
Blogging is much the same way. The best bloggers make money, but mostly as a side effect, not as a direct result of setting out to use a blog to make a profit. It’s just too long a ramp up time, too frustrating and too uncertain to be the best path to make a living.
If it makes you happy (and your readers happy) it’s a great place to start. Step by step you get better at it, and then you discover the ancillary benefits. But the benefits kick in best when you don’t set out to achieve them.
Megan has a great post about the difference between catchers and throwers, inspired by my post about twits: SquidBlog: Catchers and throwers.
I had an interesting interaction along these lines this week. A woman named Jennifer Rosini at Forbes sent a note that read:
Hi ,
You are invited to join the new community of the high quality business and financial bloggers from Forbes.com. Our community – the Business and Financial Blog Network, will launch shortly.
I wrote her back, pointing out that she hadn’t even bothered to pretend it was a personal note… just a mail merge missing my name.
She responded (this is the entire note):
I’m not sending these out. I have people working for me that send out 500 a day. Are you interested in joining, Seth?
The juxtaposition of the third sentence with the second just highlighted the inanity of the entire enterprise. It’s a high-quality network, but 500 people a day are being asked to join, and it’s okay to spam people but do I want to join anyway?
The end result of spam (email spam, blog spam, Twitter spam, Squidoo spam, comment spam, phone spam, politician spam) is that it eats away at your brand. If you don’t have a brand, you might make some short term cash but it gets tiresome creating annoyance everywhere you go. If you do have a brand, a brand like Forbes, say, you don’t notice the brand erosion… until it’s too late.
Here, it’s simple:
You can contact just about anyone you want. The only rule is you need to contact them personally, with respect, and do it months before you need their help! Contact them about them, not about you. Engage. Contribute. Question. Pay attention. Read. Interact.
Then, when you’ve earned the right to attention and respect, months and months later, sure, ask. It takes a lot of time and effort, which is why volume isn’t the answer for you, quality is.
That’s a great way to get a job, promote a site, make a friend, spread the word or just be a human.
April 12, 2008
