A newspaper asked me the following, which practically set my hair on fire:
What inherent traits would make it easier for someone to becoming a linchpin? Surely not everyone can be a linchpin?
Why not? How dare anyone say that some people aren't somehow qualified to bring emotional labor to their work, somehow aren't genetically or culturally endowed with the seeds or instincts or desires to invent new techniques or ideas, or aren't chosen to connect with other human beings in a way that changes them for the better?
Perhaps some people will insist that there are jobs where no humanity is possible. But you don't have to work for them.
Some people want to tell you that your DNA isn't right, or you're not from the right family or neighborhood. I think that's wrongheaded.
Bob Marley grew up in one of the poorest villages in the world. Sir Richard Branson has dyslexia that makes it difficult for him to read. Hugh Masakela grew up in Witbank, a coal mining town. It's not just musicians and entrepreneurs, of course. The Internet makes it possible for a programmer in Russia or a commentator in South Africa to have an impact on a large group of people as well.
We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that the factory approach (average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost) is the one and only way. It's not.
We make a difference to other people when we give gifts to them, when we bring emotional labor to the table and do work that matters. It's hard for me to imagine that this is only available to a few. Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people. Yes, there's too many barriers and not enough support. But no, your ability to create and contribute isn't determined at birth. It's a choice.
June 3, 2010
If you're starting out as an entrepreneur or a freelancer or a project manager, the most important choice you'll make is: what to do? As in the answer to the question, "what do you do?"
Some questions to help you get started:
- Who are you trying to please?
- Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
- How will the world be different when you've succeeded?
- Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
- Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that's two questions)
- Would you rather have an open-ended project that's never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)
- Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
- Which: to invent a category or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?
- If you take someone else's investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?
- Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?
- Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask…
- How long can you wait before it feels as though you're succeeding?
- Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
- Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe) or is it better they be anonymous and separate?
- How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we're on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
- What does busy look like?
In my experience, people skip all of these questions and ask instead: "What can I do that will be sure to work?" The problem, of course, is that there is no sure, and even worse, that you and I have no agreement at all on what it means for something to work.
June 2, 2010
A few deadlines are coming up, and alas, we can't do extensions, so I thought I'd remind the last-minute hold-everything types:
More than 4,000 people in 700 cities have signed up for the June 14 Linchpin meetup. Maybe you'll meet someone who's shipping. It's free and it's semi-unofficial.
Deadline for submitting a picture for the Linchpin cover is June 1 at midnight EST.
Also on June 2, the price for the full day ticket for the Boston road trip event goes up.
June 1, 2010
Not just my head, but your customer's head and yes… yours.
Everyone has multiple conversations and priorities going on, competing agendas that come into play every time we make a choice about doing, buying, creating or interacting. I think these voices (and a few I missed) determine which career we
choose, how good a job we do, where we shop and what we watch. Here are a few:
- The ego–seeks applause and recognition.
- The lizard–seeks safety, wants to fit in and not be rejected or criticized.
- The artist–wants to be generous, creative and make positive change with impact.
- The boxer–wants to poke and be poked, seeks revenge and ultimately victory.
- The zombie–wants to turn off and be entertained.
- The carpenter–seeks to do useful work, and finish it well.
- The philanthropist–wants to help, anonymously.
- The evangelist–wants to spread an idea.
- And the hunter–wants to successfully track and bring down a target.
There's a lot of overlap here, no doubt about it. Who's winning?
Every 18 months for the last decade, the world has doubled the data it pushes to you.
Twice as much email, twice as many friend requests, twice as many sites to check, twice as many devices.
When does your mind lose the ability to keep up? Then what happens? Is it already happening?
May 31, 2010
Yes, I know you're a master of the web, that you've visited every website written in English, that you've been going to SXSW for ten years, that you were one of the first bloggers, you used Foursquare before it was cool and you can code in HTML in your sleep. Yes, I know that you sit in the back of the room tweeting clever ripostes when speakers are up front failing on a panel and that you had a LOLcat published before they stopped being funny.
But what have you shipped?
What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?
Go, do that.
May 30, 2010
Your business has a core, a goal, a challenge and a deliverable. There is probably one thing that would transform your project, one
success that changes things, one hurdle that's tougher than the others. What's difficult, what would respond to
overwhelming attention? That's the core.
Getting from here to there involves making sales, delivering on promises, overcoming the Dip and shipping.
Along the way, there are supporting tasks you can engage in, things you can do to make the goal easier to achieve.
A popular blog might gain attention and then trust and ultimately help you sell more widgets.
A lot of followers online might give you permission to tell a story that gets you better employees.
A vibrant party at SXSW can create buzz that gives your salespeople entree to important meetings.
These aren't trivial activities. In fact, they're part of what marketing means today. But…
But if they give you and your team an outlet to avoid the difficult work of achieving your goal ("I can't go to that sales call, I'm busy uploading pictures of last night's party to the blog and then tweeting out the url") then you're not building, you're hiding. Rich calls this playing with turtles. The thing is, the turtles are alive, and they're going to demand a lot from you.
There's a huge downside here: once your side activity gets going, it will lead to crises (we have an urgent email we have to answer), to feelings of abandonment (hey, you haven't been on the forum lately!), to irresistible offers to have the CEO speak or get people involved. There will always be a feeling of sunk cost, of opportunities missed and of things on the verge because these are human movements, not paid ads.
Two choices: 1. find a way to make your goal completely aligned with the tactics you use to achieve it. What's good for your blog is good for your business. or 2. Now that these approaches are working, and working incredibly well, it's time to come up with boundaries so the tail doesn't end up wagging the dog.
May 29, 2010
Take a look at just about any industry with many competitors–colleges, hotels, sedans, accounting firms (especially accounting firms)…
The websites bend over backwards to be just like all the others. You can't identify one hotel website from another if you delete the name of the hotel (unless there's a beach or a snow-capped mountain in the background).
Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what's cheap and close?
How about a site that says, "Here's why we're different." And means it.
(Easy to read this and nod your head, but… what's your resume look like?)
May 28, 2010
Mark Frauenfelder, a leading voice of the post-industrial age, has a new book out today.
It's not what you expect, and it provoked quite a few thoughts.
- The book is about the increasing insulation between modern life and the idea of actually making/growing/fixing things. As Mark chronicles his journey into the world of tinkering, I realized that this is a spiritual journey, not merely a hobby. Tweaking, making and building are human acts, ones that are very easy to forget about as we sign up to become cogs in the giant machinery of consumption and production.
- Mark has shepherded the world's most popular blog for eons. What do we owe him for that? Even if the book is merely good, shouldn't it sell a million copies, if only as a gratuity? Of course it's not merely good, it's foundation-shaking, at least for me.
- Is it any surprise that Publisher's Weekly didn't like it? Of course not. The anonymous reviews in this dying trade publication are almost always diametrically opposed to what the book delivers and whether it's interesting enough for a bookstore to sell. Almost all bestselling books are surprise bestsellers, because it's the surprise part that makes them bestsellers in the first place.
This book won't resonate with everyone, but Mark's honest retelling of his repeated failures to be brilliant at all times made me smile, and his relentless and joyous embrace of actually making things was an inspiration.
May 27, 2010
Here's an app that pays for 12 iPads the very first time you use it. Buy one iPad for every single chair in your meeting room… like the projector and the table, it's part of the room.
I recently sat through a 17 hour meeting with 40 people in it (there were actually 40 people, but it only felt like 17 hours.). That's a huge waste of attention and resources.
Here's what the app does (I hope someone will build it): (I know some of these features require a lot of work, and some might require preparation before the meeting. Great! Perhaps then the only meetings we have will be meetings worth having, meetings with an intent to produce an outcome). I can dream…
1. There's an agenda, distributed by the host, visible to everyone, with time of start and stop, and it updates as the meeting progresses.
2. There's a timer, keeping things moving because it sits next to the agenda.
3. The host or presenter can push an image or spreadsheet to each device whenever she chooses.
4. There's an internal back channel that the host can turn on, permitting people in the room to chat privately with each other. (And the whole thing works on internal wifi, so no internet surfing to distract!)
5. There's a big red 'bored' button that each attendee can push anonymously. The presenter can see how many red lights are lighting up at any give time.
6. There's a bigger green 'GO!' button that each attendee can push anonymously. It lets the host or presenter see areas where more depth is wanted.
7. There's a queue for asking questions, so they just don't go to the loudest, bravest or most powerful.
8. There's a voting mechanism.
9. There's a whiteboard so anyone can draw an idea and push it to the group.
10. There's a written record of all activity created, so at the end, everyone who attended can get an email digest of what just occurred. Hey, it could even include who participated the most, who asked questions that others thought were useful, who got the most 'boring' button presses while speaking…
11. There's even a way the host can see who isn't using it actively.
Can you imagine how an hour flies by when everyone has one of these in a meeting? How focused and exhausting it would all be?
$500 each, you'll sell 50,000…
PS no one built the first one yet. Sigh.
