A few months ago, I promised to record and release highlights from the three day startup session that I ran. Thanks to Jeff at Earwolf, here it is. Not flashy, but if you want to invest the time, I am hoping you'll learn some new ways to think about your project.
And, for a shorter, punchier, more visual hour, here is my This is Broken talk from the Gel conference a few years ago.
Enjoy.
The downward spiral is all too familiar. A drinking problem leads to a job lost, which leads to more drinking. Poor customer service leads customers to choose other vendors, which of course leads to less investment in customer service, which continues the problem.
Your boss has a temper tantrum because he's stressed about his leadership abilities. The tantrum undermines his relationship with his peers, which of course makes him more stressed and he becomes more likely to have another tantrum. An employee is disheartened because of negative feedback from a boss, which leads to less effort, which of course leads to more negative feedback.
Most things that go wrong, go wrong slowly.
The answer isn't to look for the swift and certain solution to the long-term problem. The solution is to replace the down cycle with the up cycle.
The (too common, obvious, simple) plan is to live with the cycle that caused the problem instead ("When I get stressed, I freeze up, so I need to figure out how to avoid getting stressed"). The simple plan puts the onus on the outside world to stop contributing the input that always leads to the negative output. That's just not going to work very well.
The more difficult but more effective alternative is to become aware of the down cycle. Once you find it, understand what triggers it and then learn to use that trigger to initiate a different cycle.
"This is my down cycle. What will it cost me to replace it with a different one? Who can help me? What do I need to learn? How do I change my habits and my instincts?"
This works for organizations as well as individuals. The fish restaurant that as sales go down, borrows money to buy ever fresher fish instead of cutting corners that will lead nowhere good. Or the ad agency the follows a client loss not with layoffs, but with hiring of even better creative staff.
Slowing sales might lead to more investment with customer service, not less. Decreased grades might lead to more time spent on enthusiastic studying, not less.
This is incredibly difficult. But identifying the down cycle and investing in replacing it with the up cycle is the one and only best strategy. The alternative, which is to rationalize and defend the cycle as a law of nature or permanent habit, is tragic.
Now that information is ubiquitous, the obligation changes. It's no longer okay to not know.
If you don't know what a word means, look it up.
If you're meeting with someone, check them out in advance.
If it sounds too good to be true, Google it before you forward it.
If you don't know what questions to ask your doctor, find them before your appointment.
If it's important, do your homework.
I confess that I'm amazed when I meet hard-working, smart people who are completely clueless about how their industry works, how their tools work…
It never made sense to be proud of being ignorant, but we're in a new era now. Look it up.
In an industrial, competitive culture, most things are just barely good enough.
Cell phone calls, if they were any worse, would be unusable. MP3 files sound not nearly as good as they could. Car mileage goes up, but really slowly. When something makes a huge leap (like the iPad did), it's headline news, because it's so rare.
The market will switch to a competitor when the competitor is just good enough to warrant switching (I know that's obvious, but it's worth stating). As a result, R&D departments ship a product out the door the moment it is just barely good enough to grab enough share to pay for itself. The thought of, for example, working on the CD for six more months before declaring it 'done' would have been considered short-term economic stupidity. As a result, we are saddled with thirty years of sub-par music–if they'd just held on a bit longer, it would all sound so much better.
The challenge kicks in for the individual or organization who thinks what they've launched is just barely good enough–and it's not. Prematurely declaring that it's done means that your incremental improvement doesn't seem important to anyone else. And so you flop.
Better to make it better than it needs to be.
Most successful (and honest) real estate agents will tell you that their business is about the listings, and that sales ability comes second. All other things being equal, the agent with a better home to sell will make a better sale.
The same thing is true for baseball managers—if you have a better lineup you're more likely to win the game. And of course that's true for the sushi restaurant with fresher fish. And the tech company with better programmers, and the college with better professors…
If this is all so obvious, why do we spend all our time trying to find cheap average inputs and then make them special through our magnificent sales and management skills? Why do we industrialize the hiring process, spend very little time on scouting, and seek out the replicatable instead of the special exception? Our ego demands that we spend all day polishing the average instead of seeking out the exceptional.
Better to invest the time and money on special people and raw materials instead.
"I'm just going to wait until all the facts are in…"
All the facts are never in. We don't have all the facts on the sinking of the Titanic, on the efficacy of social media or on whether dogs make good house pets. We don't have all the facts on hybrid tomatoes, global warming or the demise of the industrial age, either.
The real question isn't whether you have all the facts. The real question is, "do I know enough to make a useful decision?" (and no decision is still a decision).
If you don't, then the follow up question is, "What would I need to know, what fact would I need to see, before I take action?"
If you can't answer that, then you're not actually waiting for all the facts to come in.
Just to be clear, especially if you’re just joining us:
The truth is elusive. No one knows the whole truth about anything. We certainly don’t know the truth about the things we buy and recommend and use.
What we do know (and what we talk about) is our story. Our story about why use, recommend or are loyal to you and your products. Our story about the origin and the impact and the utility of what we buy.
Marketing is storytelling.
The story of your product, built into your product. The ad might be part of it, the copy might be part of it, but mostly, your product and your service and your people are all part of the story.
Tell it on purpose.
Do the extra work not because you have to but because it's a privilege.
Get in early.
Sweep the floor without being asked.
Especially when it's not your turn.
Not because you want credit or reward. Because you can.
The industrialist wants to suck everything out of you. Doing extra work as a cog in an industrial system is a fool's errand.
For the rest of us, the artist and the freelancer and the creator, we know that the privilege of doing the extra work is the work itself.
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice. And the habit is priceless.
"But what will I tell my neighbors?"
Once someone makes a decision about your cause or your product or your resume, it's almost impossible for you to persuade them that they were wrong. You're no longer asking them to remake the first decision, you're asking them to admit an error, which is a whole other thing.
Compounding this, organizations often make it awkward for someone who is trying to come around to be embraced, largely because the tribe is hurt that they were rejected in the first place.
The opportunity is to encourage the non-supporter to look at new information and make a new decision. Give them the story they need to tell their colleagues. "Well, I know that I always thought this brand was a cult and I said I would never use them, but then I saw their new product line. They've listened to all the stuff I said was wrong and fixed it…"
And step two is to celebrate the newcomers, not to dredge up their past statements and wave them in their face.
Transformational leaders don't start by denying the world around them. Instead, they describe a future they'd like to create instead.
Denying the truth about relative market share, imperial power or the scientific method helps no one.
Gandhi didn't pretend the British weren't dominating his country, and Feynman didn't challenge Einstein's theory of relativity or the laws of thermodynamics.
It's okay to say, "this is going to be difficult." And it's productive to point out, "our product isn't as good as it should be yet."
The problem with Orwellian talking heads, agitprop, faux news and Ballmer-like posturing is that they take away a foundation for a genuine movement to occur, because once we start denying facts, it's difficult to know when to stop. Tell us where we are, tell us where we're going. But if you can't be clear about one, it's hard to buy into the other.
