Designers prune.
Left to its own devices, the mob will augment, accessorize, spam, degrade and noisify whatever they have access to, until it loses beauty and function and becomes something else.
The tragedy of the design commons.
A farmer's market with no entry requirements turns into a bazaar and then into a souvenir stand and finally into a flea market.
A bulletin board with no moderator or hierarchy becomes a random mess of affiliate posts and noise, where only a smart search engine is helpful.
An Apple product designed with user feedback would have thousands of extra features, multiple input methods and weigh 18 pounds.
(The best exception to this rule are some–not all–places where people live, including parts of Manhattan and Kibera, Kenya. But even in the best instances, as soon as commercial interests are served, it starts to fail).
It seems democratic and non-elitist to set it and forget it and let the users take over. But the tools we use (Wikipedia) and the brands we covet (Nike or Ducati) resolutely refuse to become democracies.
August 9, 2012
My car informs me that I've been averaging 26 mph over the last month. Much lower than I would have guessed.
It's low not because we don't drive on the highway, it's low because there's also a lot of time spent sitting still in traffic and at lights.
When we remember our journey and our work, the highlights are the fast parts, the thrilling moments, the peaks (and the valleys). It seems, though, that we spend most of our time in preparation, or circling, or considering. Probably worth investing some effort into our performance there, and enjoying those parts as well.
August 8, 2012
Innovation is often the act of taking something that worked over there and using it over here.
Your problem, whatever it might be, probably has a solution somewhere in the world. And your organization is probably stuck because they don't know what to do, and more important, don't have the guts to do it.
An example in the real world that's precisely about your particular problem, then, is fabulous because it not only shows you what to do, it gives you the confidence to do it.
Louis CK had the same problem of many comedians–too much time, not enough money. His pay-on-the-honor-system internet special was a huge success, and of course, dozens of comedians (ostensibly creative risk takers) rushed to follow in his precise footsteps.
What were they waiting for? After all, Radiohead did a similar thing years before Louis did. Of course, they make music and he makes comedy.
"Oh, that's a fine example of how a company in the hockey stick industry grew, but we make lacrosse sticks. Do you have any case studies of how a lacrosse stick company has succeeded?"
If you're waiting for a proven case study, directly on point, you're going to wait too long.
The skill, it seems, is having the desire and the guts to seek out examples by analogy instead of insisting on being a follower of someone with guts.
In the short run, it's easy.
It's easy to fool someone or lie to them or give them what they think they want. It's easy to write a great block of copy, to sell on credit, to grab the attention of the mob.
Not so easy: to build mutually profitable long-term relationships that lead to satisfaction, trust and work worth doing.
Lincoln was right about fooling people, but along the way we often forget that while trickery is easy, the longer path of keeping your promises is far more satisfying and stable.
August 7, 2012
Happy Days is famous for jumping the shark. In an episode near the end of their run, the writers ran out of ideas and went so far to please the masses that they wrote a script in which Fonzie, wearing a leather jacket, rode water skis up a ramp and over a shark.
Since then, the kind of people who like to say, "no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded," are happy to point out when a popular organization jumps the shark.
The thing is, there isn't one shark. There's your shark, my shark and their shark. The masses have a different shark than the early adopters do.
For some, Apple has already jumped the shark. A new upgrade or a new TV commercial might be a step too far, and they walk away, sad that yet another cutting edge organization has succumbed to mass mediocrity. For others, they're just feeling safe enough to take a shot, and the shark is nowhere in sight.
The insight is to have the empathy not to confuse your shark with the shark of the kind of person you're hoping to delight. Choose your customers, choose their shark.
August 6, 2012
The giant multinational can start a project knowing that it will take years to pay off.
The struggling freelancer might be willing to invest a few days.
Venture capital, particularly for web companies, mostly changes the time horizon. It means that the bootstrapping entrepreneur can make longer term investments, building assets that scale instead of cashing them in daily.
Goverments do some of their best work when they take on projects with time horizons that would frighten away even large companies. You're going to wait how long for that bridge to pay off?
One interesting side effect of going public is that companies that use venture capital to lengthen their time horizon suddenly (in just one day) have to switch gears to a time horizon that's measured in days or quarters.
And one useful note: if you're having trouble selling/working with or for an organization, it might be because you don't understand each other's time frame.
August 5, 2012
Viewers are not the customer of the TV networks—advertisers are.
For a long time, those two groups had similar goals, though. Advertisers wanted lots of viewers and viewers wanted shows that lots of them wanted to watch. So the TV networks used ratings as a proxy for advertiser happiness and there wasn't much of a problem.
The same thing was true for newspapers. More local readers meant local advertisers were happy.
Both newspapers and TV networks suffer when mass starts to disappear. Viewers seek out what they want to watch, as opposed to what the masses want, and advertisers are left to scramble for eyeballs.
HBO turns this upside down. The viewers ARE the customer. HBO can program with confidence, because there's no question about who they are working for.
Search engine advertising works because the search engine knows the searcher is going to leave the site no matter what. They don't care if you leave to click on an organic link or a paid one, as long as you come back often. And the advertiser is paying by the click, so he cares about having the right people click, not everyone. Fairly aligned goals among all three parties.
Which leads to the conundrum faced by Twitter as they try to monetize sufficiently to justify the expectations of their investors.
If they relentlessly sell the attention of their users, they will have a misalignment as they maximize profit. The advertisers will want ever more attention, and the users will want to avoid those interruptions the advertisers are paying for. Tension will keep rising as users feel trapped by a medium with few substitutes that begins to charge an ever higher tax in the form of attention wasted.
My suggestion: Twitter has the opportunity to become extraordinarily aligned with their best users. Offer the top users the opportunity to pay $10 a month. For that fee, they can get an ever-growing list of features, including analytics, verification, 160 characters, who knows…
10,000,000 users choosing to pay $10 a month means that the service turns a profit (!) of more than a billion dollars a year. And because the company is in alignment with their most powerful and evangelical users, that number grows over time. Every decision proposed will have to answer just one question: what makes our users happier?
Free is a great idea, until free leads to a conflict between those contributing attention and those contributing cash.
August 4, 2012
Don’t follow, lead.
Don’t copy, create.
Don’t start, finish.
or even,
Don't sit still, move.
Don't fit in, stand out.
Don't sit quietly, speak up.
Not all the time, sure, but more often.
August 3, 2012
Here's one strategy for handling returns from unhappy customers:
Let them know you don't accept returns. Explain that it must be a user error. Explain that the customer must have lacked care or intelligence or ethics. Explain that you're willing to accept a return, but just this one time. And finally, explain that you're now going to put the person on a list, and you'll never sell to him ever again.
Do all this in one continuous statement, without pausing for a response.
This has happened to me more than once.
What puzzles me is this: if you're going to give the customer a refund, why not make them delighted by the process? Why not create an aura of goodwill? At the very least, both of you will have a better day. Even better, perhaps one day someone will mention your company to this former customer–I wonder what he'll say?
One tip: if you say your meta-goal out loud (or jot it down) before you start an interaction, you're more likely to consistently create the outcome you seek, not the one you hyperventilate yourself into.
August 2, 2012
Isn't it always?
Actually, the long stories are the good ones. About how you found that great job, or discovered this amazing partner or managed to get that innovation approved.
If long stories are so great, how come we spend all our lives working for the short ones? The very act of seeking out the shortcut and the quick win might very well be the reason you don't have enough successful long stories to share.
August 1, 2012
