Traditional higher education is based on scarcity.
Famous colleges are permitted to be famous because they don't have many graduates. The value of the degree increases the number of students who want to attend, which further enhances their fame. In fact, they're called, "selective," because they don't let many people in. Here's an amazing truth: many colleges promote their schools to students who can't possibly get in, just so the number of applications will go up, so they can reject more students and thus appear more selective, which will, perversely, make them more popular as a school to apply to.
A class taken at the Harvard continuing education program is not 'worth' nearly as much as one taken by someone who got in to real Harvard. Because getting in is scarce.
Class enrollment is scarce. You need to get up early, or game the system or get lucky to get a seat in the best classes. We happily applaud the value of a small-group seminar and decry the 300 person lecture because the intimacy that comes with this sort of scarcity is valuable.
Accreditation further enhances scarcity, as does the requirement that a certain number of teachers have a doctorate degree.
MOOCs and online education, of course, turn all of this upside down. There's no extra cost to having more students in an online course. 100,000 students isn't at all unusual. Abundance! Not only that, but since anyone can take any course, there's an abundance of choice. A typical university might offer just one or two intro courses in artificial intelligence, but the internet can easily offer a hundred or a thousand.
Abundance means that there's far less brand value in saying you took a course, because the fact that you took the course isn't rare or scarce. The learning is valuable, not the proof you took it.
Now that just about anyone can continue their education, just about everyone must. You must, because if you're not keeping up, you're falling behind. You must because the new abundance creates a new expectation. "What do you mean you don't understand that…"
Here's the big leap: When we were offering you the valuable prize of a brand-name degree, that scarcity required you to jump through hoops to get it. It meant you had to spend years in high school following the pre-college rules just to get in. It meant that we had to test you in each course, to prove you learned it. The proof was what you exchanged for your A, and your A was the coin you needed to buy your summa cum laude degree, the thing of value.
In the world of abundance, there's no scarce degree. So testing you as a form of scarce proof is silly. No, the reward is simpler–learn something because you want to learn it, not because you need a grade on a curve.
Forgive me for going on, but I wanted to expose this line of thinking to help you see how flipped and flopped our experience of education is about to become.
The old system isn't going away. I still want my surgeon and my engineer to be certified and to prove that they've learned what they were supposed to learn. But more and more of the education we're valuing today is about the soft skills of decision making and creativity and most of all, about the choice to grow and step up. And that sort of learning doesn't easily happen in a scarcity-based institution.
Learn what you want to learn.
Pick yourself.
Do it often.
Don't do it for proof, do it because the learning itself is worth it.
Organize and teach and lead, because it's a great way to learn, because it's the right thing to do and because it is a new sort of scarcity, the scarcity of people who care.
[coming later this week: details on our first course and how you can start organizing for it].
September 9, 2013
Our series continues with All Marketers are Liars, a prime example of what happens when you tell a story wrong. I've done some pretty poor book titling over seventeen books, but this one was too clever by half.
Most people, of course, have never read any of my books, and even most of my blog readers haven't read any given Seth Godin book. So a book is judged by its cover, just as you and your brand and your product are judged by your (conceptual) cover.
People saw this cover (with the original ridiculous photo) and immediately assumed that they knew what it was about (how to lie) and that the title offended them ("hey, I'm a marketer and I'm not a liar").
But, of course, the book isn't about how to lie, it's about the imperative to tell the truth, a truth that resonates, a truth you can live with. The title messes with our perceptions, but in a way that instead of welcoming in my very busy, very picky potential reader, pushes her away. One newspaper reviewer slammed the book without even reading it, deciding that the title alone was sufficient cause for dismissing it.
So, to answer David Meerman Scott's (and others') questions: I changed the title for future editions to All Marketers Tell Stories because, even though it's less artistic, it takes my own advice (at least a little). An even better title would have been: TRUE STORIES (and the Smart Marketers That Tell Them).
The advice: find the worldview and the bias and the cultural preconceptions that your audience carries with them and then place your story (you do have a story, whether you want to or not) as a hook that leverages those biases.
In the internet era, your story is going to be inspected, held up to scrutiny and scoured for half-truths. But if your story is true, if it not only resonates with the worldview we insist on but actually delivers, then you've created something of lasting value.
Krulak’s law is simple: Soldiers in the field interacting with local people are the most important element of nation building and counter insurgency. It has wide applicability to any organization that interacts with the public.
One errant minimum-wage cog in the machine can cripple an entire brand,
or at the very least, wreck the lifetime value of a customer. The two kids at
Domino’s who made a YouTube sensation out of cruelty to pizza did more damage
to the Domino’s brand than any vice president ever could.
The instinct, then, is to tightly control that last step, to be sure no one has any leeway or can take initiative when dealing with customers, because, after all, you can't trust them.
This is a self-defeating precaution. As soon as you elminate humanity from the interactions you have with customers, you've guaranteed that your (now sterile) brand will mean less than it could.
Hire better people. Trust them more. And be prepared to make it right when they don't.
There are proven strategies that generic products can use so that they're more likely to be stumbled upon by someone searching. Name your new book with all sorts of keywords in the title, for example, so it organically ranks higher for those very keywords…
The alternative is to create a product that earns a reputation sufficient that people choose to talk about it, choose to argue about it, choose to look for it. Not something like it, but it.
Nice to be found. Essential to be sought.
This was always a good idea, but in a post-search era of mobile and social, it's now the best idea.
September 8, 2013
Krypton is an experiment in one way we can think about a future of education.
One of the best things about playing with ways to engage in education is that there are all these fabulous tropes. Calling this a "community college" for example, is a way of getting at the idea of community and collegiality and inquiry, while still riffing on the name of an institution.
You can have deans, registrars, degrees, grades, ivy covered buildings, cheerleaders–tons of shortcuts to communicate a reminder of something that most of us have experienced in one way or another.
Of course, every institution worth its salt today also has a sports program, with a private jet, a football team and a mascot. We don't need the jet or the footballs, but we do have a mascot.
Here's what the interns looked like sorting through their limited-edition Krypton Ultimate Frisbee Team t-shirts ("league champs, 2016"). There are no more of these, but one day perhaps we'll make something even cooler.
Before we do that, though, we need an image of our mascot, so we can invent our own t-shirts and swag.
If any of you are up for the task, draw your narwhal, a better narwhal, polish it up and send it over. The winning mammal gets a free t-shirt. Thanks.
We'll get back to more serious matters in two days. Enjoy your weekend!
PS This stamp, while well intentioned, is insufficient. It misses the joy of being a tusked sea mammal, don't you think?
September 7, 2013
Dave Ramsey was telling a small business person how he'd built his media empire. The guy interrupted, "well, sure, that's fine for you, because you have a trust brand."
A trust brand?
What other kinds of brands are there?
Perhaps your brand stands for cheap or convenient. Sure, you can win with that for a while, at least until someone gets a little cheaper or the internet gets a little closer. For the rest of us, though, there's only one option, isn't there?
When you have a choice in what to buy, you will first and foremost (and second and third in fact) base your choice on a simple question, "who do I trust to keep the promise that the marketers are making?"
The fact is, people will soon forget if they overpaid for something. They will probably never (ever!) forget if you violated their trust.
The fascinating thing: even though most everyone shakes their head in agreement on this topic, they get stuck answering the question, "how have you regularly overinvested and prioritized being the most trustworthy organization/individual in your industry?" Being just like the others and doing your job doesn't get you to this level.
It doesn't matter if you work for a search engine, run a plumbing service or organize a conference. If I've come to know you and trust you and then you turn your back on me, abandon me and make me feel like a fool for trusting you, I won't be back any time soon.
The viral music video of the moment is right here.
It's probably going to be compared to Numa Numa (but not break any records–Gangnam has 1.7 billion views).
The question for the marketer, music or otherwise, isn't, "what are the hooks and tricks I use to go viral?" No, the question is, "is it worth it?"
What does the fox say has the hooks and tricks in abundance. It has Archie McPhee animal costumes, nonsense words, just the right sort of production values, superfluous subtitles, appropriate silliness. It would probably help the cause to add spurious nudity, but give them points for getting the rest of it right.
To what end?
If your work goes viral, if it gets seen by tens of millions of people, sure you can profit from that. But most of the time, it won't. Most of the time, you'll aim to delight the masses and you'll fail.
I'm glad that some people are busy trying to entertain us in a silly way now and then. But it doesn't have to be you doing the entertaining–the odds are stacked against you.
So much easier to aim for the smallest possible audience, not the largest, to build long-term value among a trusted, delighted tribe, to create work that matters and stands the test of time.
"Baby bump bump bay dum."
September 6, 2013
In creating a new project, the essential step is isolating the difficult part and focusing on that. The easy parts are important and they take work, but they tend to take care of themselves if the core engine is working.
Wikipedia: find people to volunteer to become editors
AirBnB: find people to put great houses up for rent
Typical MOOC: find millions of students willing to take a course (you don't need infinite teachers, just a few, meaning the students are actually the hard part)
In the case of Krypton, we knew that there were several key elements:
- Finding and working with important and passionate thought leaders
- Designing curricula that would resonate and deliver on the promise of useful learning
- Building a software platform that could amplify the impact of what we're building
- Finding local leaders who would step up and volunteer to organize groups or classes
It turns out that the element that's both critically important and difficult is the last one.
What does it take to pick up the phone or write an email to invite a dozen people to get together for ninety minutes? Technically, it's pretty quick and easy. Socially and emotionally, though, it's a significant leap.
The questions come unbidden–what right do I have to organize this? is everyone too busy? what if they don't come? should there be snacks? who should I include and who should be left out?
Why go first?
That's the biggest question of all. It's easier to wait, after all. Easier to be sure that this is a proven success, a worldwide shift in the way we connect over ideas.
Our job, then, is to find interesting enough topics, a simple enough structure, and a low enough risk that our local leaders would take the leap. If we've done our jobs, the idea will spread.
The secret weapon in our launch, then, is you. I'm fortunate to have an extraordinary tribe of blog readers, people who have an instinct to lead, a desire to go first, the generosity to take a leap on behalf of those they care about.
So, that's the bet. The bet is that you, the early adopters, will take a leap in a few weeks and involve a dozen or so colleagues and friends in an unproven, free, lightweight experiment in how we might actually come to learn together.
Everything we've built and will be sharing with you in the next few weeks is based on that assumption. It gives us the freedom to be open and clear and direct, because you're willing to take the last, critical step.
September 5, 2013
AT&T has a new film out about the stupidity, selfishness and yes, death, associated with texting while driving. It's directed by Werner Herzog and it's quite moving.
It's not going to work.
Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die or be maimed because it's physically impossible for us to deal with the cultural imperative to stay in touch on our phones–and drive at the same time.
The reason a movie isn't going to solve the problem is that it is competing against several cornerstones of our culture:
- The culture of the car as a haven, a roving office, and a place where you do what you like
- The culture of the Marlboro man, no speed limiters in cars, 'optional' speed limits on roads
- The culture of connection and our fear of being left out
- The culture of technology, and our bias to permit it first and ask questions later
If you get a marketing assignment where you're out to change even one of these deeply held beliefs, consider finding a new client. All four? There's no marketing lever long enough to do this work.
There's a technical solution, one that might work. The are two solutions I can think of actually, both cheap and fast and effective.
The first is to require the phone to automatically alert every person you're texting or emailing at the moment you use your phone while moving. As we've seen, knowingly interacting with someone who is driving is a crime in many locales, and yes, you should go to jail for it. We need to change the cultural imperative, and we can't do that with laws alone and we can't do that with movies. Technology, though, can fix what it broke.
The second solution is even simpler: when a phone is moving, don't permit it to accomplish certain tasks.
People won't die as a result.
It won't cost the companies a penny in profit.
And defenders of the status quo will scream about freedom and access and rights and how it used to be. They will worry about people on trains or passengers in carpools.
But you know what? It's better than being dead. Better than being the victim of the one out of three drivers I see who couldn't wait…
I have no illusions that we will find the will as a society to insist that a technology be used to alter our culture. But we could.
/rant
At the grueling Iditarod, there's a prize for the musher who finishes last: The Red Lantern.
Failing to finish earns you nothing, of course. But for the one who sticks it out, who arrives hours late, there's the respect that comes from finding the strength to make it, even when all seems helpless.
Most parents (and most bosses) agree that this sort of dedication is a huge asset in life. And yet, as we head back for another year of school, I can't help but notice that schools do nothing at all to encourage it.
The coach of the soccer team doesn't reward the players who try the hardest, push themselves or put in the hours. He rewards the best players, by playing them.
The director of the school play puts the same kids in leading roles year after year. After all, the reasoning goes, we need to have tryouts and reward the best performers, just like they do in real life.
But school isn't real life. School is about learning how to succeed in real life.
Natural talent is rewarded early and often. As Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, most of the players in the NHL have birthdays in a three month window, because when you're 8 years old, being six months older is a huge advantage. Those kids, the skaters with good astrological signs, or possibly those performers with the genetic singing advantage–those are the kids that get the coaching and the applause and the playing time. Unearned advantages, multiplied.
If we're serious about building the habits of success, tracking is precisely the wrong approach. Talent (born with or born without) is not your fault, is not a choice, is not something we ought to give you much credit or blame for.
How do we celebrate the Red Lantern winners instead?
