Hope and expectation
Hope is fuel, it moves us forward and it amplifies our best work.
Expectation is the killer of joy, the shortest route to disappointment. When we expect that something will happen, we can't help but be let down…
The noise in our head (and artificial intelligence)
One common insightful definition of AI: Artificial Intelligence is everything a computer can't do yet. As soon as it can, we call it obvious.
And so, self-driving cars and devices that can beat us at chess don't really think, they're just doing something by rote (really really fast).
One reason we easily dismiss the astonishing things computers can do is that we know that they don't carry around a narrative, a play by play, the noise in their head that's actually (in our view) 'intelligence.'
It turns out, though, that the narrative is a bug, not a feature. That narrative doesn't help us perform better, it actually makes us less intelligent. Any athlete or world-class performer (in debate, dance or dungeonmastering) will tell you that they do their best work when they are so engaged that the narrative disappears.
I have no idea when our computer overlords will finally enslave us, but it won't happen because we figured out a way to curse them with a chattering monkey.
Five steps to digital hygiene
Washing your hands helps you avoid getting sick.
Putting fattening foods out of your reach helps you stay slim.
And the provocations and habits you encounter in the digital world keep you productive (or drive you crazy):
- Turn off mail and social media alerts on your phone.
- Don't read the comments. Not on your posts or on the posts of other people. Not the reviews and not the trolls.
- De-escalate the anger in every email exchange.
- Put your phone in the glove compartment while driving.
- Spend the most creative hour of your day creating, not responding.
Each habit is hard to swallow and easy to maintain. Worth it.
Why not?
If technology gives you the chance to speak up, build a platform and help show the way, why not use it?
If someone offers you a project or a job with more leverage and the chance to both learn and teach, why not take it?
If you can learn something new, more efficiently than ever before, if the opportunity to leap presents itself, why not?
Now is a good time.
Enthusiasm and contempt are both self-fulfilling
Someone who shows up with enthusiasm made a decision before she even encountered what was going on. The same thing is true for the guy who scowls with contempt before the customer opens his mouth.
It's a choice.
This choice is contagious.
This choice changes what will happen next.
This choice is at the heart of what it takes to be successful at making change or performing a service.
More than you imagine, we get what we expect.
Two heads or one?
As a company gets bigger, there's an inevitable split between the people who market what gets made and the people who design what gets made.
At some organizations, it's likely that these two people work in different buildings, and don't spend much time together.
One of the most important decisions made in the early days of JetBlue was that the woman in charge of marketing the airline was also in charge of hiring and training. Amy designed the product and the marketing, both.
This was certainly one of the things Steve Jobs brought to the table as well.
There are a lot of reasons that this is quite difficult to pull off. That doesn't mean it isn't important.
Try before you buy (or buy, then try)
There are two kinds of purchases: Either you are replenishing (you know precisely what you're about to get) or you are exploring.
Books and movies are almost always purchased before they are consumed. A bottle of Coke, or a return visit to a massage therapist, on the other hand, are replenishments of a known quantity. You might buy something for the satisfaction of owning it, or of owning one more, but that's different than buying one to find out what it does.
Neither is better or worse, but they are very much not the same.
If you sell an exploration, your customer is taking a chance. Sometimes magnifying that chance fits the worldview of the purchaser, and sometimes minimizing the risk is precisely what the purchaser is seeking.
On the other hand, in services like software and in recurring purchases, the sampling that leads to people getting hooked on the network effect and in replenishing what they have is what the seller seeks.
This is almost never talked about by marketers, but it's at the core of the strategy choices that follow.
Categories
Are tomatoes a fruit?
The benefit of a category isn't to denigrate something or someone. It's to help us make better decisions with limited information.
If we put someone in the category of, "frequent business traveler," we can apply previous learnings about what people like this might want or need.
Categories are useful tools when they help us find shared worldviews and interests. They're ineffective when they are nothing but surface labels, labels that don't help us serve.
Use categories well and you seem like a well-prepared mindreader, able to provide what people need, sometimes before they even realize it. It means you can treat patients, lead employees and delight customers on a regular basis.
Use them with laziness or ill intent, and you dehumanize the very people you ought to be serving.
A practical definition of reputation
Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.
We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation.
Customer service and luxury
If your Chanel bag wears out, don't expect the same response you might find if you have trouble with something from LL Bean or Lands End. Luxury brands have long assumed that if you can afford to buy it, you can afford to replace it.
That's changing.
The mass brand leaders in most markets have figured out how to deliver extraordinary promises at scale. Not the high end guys. The mass ones. They do this by realizing that the cost of making the customer happy is tiny compared to the cost of leaving her unhappy.
[Hint: if you think that there's any chance at all that people consider what you sell a luxury good, the answer is, they probably do.]
Go to a McDonalds. Buy a Big Mac and a chocolate milkshake. Drink half the milkshake. Eat half the Big Mac. Put the rest of the Big Mac into the milkshake, walk up to the counter and say, "I can't drink this milkshake, there's a Big Mac in it." You'll get a refund. (Please don't try this, but yes, it works).
It's cheaper to just say, "here's a refund," than it is to start a debate.
How is a luxury brand going to compete? Is part of the story of why you pay extra because of the service you'll get? Lexus did groundbreaking work on this (compare the Lexus service story/truth to the way Porsche or Jaguar owners used to be treated).
Luxury buyers who see that they're getting lesser service feel stupid, and stupid is the brand killer.
If you're going to sell luxury, you probably need to figure out how to use some of the premium you charge to deliver even better service than your lower-priced competition.