A beautiful pair of shoes, but one size too small, on sale and everything…. Not worth buying, not for you, not at any price. Because shoes that don't fit aren't a bargain.
And at a restaurant, you may have noticed that there's no extra charge for salt. You can have as much salt as you want on your food, for free. (Of course, it's not really free, it's part of the cost of the meal, so we paid for it, so we might as well get our money's worth, might as well use a lot.) Of course, that's silly, because regardless of how much we were billed for the salt, no matter how unlimited our access to it is, using more is merely going to ruin our meal. Too much salt isn't a bargain.
Buffets (like life, organizations, projects, art…) aren't actually, "all you can eat." They're, "all you care to eat." Which is something else entirely. Just because you can have it doesn't mean you want it. Just because we paid for it doesn't mean we should use all of it.
February 24, 2015
An original audio production* via Sounds True, with 100% of my royalties going to the Acumen Fund.
Find it right here: Leap First.
I just got this great note from Jason Connell. I hope the recording resonates with you as much as it did with him:
Wanted to let you know that I listened to Leap First over the past two days and love it. I am amazed by how you blended business, personal development, and spirituality into one fluid recording.
It did an amazing job of inspiring confidence, vision, and excitement about tackling… not just projects, but life and I plan to listen to it again soon.
Thank you for so generously sharing your insight. You could have charged far, far more for this.
Thanks to everyone who has listened, reviewed it and recommended it. I appreciate your support.
(*Producing this audio inspired my new book, Your Turn).
February 23, 2015
Celebrated all over the world, for the first time, tomorrow is annual Ruckusmaker Day.
Tomorrow would have been Steve Jobs' 60th birthday. Steve's contribution wasn't invention. Technology breakthroughs didn't come out of his basement the way they did from Land or Tesla. Instead, his contribution was to have a point of view. To see something and say 'yes' or 'no'. To not only have a point of view, but to change it when the times demanded.
Most of all, to express that point of view, to act on it, to live with it.
There's a lot to admire about the common-sense advice, "If you don't have anything worth saying, don't say anything."
On the other hand, one reason we often find ourselves with nothing much to say is that we've already decided that it's safer and easier to say nothing.
If you've fallen into that trap, then committing to having a point of view and scheduling a time and place to say something is almost certainly going to improve your thinking, your attitude and your trajectory.
A daily blog is one way to achieve this. Not spouting an opinion or retweeting the click of the day. Instead, outlining what you believe and explaining why.
Commit to articulating your point of view on one relevant issue, one news story, one personnel issue. Every day. Online or off, doesn't matter. Share your taste and your perspective with someone who needs to hear it.
Speak up. Not just tomorrow, but every day.
A worthwhile habit.
The worst troll is in your head.
Internet trolls are the commenters begging for a fight, the anonymous critics eager to tear you down, the hateful packs of roving evil dwarves, out for amusement.
But the one in your head, that voice of insecurity and self-criticism, that's the one you need to be the most vigilant about.
Do not feed the troll.
Do not reason with the troll.
Do not argue with the troll.
Most of all, don't litigate. Don't make your case, call your witnesses, prove you are right. Because the troll knows how to sway a jury even better than you do.
Get off the troll train. Turn your back, walk away, ship the work.
February 22, 2015
We invented televisions so marketers would have a way to run TV ads. We have magazines so marketers can run magazine ads.
Make no mistake: mass media exists because it permits mass marketers to do their job.
Mass production, the ability to make things cheaply, in volume, demanded that we invent mass marketing–it was the only way to sell what was being made in the quantity it was produced.
The internet, though, was not invented so marketers could run internet ads.
And, at the same time, mass production is being replaced by micro production, by the short run, by customization, by the long tail.
Just in time, mass media is going away too.
Mass marketers don't like this and they often don't even see it. They're struggling to turn Snapchat and Twitter and other sites into substitutes for TV, but it's not working, because it's an astonishing waste of attention.
The Ed Sullivan Show existed to sell Jello to everyone. Today, there's no everyone, and certainly no media channel that can sell everyone, cheap, to the folks who market Jello.
This is an ongoing challenge for mass marketers, and the opportunity of a generation for everyone else.
For fifty years, TV and TV-thinking was the shortcut. Make average stuff for average people (by definition = mass) and promote to every stranger within reach. It worked.
But mass is fading, fading faster than our desire to be mass marketers is fading. The shortcut doesn't work every time now, and the expectation that success is the same as popularity is still with us.
Fifty years ago, producers and marketers got smart. They saw the miracle of mass marketing and they adopted it as their own. They amped up mass production and bet on the masses.
The smart creators today are seeing the shift and doing precisely the opposite:
Produce for a micro market.
Market to a micro market.
When someone wants to know how big you can make (your audience, your market share, your volume), it might be worth pointing out that it's better to be important, to be in sync, to be the one that's hard to be replaced. And the only way to be important is to be relevant, focused and specific.
February 21, 2015
Hitters don't have much of an agenda other than, "swing at the good balls." No one blames the hitters when the pitcher has a hot hand and throws a no hitter.
Pitchers, on the other hand, decide what's going to happen next. Pitchers get to set the pace, outline the strategy, initiate instead of react.
When your job is in reaction mode, you're allowing the outside world to decide what happens next. You are freed from the hard work of setting an agenda, but in exchange, you dance when the market says dance. "I did the best I could with what was thrown at me…"
Finding the guts to move up the ladder is hard. When you decide to set the agenda and when you take control over your time and your effort, the responsibility for what happens next belongs to you.
February 20, 2015
What does Bob Dylan do for a living?
"Oh, I confound expectations."
And what about Jill Greenberg? Jill startled the art world with her spectacular retouched and lit photos of bears, of politicians and of babies. Quickly, people figured out how to copy her distinctive look, which is precisely what happens when you make any sort of important work.
And so, she re-confounded.
Being done isn't the point. In fact, being done is the only thing to fear.
February 19, 2015
Unfair things happen. You might be diagnosed with a disease, demoted for a mistake you didn't make, convicted of a crime you didn't commit. The ref might make a bad call, an agreement might be abrogated, a partner might let you down.
Our instinct is to fight these unfairnesses, to succumb if there's no choice, but to go down kicking and screaming. We want to make it clear that we won't accept injustice easily, we want to teach the system a lesson, we want them to know that we're not a pushover.
But will it change the situation? Will the diagnosis be changed, the outcome of the call be any different?
What if, instead, we went at it singing and dancing? What if we walked into our four-year prison sentence determined to learn more, do more and contribute more than anyone had ever dreamed? What if we saw the derailment of one path as the opportunity to grow or to invent or to find another path?
This is incredibly difficult work, but it seems far better than the alternative.
February 18, 2015
Tribal jingoism doesn't scale for the long-term.
In the short run, the fear-based attack on the 'other' is a great way to galvanize those likely to take up arms, defend the brand or send in cash.
But, fortunately, for all of us, the 'others' are able to band together. Fortunately, it turns out that connecting and understanding and most of all, granting respect, is the essence of the connection economy.
It's tempting to enjoy the short-term rush that comes from hating the other guys. It's certainly a good way to get the crowd on its feet. But it doesn't last.
When we're defending a physical castle, it's entirely possible that hating outsiders is a useful tool. But in a connection economy, hating the other almost always destroys the hater.
February 17, 2015
Tell me where to click.
Just about every web page is designed to cause me to connect, to buy, to approve, to move to the next step. Okay, great. Where is the button to do that?
(click to enlarge). This is the page you see when you want to refund an order on Eventbrite. Question: Should you click on the big green square or the big grey square? Answer: It turns out you click on the little tiny blue words.
Here's the page you see to log on to a New York State site. Question: Should you log in by clicking the big green button under the box you just filled in, or the smaller blue button across the page? It turns out that the green button (green for go) actually makes you start over.
Suddenly, everyone who builds a website is in the business of making tools, and it turns out that we're not very good at making tools, especially when there's a committee involved. It takes work and focus to create a useful tool, it's more difficult than writing a memo…
Simple question with a simple answer: What do you want me to do now?
And here's why it matters: Tech is expensive. Tech is hard to change. Changing tech has all sorts of side effects and repercussions.
Language, on the other hand, can be changed on a whiteboard. Language is at the heart of communication, and the only purpose of a website is to communicate.
Get the language right first (and the colors). Tech isn't going to fix your problem, communication is.
February 16, 2015
