Anyone who has done the math will tell you that word of mouth is the most efficient way to gain trust, spread the word and grow.
And yet…
It only takes a moment to destroy. Only a few sentences, a heartless broken promise, a lack of empathy, and it's gone. Not only that, but the lost connection can easily lead to lawsuits.
Doctor, the surgery seems to have gone wrong!
It's not my fault. I did a perfect job. Tough luck.
Architect, the floor is sagging, the beams were put in the wrong direction!
I don't care. There's a three-year statute of limitations, and even then, it wasn't my job to ensure that the work met the plans.
Airline, my two-year-old can't sit in a row by herself, and the agent on the phone said you'd work it so we could sit together!
It's not my fault. If you don't want to get on the plane, don't get on the plane.
In all three cases, there are significant operational barriers to magically fixing the problem. But that's not where the breakdown happened. It happened because a human being decided to not care. Not care and not express anything that felt like caring.
A human being, perhaps intimidated by lawyers, or tired after a hard day, or the victim of a bureaucracy (all valid reasons) then made the stupid decision to not care.
By not caring, by not expressing any empathy, this individual denied themselves their own humanity. By putting up a brick wall, they isolate themselves. Not only do they destroy any hope for word of mouth, they heap disrespect on someone else. By working so hard to not engage (in the vain hope that this will somehow keep them clean), they end up in the mud, never again to receive the benefit of the doubt.
What kind of day or week or career is that? To live in a lucite bubble, keeping track only of individuals defeated and revenue generated?
It turns out that while people like to have their problems fixed, what they most want is to be seen and to be cared about.
Of course you should use these fraught moments to reinforce connections and build word of mouth. Of course you should realize that in fact people like us get asked to recommend airlines and doctors and architects all the time, but now, we will never ever recommend you to anyone, in fact, we'll go out of our way to keep people from choosing you.
But the real reason you should extend yourself in these moments when it all falls apart is that this is how you will measure yourself over time. What did you do when you had a chance to connect and to care?
August 27, 2017
In 1995, my book packaging company published one of its last titles, an anachronism called, Presenting Digital Cash. It was the first book on digital cash ever aimed at a mass audience. And it was ahead of its time, selling (fortunately) very few copies. The examples in the book were current, but it was soon outdated. (The foreword was written by Neal Stephenson—someone who is ahead of his time for a living).
Thirteen long years later, Bitcoin was introduced to the world. I didn't invent it, even though I'd written about digital cash more than a decade before. I'd created an entire book about digital cash, and thought about it deeply for months.
Except I didn't buy 1,000 dollars worth of Bitcoin in 2008. If I had, I'd have more than $40,000,000 today.
It's not that I didn't know.
It's that I didn't act.
Two different things.
I knew, but I didn't know for sure. Not enough to act.
All the good stuff happens when we act even if we don't know for sure.
August 26, 2017
They (whoever 'they' is) made it easy for you to raise your hand. They made it easy for you to put your words online, your song in the cloud, your building designs, business plans and videos out in the world. They made it easy for you to be generous, to connect, and to lead.
Did you?
Maybe today's the day.
August 25, 2017
The first step is learning how to do it. Finding and obtaining the insight and the tools and the techniques you need. Understanding how it works.
But step two is easily overlooked. Step two is turning it into a habit. Committing to the practice. Showing up and doing it again and again until you're good at it, and until it's part of who you are and what you do.
Most education, most hardware stores, most technology purchases, most doctor visits, most textbooks are about the first step. What a shame that we don't invest just a little more to turn the work into a habit.
August 24, 2017
If you seek to make change or do something important, your work will be rejected along the way. This is not in dispute.
What will you do after that?
- Determine that what actually happened was that you were rejected, not your proposal, and that you have no right, no standing and no hope. Decide to back off, keep your head low and do what you're told from now on.
- Realize that what might have happened is that you asked the wrong person, who wants something other than what you want. Resolve to do a better job of seeing where your work will be needed and recognized.
- Understand that you didn't tell a story that resonated, that your homework, your details, your promise–something didn't resonate. Figure out what it was, and learn to do better next time.
- Assume that whoever turns you down, ignores you or disagrees with you is a dolt. Learn nothing and persist.
In my experience, paths two and three are the most likely to get you where you're going. It takes grit and resilience to avoid the first path, and the fourth path is reserved for megalomaniacs, bullies and the terminally frustrated.
August 23, 2017
It doesn't matter how many you have.
It doesn't matter how much you paid for them.
It doesn't matter how long the line was yesterday…
The market is gone. It's a sunk cost. Falling in love with what you have and reminding yourself of what it cost you is no help at all.
The same goes for the value of the assets we invested in, the rare skills we used to possess, the position in the marketplace we worked so hard to get.
New days require new decisions.
August 22, 2017
A hygiene factor is something you miss when it's gone, but barely notice when it's there.
Clean sheets at a hotel, for example. The base salary at a job. Your title.
Every time you add one of these factors to consumer or employee expectation, you've signed up for a lifetime of providing that benefit. You've made it more difficult for the competition to keep up. And you've raised the standards for everyone.
They're important, but their presence doesn't motivate people. It's only when they disappear that we think about them.
August 21, 2017
We have a word for the fruitless search for perfect: perfectionism.
And we have a word for what we do when we dumb something down to get approval: the committee.
But what do we call it when we work to make something important?
Something that will last? And be worth the effort?
It's tempting to treat things as disposable, to call it a temporary fix, to do it cheap and fast and apologize as we do.
But maybe this next thing we're going to do–maybe it will last. Maybe it will be like that novel from 60 years ago or the record album from 1962 or even the Flatiron building, 100 years later. Still around.
Not more polish, but more guts.
It might be worth the effort to confront the status quo, to own it, to leap.
August 20, 2017
"I'll know it when I see it," or perhaps, "I'll see it when I know it…"
We're hardwired to believe and understand the things we can actually experience. That's why no one argues about Newton's laws, but most people panic or shrug when confronted with dark matter, Heisenberg or quarks.
We're often good at accepting what's in front of us, but bad at things that are very far away or very very close. We have trouble with things that are too big and too small, with numbers with lots of zeroes or too many decimal places. And most of all, we fail when trying to predict things that are too far in the future.
Almost nothing in our civilization is merely the result of direct experience. We rely on scouts and technologists and journalists to tell us what it's like over there, to give us a hint about what to expect next, and most of all, to bring the insights and experiences of the larger world to bear on our particular situation.
The peril of roll-your-own science, in which you pick and choose which outcomes of the scientific method to believe is that you're almost certainly going to endanger yourself and others. Anecdotal evidence about placebos, vaccines and the weather outside is fun to talk about, but it's not relevant to what's actually going to pay off in the long run.
78.45% of humans tend to hate statistics because we have no direct experience with the larger picture. It's easier to make things up based on direct experience instead.
The solar eclipse is going to happen whether or not you believe it will, whether or not you have direct experience with previous eclipses.
When we reserve direct experience for the places where it matters—how we feel about the people in our lives, or the music we're listening to or the painting we're seeing, we have the priceless opportunity to become a better version of ourselves.
The rest of the time, standing on a higher ladder and seeing a bit farther is precisely what we ought to seek out.
August 19, 2017
True connection is a frightening prospect.
When you are seen by someone else, really seen, it hurts even more if you're ultimately rejected. When we connect, we make promises, buy into a different future, engage with another, someone who might let us down (or we might let them down).
Far easier, of course, to do something more shallow.
A friend on social media is not like a friend in real life.
And so, we sit at dinner, browsing on our phone instead of connecting with the person across from us. Because the phone promises instant gratification, an exciting dopamine hit, and plenty of faux intimacy.
Which is great as far as it goes, but no, it's not the same.
August 18, 2017
