When you see someone walking down the street with new sunglasses on, do you stare at them? Really stare at them, from every angle?
If you're fortunate enough to have a selfie with President Obama, with Bono or with Sarah Jones, what do you look at when you look at the picture? Do you focus on the tie he was wearing, or her earrings? Or are you worried about the bit of parsley that was in your teeth or the ridiculous jacket you were wearing that day?
We like to see.
But mostly, we're worried about being seen.
We spend far more time looking at ourselves in sunglasses than anyone else ever will.
And social media might appear to be about seeing what others are doing. But it's actually about our juxtaposition with those others, our standing, our status… The reason we want to know what people are saying behind our backs isn't because we care about them, it's because we care about us.
The culture of celebrity that came with TV has shifted. It's no longer about hoping for a glimpse of a star. It's back to the source–hoping for a glimpse of ourselves, ourselves being seen.
Culture is changed by design, and design by culture.
There are things that look ‘right’, and others that don’t. We notice the mistyped word, the straight quote, the lousy kerning.
But then, the paradigm shifts. An illuminated manuscript and a dime-store novel are both books, but neither would look right to someone accustomed to the other.
The challenge of breakthrough design is in doing it with intent. To deliver more, not less of the change you seek to make, the leverage you seek to provide. To do the work with knowledge and care, not laziness or haste.
There’s an internal consistency to breakthrough design. It’s of itself, it reflects the intent of the designer. Copying the status quo is easy, commodity work. Creating a new paradigm, one that resonates, is the real work the designer seeks to offer.
We find knowledge (and express it) by dividing the world into grids and segments, and explaining how this organization works.
The periodic table is a useful construct.
Useful constructs are replicable and they’re predictive.
If I tell you the rules needed to organize the elements, you’ll come up with the same table as every other scientist.
And if you know where something is on that table, you can make accurate predictions about how the element will behave.
On the other hand, race is not a useful construct. Neither is ethnicity. It’s not a replicable approach—every person who tries to organize other humans by race will come up with a different system. And it’s not predictive—it doesn’t tell us anything about how someone will act going forward.
Engineers build their work around useful constructs. And often, people who are in politics waste their time arguing about constructs that aren’t useful at all.
If we’re going to influence the culture, grow our organizations, lead people and engage in the marketplace, finding useful constructs (as opposed to established superstitions) is essential work.
In the traditional world, most things are organized so you can find them when you’re looking for them. That’s why you keep your tools in your tool chest and the forks in the silverware drawer. That’s why books are stored in alphabetical order, by author.
But in the digital world, finding is easy. Type what you want in the search bar.
What we’re still exploring, and not very successfully, is how to organize things for browsing. How do you bump into the thing you didn’t know you were looking for? How do you decide what your next home improvement project should be, or the next movie you should see?
Dancing along the edge of facilitated discovery is one of the most important frontiers that marketers are challenged to do. And we’re not doing it very well yet.
Not as a way to make big dollars (blogging didn’t do that either). But as a way to share your ideas, to lead your community, to earn trust.
Podcasting is a proven technology that is still in its infancy. It’s an open mic, a chance for people with something to say to find a few people (or perhaps more than a few people) who’d like to hear them say it.
And podcasting is the generous act of showing up, earning trust and authority because you care enough to raise your hand and speak up.
Over the summer, Alex DiPalma ran the Podcasting Fellowship, and I was lucky enough to be invited along to help out.
Landlords are notorious for having a bias toward raising the rent. They’re in it for the long haul, they’ve seen downturns before, and while they’re quick to raise rents in good times, they are loathe to lower rents, even if it means sitting with an empty storefront for months at a time.
While this math might be compelling for some landlords, it’s terrible for the cities those buildings are located in.
They also deprive the municipality from sales tax revenue, cost jobs and take watchful eyes away from the neighborhood as well.
If we view the ability to have a well-cared for, civil neighborhood as a privilege, it’s logical to consider a vacancy tax for landlords as an incentive for them to lower rents when decreased demand happens because retailers can’t afford the old rent.
It could be something like: For any storefront that’s empty, after two months of vacancy, the landlord has to pay a tax of 20% of the average rent they’d be receiving. All the money would go to neighborhood improvements and policing.
Lower rents create new innovations, which leads to more interaction and more vibrant neighborhoods. And in the long run, it gives landlords an incentive to do what actually generates more of what they seek as well.
The typical go-go small business goes out and raises $200,000 or $400,000 in equity, usually from friends, family and amateur investors. Maybe a bit more or less.
This is a danger zone.
This is funding for your expenses and your salary and it will rarely pay off for you or for your investors. Because, it’s worth remembering, your investors want their money back, somehow, someday soon.
If your goal is to build a significant brand, the sort of consumer products company that so many entrepreneurs dream of, you’re going to need fifty times that much before you cross the chasm.
And if you’re building a direct-marketing company, something you can bootstrap, where you sell high-value products and services to businesses and consumers in a measurable way, then you ought to be making money right from the start. Sure, you might need some equipment, but in today’s Meshed world, that’s easier than ever to outsource.
“And then a miracle occurs,” is something no fundraising entrepreneur ought to ever say.
Road 1: I can learn from you and make things better
Road 2: You’re an important customer and I can bring empathy and care to this moment to strengthen our relationship
Road 3: I can teach you something and make things better
Road 4: Go away
Now it begins to make sense. For example, if you call Hyatt’s 800 number, they’ll tell you that they’re not actually in contact with management. That all they can do is refer you to the front desk. They’re not there to learn anything from you.
If you call a company that puts you on hold for a long time, you’re on road 4. The organization has decided that you are a cost, not an asset.
Road 1 customer service is pretty rare. It tends to happen with very small organizations, and that’s one reason why companies appear callous and stuck when they get bigger. They don’t want to spend the resources to expose their decision-makers and creators to the people who actually use the product or service, so they build a moat around them. All they seek to learn is, “how cheap can we mollify customers?”
Road 2 and Road 3 can overlap. It’s entirely possible that the customer is upset or confused because they need training or insight or an explanation. By teaching them how to navigate their situation, you can improve satisfaction at the same time you rebuild a relationship.
Road 3 is often best done with the internet, with a manual, with a video. It’s a chance for the customer (who’s enrolled in getting their problem solved) to interact with a well-designed system that can teach them how to solve it. This can fall apart when the customer doesn’t actually want to learn, or worse, when the organization does a mediocre job of education.
Sometimes, though, the flight actually is cancelled, the software has a bug or the weather just isn’t what it needs to be. In that moment, education can help, but what matters more is clarity, respect and care. Most customers don’t actually expect miracles, but they certainly expect more than Road 4.
The harried commodity providers, the pawns in a monopolistic system that have chosen to race to the bottom, the airlines, the cable companies, the underfunded government agencies–all they have to offer is Road 4.
Go away.
If they had guts, they’d just say so.
If they had talent, they’d make you go away without actually being upset.
Instead, the on-hold industrial complex has created an endless maze, designed to sort through the slightly-annoyed and only serve the remaining truly-committed to getting to the bottom of it.
What a waste.
If you engage with customers, as a freelancer or as a public company CEO, pick your road. Be clear about what it’s worth and what it costs. And then do that.
The confusion about what you’re seeking to achieve helps no one.
