That’s a hard sell.
It’s difficult to get someone (a client, a boss, a voter, a partner) to say those three words. Difficult to say on our own behalf, too.
Which is why we so easily get stuck.
We get stuck defending what we already decided. Because it feels easier to defend than it does to be wrong.
In 1993, in my role as founder of an internet company, I rejected the idea of the world wide web. I saw Mosaic (and then Netscape) and decided it was stupid, a dead end, a technology not worthy of our tiny company’s time.
That decision cost me a billion dollars.
Within nine months, I saw what others were seeing. I saw the power of widespread connectivity and how it was more powerful than a centralized host.
It still wasn’t easy to say, “I was wrong.”
The alternative is, “based on new information, I can make a new decision.”
We can make a new decision on what’s happening to our environment, based on new data and new science. We can make a new decision on corporate governance or on a recent political referendum.
“Why didn’t you tell me that it would lead to all these bad outcomes?”
Not wrong, simply underinformed.
The cost of a do-over is often less than the cost of sticking with a decision that was made in good faith, on insufficient information.
We don’t have to be wrong. But we regularly get a chance to make things more right.
April 5, 2019
- If you wait until you really want an avocado, the market won’t have any ripe ones. You need to buy them in advance.
- If you eat an avocado that’s not quite ripe, you won’t enjoy it. AND, you won’t have a chance to enjoy it tomorrow, when it would have been perfect if you had only waited.
- If you live your life based on instant gratification and little planning, you’ll either never have a good avocado or you’ll pay more than you should to someone else who planned ahead.
- Buy more avocados than you think you need, because the hassles are always greater than the cost, so you might as well invest.
- And since you have so many, share them when they’re ripe. What goes around comes around.
All of these truths lead to the real insight, the metaphor that’s just waiting to be lived in all ways: If you get ahead of the cycle, waiting until the first one is ripe and then always replenishing before you need one, you can live an entire life eating ripe avocados. On the other hand, if impatience and poor planning gets you behind the cycle, you’ll be just as likely to waste every one you ever eat.
Plant your tree before you need the shade.
April 4, 2019
There are at least seven realistic ways to get from my home near New York to a meeting in Washington DC. None of them are wrong. Each offers its own advantage in terms of resilience, speed, cost or hassle.
And so, we can’t choose based on this is right and those are wrong. The only useful construct is to consider our priorities and find the route with the best combination of trade offs.
Waiting for perfect is a never-ending game.
And the comfort of totally right vs. totally wrong is elusive.
April 3, 2019
Books sell better in bookstores than they sell in butcher shops. In a bookstore, surrounded by all the competition, a book is in the right place to be seen, compared and ultimately purchased and read.
Trade show booths work when they’re in close proximity to the other options a buyer has. Building your trade show booth across town might insulate you from the other choices, but it does little to help establish where you belong and whether or not you’re a smart choice.
If I was one of the 25 people running for President of the US, I’d organize my own debate tour. I’d invite four or five other candidates to hit the road with me, and I’d do a debate every single night. All six of us would benefit from the competition, leaving the rest behind, ignored because they are alone. No one will stop you, simply begin.
And if I was a wedding photographer, I’d organize a dozen other photographers in town and do a joint brochure and marketing effort. Serving brides in a way that establishes status and increases their confidence.
It’s tempting indeed to shy away from organizing a panel, a conference or a trade show where you can see and be seen right next to those that seek to solve problems for those that are listening. But now that information flows more freely than ever, that’s your fear talking, not an actual strategy for somehow fooling people into believing they don’t have a choice.
[More on debates]
April 2, 2019
The press release from Comcast, perhaps America’s most hated monopoly, begins as expected. “In order to serve all of our customers better, we’re delighted to announce several new features…”
But it goes quickly downhill from there. Under the guise of increasing net access during a time when Net Neutrality is sorely missed, spokesperson Kevin Marting says, “We’ll be offering a new basic plan, one that costs 15% less than our current offerings. The only difference in service is that due to the cost of moving text around, these users won’t get vowels in their emails or blog posts.”
He goes on to point out that reading without vowels is an ancient tradition, back to the Sumerians and ancient Hebrew. And that it’s more convenient, because, after all, convenience is what we all care about.
I was part of the team that developed the original codec for the internet, particularly the way aascii characters would be treated. Because there are 26 letters (more in various international alphabets) we had to divide the corpus of letters into two batches, reserving a high bit for some of the most used letters. This high bit is necessary, but it also requires twice as much bandwidth to transfer.
Of course, the videos transmitted by Netflix and YouTube use far more space than any text file ever would, but Comcast, seeing the post-literate future, decided to take a short-term selfish route and eliminate the letters that are the most difficult to move around.
This is about the relentless munching around the edges that big companies engage in. They need to boost their earnings, and instead of focusing on better, they obsess about more.
Once again, ordinary people are seeing choice stripped away by selfish functionaries and power-hungry bureaucrats.
In the case of this blog, because we’re connected to the net via Comcast’s DSL (the only service that’s available in my building) it means that after next week, all future posts on the blog will only contain consonants (and semicolons).
Enough already.
The internet works because it’s open. It creates generous connection across time and distance, and it works best when it’s accessible to all.
Just because a company can legally do something doesn’t mean that they should.
Here, go ahead a try it. A chapter from Ths S Mrktng, with the vowels removed:
Mrktng hs chngd, bt r ndrstndng f wht w’r sppsd t d nxt hsn’t kpt p. Whn n dbt, w slfshly sht. Whn n crnr, w ply smll bll, stlng frm r cmpttn nstd f brdnng th mrkt. Whn prssd, w ssm tht vryn s jst lk s, bt nnfrmd.
Mstly, w rmmbr grwng p n mss mrkt wrld, whr TV nd th Tp 40 hts dfn s. s mrktrs, w sk t rpt th ld‑fshnd trcks tht dn’t wrk nymr.
Th cmpss pnts twrd trst
vry thr hndrd thsnd yrs r s, th nrth pl nd th sth pl swtch plcs. Th mgntc flds f th rth flp.
n r cltr, t hppns mr ftn thn tht.
nd n th wrld f cltr chng, t jst hppnd. Th tr nrth, th mthd tht wrks bst, hs flppd. nstd f slfsh mss, ffctv mrktng nw rls n mpthy nd srvc.
Count me out.
[PS here’s a plugin for Facebook that automatically removes all vowels when browsing in Chrome. I’m not sure it will work all the time, but at least it works today, which means very little. Wtch th dt. Hpp prl frst.]
April 1, 2019
There’s a common safe place: Being busy.
We’re supposed to give you a pass because you were full on, all day. Frantically moving from one thing to the other, never pausing to catch your breath, and now you’re exhausted.
No points for busy.
Points for successful prioritization. Points for efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters.
No points for busy.
March 31, 2019
Judge people by where they came from
… Judge people by where they’re going
Choices come with responsibility
… People can’t be trusted to make good choices
Dominate
… Affiliate
Redemption is possible
… Past actions define the future
People with authority should be held accountable
… People with authority should do what they want
It’s most efficient to slot people into tracks early
… There’s potential in everyone
Because I said so
… Let’s figure it out
Talent is inborn
… Skill is earned
Investing in culture change pays off
… People are separate from the culture
Push people away
… Pull people closer
Conserve it for later
… Use it all
Wait to get picked
… Pick yourself
It takes a village
… You can do it by yourself
Look forward
… Look back
Consume
… Create
Possibility
… Safety
Lead
… Follow
Open doors for others
… Take what you can
As long as it’s not against the law it’s fine
… Do what’s right
Politics
… Governance
Later
… Now
March 30, 2019
Intellectual horsepower is overrated.
“I’m too stupid to do that,” isn’t helpful and it’s probably not true.
We’re capable of learning Photoshop, We can figure out the arithmetic behind our analytics. We can follow a nuanced discussion of strategy. We can learn to read a balance sheet and we can get sophisticated about long-term decision making.
If we’re being honest, the real reason we don’t do this work isn’t that we’re stupid.
It’s probably that we haven’t made it a priority.
It might be that we’re afraid, that we’re lazy or that we’re underinformed.
All three are temporary conditions if we want them to be. Or we can live with them and assume that we’re stupid instead.
(Which is worse: to be seen as stupid or to have priorities that don’t match the opportunity?)
March 29, 2019
Are you a bottleneck?
Sometimes it’s a good thing. It would be impossible to guzzle a Pepsi if it were served in a saucer–the bottleneck creates the path of maximum slam.
It would be difficult to water your lawn without a nozzle. The bottleneck creates pressure that allows you to reach further.
But in an organization, a bottleneck can be a real problem.
If the project is sitting on your desk, no value is being created. The opportunity, then, is to achieve your goals by getting every single thing off your desk so that it can move forward.
A team that is sitting still waiting for you to attend the approval meeting is suffering from your bottleneck. And so are the people you set out to serve.
The trick: Figure out which parts of the approval process truly benefit from your unique judgment and skills, and which parts are merely your fear at work.
And then get it off your desk and let someone else do it.
March 28, 2019
I hope we can all agree that the long run is made up of a bunch of short runs.
That seems obvious.
The surprising thing is that we live our short runs as if that isn’t true.
March 27, 2019
