“And then what happens?”
Repeat the second question 100 times. Because after every good idea, there are at least 100 steps of iteration, learning, adjustment, innovation and effort.
Starting with the wrong idea is a waste of energy and time.
But not committing to the 100 steps is a waste of a good idea.
We put a lot of pressure on the idea to be perfect because it distracts us from the reality that the hundred steps after the idea are going to make all the difference. Nearly every organization you can point to is built around an idea that wasn’t original or perfect.
The effort and investment and evolution made the difference.
June 20, 2020
Today is Juneteenth, a holiday that should be more widely observed.
It doesn’t mark the date of Lincoln’s proclamation that freed enslaved people, nor does it occur on the day that the 13th amendment was passed. Both were overdue and urgent and important steps forward. Instead, it commemorates the day that a last group of enslaved people (outside of Galveston, TX) heard that they had been freed years earlier.
Holidays are symbols. They can cause us to pause for celebration or grief, for togetherness or simply to smile. Holidays are worth recalling because they give us a chance to connect and recommit to an idea that matters to us. This is a holiday about freedom delayed.
Change is hard, but delaying what’s right is toxic. Today we can remember just how much we have to do and realize the ability each of us has to see and alter the systems around us.
Not simply today, but every single day. A chance to make things better.
June 19, 2020
Some marketers want you to solve their problem.
And some marketers want to solve your problem.
Eagerly sending prospects to competitors who can help them better than you can is a fine symptom of where you stand on this choice.
June 18, 2020
One of the great cartoons involves two goldfish in a tank talking to one another. One responds in surprise, “wait, there’s water?”
When we don’t see the water, it’s a sign we’re benefitting from being part of the dominant culture.
And since we’re not fish, we can learn to see the water and figure out how it is affecting us and the people around us.
Visit a country where they don’t speak English and you’ll probably remind yourself all day that you speak English, something you didn’t have to think about last week. You’ll have to work overtime to understand and communicate. Back home, that stress disappears.
Living within a dominant culture means being reminded of this all day, every day.
When media images, policies and corporate standards tell someone that they are an outsider who needs to fit in in non-relevant ways, we’re establishing patterns of inequity and stress. We need to be clear about the job that needs to be done, the utility we’re seeking to create, but not erect irrelevant barriers, especially ones we can’t see without effort.
Good systems are resilient and designed to benefit the people who use them.
If the dominant culture makes it harder for people who don’t match the prevailing irrelevant metrics to contribute and thrive, it’s painful and wasteful and wrong.
It’s becoming more and more clear to me how much ‘water’ there is in the world I live in. Much of it is needless and counterproductive. Unfair, too. It will take an enormous amount of effort and persistence to reduce it. I’m working hard to see it. Because it’s everywhere.
June 17, 2020
If you buy an old painting at a garage sale for $1,000 and then sell it for $25,000, was the change in value due to a change in the magic involved in the creation of the painting, or is it because the market now recognizes the painting for what it is (and was all along)?
When Alta Vista refused to pay a million dollars to buy Google, was the problem in the value of what Google had, or in Alta Vista’s recognition of that value?
There’s often a significant lag between the creation of something useful and when the market recognizes it.
That’s an opportunity for speculators and investors, who can buy before the recognition happens.
And it’s an opportunity or a trap for creators, who might get disheartened about the lack of applause and upside immediately after they’ve created something.
When we look to the outside world for valuation and recognition, we might be confused about the intrinsic value of what we just created. Over time, those things may come into alignment, but that’s rare indeed.
Creation plus persistence can lead to recognition. But creation without recognition is still a worthwhile endeavor.
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June 16, 2020
Change happens more efficiently when we have both.
Often, they’re not individuals. It could be a status quo or a system.
In the early days of the Mac, Jobs chose Microsoft to be Apple’s adversary. But keeping the focus on them too long was an expensive and distracting mistake.
An adversary focuses the mission, but it also gives agency and leverage to the opponent.
It helps to have accomplices, leverage and a focus for the long haul as well.
June 15, 2020
I tried to recharge the lithium battery that works with my drill. After twenty minutes, the charger said the battery had failed.
Fortunately, I have a second battery. I put that into the charger and it also showed a failure.
Neither battery had failed. The charger had.
June 14, 2020
The experience people have with your brand is in the hands of the person you pay the least.
Act accordingly.
(This involves training, trust, responsibility, leadership, dignity, authority, management and investment. It mostly means seeing the front-line people in your organization as priceless assets, not cheap cogs.)
June 13, 2020
I didn’t spend any time yesterday worrying about being eaten by a grizzly bear. Or that I would get cholera from the water in my house.
Over time, we’ve built layers of insulation between ourselves and the world.
Shoes make it easier to walk around. We can put one foot in front of the other without constantly scanning for rocks or rusty nails.
This invisible insulation is a form of civilization.
And when it’s unevenly available, it becomes privilege. Just as invisible sometimes, but to make things better, we need to look at it and realize that it’s there and do something.
If other people have shoes, it doesn’t make your shoes less functional. But if they don’t have shoes, then everything else they contribute (to you, to me, to everyone) is going to be different.
We’ve done a shameful job in failing to offer insulation widely. Access to health care. Clean water. Good schools. Freedom of fear from state violence. And the benefit of the doubt, which is easy to overlook. Because it all adds up, every day, for generations.
It’s almost impossible to make a list of all the things I didn’t have to worry about yesterday. We need to work overtime to make that true for more people.
June 12, 2020
150 years ago, the periodic table of the elements was published.
It’s a truly stunning achievement because it predates the electron microscope. It’s a bit like labeling all the colors in a box of crayons in a world with nothing but very dim light.
Once the structure of the table was understood, its creator Dmitri Mendeleyev had a problem. Some of the elements that needed to be on it hadn’t been discovered yet. He knew that something needed to fill a slot, but he wasn’t exactly sure what.
And so he left the square blank.
Which inspired other scientists to go looking for what was needed to fill in that empty slot.
Much of the innovation of the internet has worked this way. As well as developments in urban planning, civil society and small business as well.
Once you see the grid, you can see the empty boxes. And then go fill them.
HT Paul.
June 11, 2020
