When we show up to bring humanity to work, we’re making a choice.
It involves risk and effort and emotional labor. We’re here to make a change happen, and we’re giving something to make that happen.
So it’s a vote.
A vote for the customer we seek to serve.
A vote for the boss and the owners of the institution where we do our work.
A vote for our co-workers.
If they haven’t earned it, if we can’t trust them, support them and root for them, we should do it somewhere else. Don’t volunteer to work for a partner who won’t work for you.
Our best work is scarce. We shouldn’t waste it on jerks, selfish hustlers or those that don’t appreciate it.
August 12, 2023
The first step is to imagine what the people you serve want and care about it.
The second is to figure out why they don’t have it yet.
If you can help people get to where they seek to go, when they’re ready to get there, the stuff called marketing gets significantly easier.
August 11, 2023
When someone acts in a surprising way, we can begin to understand by wondering what they might be afraid of.
August 10, 2023
The candidate running for re-election offers truth. This is what I did, I would like to do it again. The candidate coming out of nowhere offers hope. We can’t know but we can imagine.
Kickstarter offers hope. No reviews, no tests, simply a promise of what might be.
Book publishers buy hope, so do venture capitalists. On the other hand, the typical commercial investor simply wants a repeat of what already was.
Some pharmaceuticals offer specific outcomes with known statistics…
Simple example: Early in my career as a producer and creator of non-fiction books, my proposals included finished layouts. It turned out that whatever I could have offered at this stage could never be as good as the publisher imagined could be created once I had their input… better to offer a blank page than the page we would actually produce. On the other hand, I couldn’t simply assert that the contents would be worth publishing–we had to offer examples and a track record.
The thing is, there’s never just truth, because we’re talking about the future. So we base our hope on what has come before.
And there’s never just hope. The hope is based on something that came before, some clue or hint or track record that makes us believe.
The hard work for the marketer is in choosing when we’ve established enough of a track record–but not too much.
And for the voter/consumer/investor, we get to choose what we seek, and what we offer. Confusing truth and hope doesn’t make it more likely we’ll succeed.
August 9, 2023
If the ferry is leaving in fifteen minutes, do you drive faster than normal to get to the dock on time?
If someone is driving close behind you and pressuring you to turn when you don’t feel safe, are you more likely to go for it?
We can do our work as fast as makes sense, but no faster.
Regardless of external pressure.
Sometimes, we establish false limits so we can leave room for when we need to hurry up. But hurry has a limit, and lowering our standards doesn’t stand the test of time. They are standards for a reason.
August 8, 2023
It’s tempting and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to load the trunk of the car.
These sorts of arguments work precisely because they don’t matter. At all.
And they distract us from the incredibly difficult work of discussing the things that actually do matter. That we can take action on. That are easier to ignore.
August 7, 2023
Magicians know where the trapdoors are, what’s up their sleeves and how to hide the ball.
And yet, mechanical skill is just the first step in being actually good at magic.
The real skill is in finding the empathy to imagine that someone else might believe. To do the trick for them, not to them.
August 6, 2023
At the dawn of the plastic age, it was a cheap substitute. The word “plasticky” is not a compliment.
Over time, the plastics industry developed new finishes, colors and most of all, cultural impact, and extra (wasted) plastic packaging was seen first as convenient, then as a sign of status.
I just got a lovely digital recorder in the mail. The thoughtfully-designed and well-constructed device weighs 6 ounces. The box it came in, on the other hand, is difficult to open and hard to re-use. It weighs 11 ounces.
The plastic in this box, and in so many other over-wrought packages, will never go away. It cannot be recycled. It will either end up burned or in the ocean or a landfill, where it will remain for more than a million years.
Gratuitous used to mean, “freely bestowed.” By overinvesting in something that’s not required, a marketer demonstrates confidence, status and power. But now, gratuitous means inefficient, grating and wasteful.
Marketers seek to tell a story of better. But better changes. Better might be more convenient, cheaper, efficiently designed, higher utility, more exclusive, mainstream, or simply fun. But better is no longer associated with wasteful.
There are a few questions where the answer is ‘plastic.’ But we’re all discovering that it comes at a real cost. Instead of raising the status of the companies that use it in marketing, it is now a lazy, shameful shortcut.
With surprisingly little effort, we can raise the bar on better.
August 5, 2023
Some fields of endeavor continue to narrow down the unknown, in search of the recipe, the efficient method of industry.
And others live on Feynman’s expanding frontier of ignorance, where each closed door leads to several newly opened ones.
That’s a fundamental choice in our work. To close doors on our way to an answer, or to open them on the way to things we never expected.
We should choose our path wisely, because each brings its own challenges and rewards.
August 4, 2023
Then neither is “yes.”
Enrollment requires choice.
PS one of my all-time favorite encore episodes of Akimbo is out this week: How to get into a famous college.
August 3, 2023
