I’m listening more than reading these days, and I find that a good audiobook can make a real impact on the way I absorb and learn from a book. It’s a once in a century sort of shift in this medium.
My new book is now available in audio. It’s not on Audible, at least not now. Audible has exploited their dominant position and the offer they make to authors is unfair and almost untenable. I’m not sure their monopoly is as secure as they hope though–all of us have a podcast app on our phones, and services like SupportingCast now deliver books seamlessly to a podcast app–at the same time they bring authors closer to listeners.
SupportingCast makes it easy for audiobook creators to produce updates and reach the audience after the book is published–something that’s impossible with a print book, and forbidden by Amazon/Audible.
I think we’re about a year away from the majority of audiobooks being narrated by AI. One more upgrade in quality and they’ll deliver a better, cheaper alternative than all but the most skilled narrators. Reading the new book cost me my voice for more than a month, but I wasn’t happy with the AI version of me, so here I am.
With each section, I asked myself, “Am I doing the reader a service?” Just as typography took over from calligraphy, I think it’s likely that the answer one day soon will be, “actually, the AI can do this with more clarity.” But as long as I had the mic, I was eager to do the best I could.
As always, AI replaces mediocre work long before it provides a realistic or better alternative to the nuance, passion and insight that a human brings. But the arc here is clear.
Thanks for supporting the work.
And Strategy Week continues on LinkedIn. Don’t miss these (if you come live, you can ask questions, but they’ll all be recorded as well).
My new book (out today) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started:
Who is this project for? Who is my smallest viable audience?
What change do I seek to make with this project?
What is my strategy to make this change happen? Can I articulate it clearly?
What resources and assets do I have to dedicate to this project? Do I have enough kindling to burn this log?
What is my timeline for this project? When does it ship and what is my deadline for calling it quits?
What systems am I currently working within? Does the system want what I have to offer?
What systems would need to change for my project to succeed? How can I create the conditions for that change?
Where will I cause tension? What resistance should I anticipate from others (and myself)?
What are the status roles and affiliations at play?
How big is my circle of us and circle of now? What can I do to expand them? What about my audience’s circles?
Why would someone talk about or recommend my project to others?
How can I create the conditions for a network effect to develop around my project?
Where are the feedback loops, and which ones move my work forward or slow it down?
Which games are being played? Who sets the rules?
Which games are winnable, which are oppositional? And which games don’t need to be won, simply played?
What can I learn to increase my odds of success? Where can I gain that knowledge?
Where is the smallest viable audience? How do they think about status and affiliation?
Which false proxies are likely to distract me? What matters?
Am I taking advantage of the shift being caused by a change agent? Or do I need to become one?
What asset would transform my project? How do I acquire it?
If an early adopter talks about my project, what will they say?
Where is the empathy? Does my work align with the actual motivations and interests of the audience?
What is the tension that I’m eagerly creating in the system by showing up with my change?
Am I building the scaffolding people will need to adopt and move forward?
Does this help the dominant forces in the system continue to achieve their goals or does it challenge their status quo?
What’s my position? Are people who choose an alternative making a good choice based on their needs?
What can I learn from comparable projects that have succeeded or failed?
Is my strategy simple to describe and hard to stick to?
What partnerships, alliances or collaborations could increase the scaffolding around this project?
Am I tapping into an insatiable desire?
What’s the process for altering the strategy based on what I learn?
Is my strategy resilient enough that we can actually look forward to surprises?
Is the network effect sufficient to insulate me from a race to the bottom? Can I create a network that is built on abundance, not scarcity?
Is the change I’m making contagious? How can I alter the culture I’m creating to make it more so?
How will early successes of my project make later successes more likely?
What are the tropes and requirements of the genre I’ve chosen?
How do we gain insight into the probability that our assertions will work out?
Can I make it easier for others to decide?
Where are the non-believers, and how do I avoid them?
How does my project tap into existing social desires for status, affiliation, and/or security to help propel its adoption and spread?
What frayed edges, anomalies, or contradictions in the current system could serve as leverage points for introducing my alternative?
What metrics is the current system optimizing for? How could my strategy re-align incentives and feedback loops around different measures of success?
How does my project seek to shift part of the culture from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset?
What incumbents might perceive my project as a threat to their power or position? How does my strategy navigate those political dynamics?
How can I design for network effects, enabling each new participant to create value for all the other participants?
What sunk costs might prevent potential stakeholders from embracing my approach? How can I lower the perceived switching costs?
What are the common scripts or objections I expect to encounter? How will I constructively respond to skepticism and resistance?
How will engaging with my project help people become who they aspire to be? What identity and worldview does it invite them to step into?
How can I lower the barrier to entry and make it feel easy and irresistible for people to take the first step with my offering? Where is the scaffolding?
How do I shorten the delay in the relevant feedback loops (or learn to thrive with a longer delay)?
How do we lower the decision-making barrier to invite participation? Can we make it easy for people to say, “I was right all along?”
How can I avoid becoming trapped by sunk costs if my initial strategy proves ill-fated? When should I pivot vs. persist? Where’s the dip?
Can I improve project hygiene? What are the standards and conversations I’m avoiding?
How will I resist the social gravity and “pull to the center” over time as my project matures and faces pressure to conform?
“We’re thinking of having a holiday every year where kids of all ages go door to door unescorted and beg for candy, and adults dress up in expensive and revealing costumes and get drunk. Would you be likely to participate?”
It’s not really a helpful question. (Yes, Halloween is mostly dumb, but it’s clearly popular).
Instead of focus groups, creators make assertions. They look for how the people they hope to engage with and serve have previously scratched whatever itch they hope to scratch. They look for emotions expressed and needs met instead of tactics or preferences.
Cultural change is incremental, but it begins with a leap, not a focus group.
PS tomorrow is the worldwide strategy meetup. The details are here. If you’re participating, you’ll find the video and prompts here. No need to watch in advance, simply bring it along. Thanks.
Floundering is flopping around and making little progress. A Dutch word for getting mired and lost.
Foundering is what we call it when the ship goes down. It’s an ancient French word based on bottom.
Too often, in our desperate attempt to not founder, we flounder.
Better, I think, to go down with energy and direction than to simply meander. It turns out that calmly executing a plan makes it less likely you’ll sink.
How often do we assume that popular things are good, and that good things become popular?
If your work doesn’t catch on, does that mean it wasn’t good?
In almost every field, people with insight, taste and experience admire and emulate good things that aren’t popular, and are surprised by popular things that aren’t good.
Perhaps we need to broaden our definition (or narrow it) so we can be clear about what we mean.
Easy work is hardly worth our effort. It can deaden us instead of giving us the chance to bring our best selves to life.
Ease, on the other hand, is the feeling of doing something worthwhile, and doing it well.
When we choose a project where the stakes are too high, where stress is our fuel, where conflict is at the heart of the work–we’re unlikely to find ease.
Ease is a combination of purpose, effort and skill. It can feel like confidence, even if we’re not sure it’s going to work. Especially then.
Change your project, change your future. And your project is a direct result of the clients you choose to serve.
Why are we more likely to get tasks done than to take on new initiatives?
Checking something off a to-do list requires far less emotional energy than adding something to the list was in the first place.
As is often the case, “resistance” is the answer.
It’s easy to type a book, hard to write one. That’s because writing one involves making choices.
The effort to perform a task we’ve done before is known in advance. So are the risks. There’s social pressure to do what we promised, and little friction in the way. It’s work, but not challenging.
Initiatives, on the other hand, go the other way around. The effort and repercussions are unknown, and in many settings, the social pressure to accept the status quo is high.
The most important work we do is to make decisions. Decisions don’t seem effortful (turn left or right, say yes or no) but the apparent risk and emotional labor is real. Hard decisions are hard because of the story we tell ourselves about repercussions and responsibility.
Once we acknowledge that taking initiative (which is more accurately described as ‘offering initiative’) requires effort, we can allocate the time and resources to do it well.
It’s going to get busy around here. I wanted to share some upcoming events (online and in person) so you can plan ahead… there are five more for the end of the week, but here we go:
Linda Rottenberg is joining me on LinkedIn on Monday. She’s built an extraordinary organization that most people have never heard of–Endeavor transforms entrepreneurs who go one to build significant organizations worldwide. We’ll be talking about her strategic insights and the work that matters, and taking your questions.
James Clear will be my guest on Tuesday. He’s one of the most successful business book authors of all time. We’ll be talking about habits, of course, but also about the strategy of the company he’s helping to back, Authors Equity. We’ll take your questions live.
The Worldwide Strategy Meetup also happens on Tuesday. It’s taking place in 200+ cities around the world, and thousands are expected to participate. It’s not too late to find your peers–and it’s free. All the details are here.
My new book launches on Tuesday, October 22, with audiobook and Kindle editions as well. There’s also a collectible chocolate bar (of course there is) with trading cards, and a breakthrough strategy deck, a tool you and your team can use to explore the unseen opportunities all around us. Details are here.
And, on stage and in person (with a virtual option) I’ll be in DC on the 28th with Bina Venkataraman. I’m really looking forward to our conversation. Find out more here.
On the 23rd through the 25th, there are more live online conversations, I’ll keep you posted.
Consider a simple graph of the temperature of the Earth over time.
There’s nothing interesting about any frame of this graph. But when we pause for just a few seconds for it to load and render, we can see 150 years unfold and then the truth becomes apparent.
The snapshot is a useful way to capture a moment. But moments rarely offer as much insight as seeing something shift over time.
Is time hiding from us, or are we deliberately ignoring it?
