Archive
” It’s easier to focus on one number than it is to focus on a life.” ~Seth Godin
Here is the context.
Measuring without measuring
As an organization grows and industrializes, it’s tempting to simplify things for the troops. Find a goal, make it a number and measure it until it gets better. In most organizations, the thing you measure is the thing that will improve.
Colleges decided that the SAT were a useful shortcut, a way to measure future performance in college. And nervous parents and competitive kids everywhere embraced the metric, and stick with it, even after seeing (again and again) that all the SAT measures is how well you do on the SAT. It’s easier to focus on one number than it is to focus on a life.
Why was Readers Digest bound to fail?
This blog by Seth Godin is worth reading in it’s entirety. What is your Readers digest idea?
Heartfelt criticism of your idea or your art is usually right (except when it isn’t…)
Check out this letter from the publisher of a magazine you’ve never heard of to the founder of a little magazine called Readers Digest:
But, personally, I don’t see how you will be able to get enough subscribers to support it. It is expensive for its size. It isn’t illustrated… I have my doubts about the undertaking as a publishing venture.
Of course, he was right–given his assumptions. And that’s the except part.
Criticism of your idea is usually based on assumptions about the world as it is. Jackson Pollock could never have made it as an painter in the world as it was. And Harry Potter was rejected by just about everyone because for it to succeed the way kids read would have to change.
The useful element of this sort of criticism isn’t that the fact that people in the status quo don’t like your idea. Of course they don’t. The interesting question is: what about the world as it is would have to change for your idea to be important?
In the case of Readers Digest, the key thing that changed was the makeup of who was reading magazines. Most of the people (and it was a lot of people) who subscribed to the Digest didn’t read other magazines. And so comparing to other magazines made no sense, except to say, “this is so different from other magazines, the only way you’re going to succeed is by selling it to millions of people who don’t read those magazines.” And Starbucks had no chance if they were going to focus on the sort of person who bought coffee at Dunkin Donuts or a diner, and the iPad couldn’t possibly succeed if people were content to use computers the way they were already using them.
Keep that in mind the next time a gatekeeper or successful tastemaker explains why you’re going to fail.
How am I doing compared to a magical unicorn?
How am I doing compared to a magical unicorn?
We love to compare ourselves to those we know we are better than. It really makes us feel good. Seth Godin suggests there is a better standard. One the will make us feel uncomfortable.
Will we take up the challenge?
The easiest way to sell yourself short is to compare your work to the competition. To say that you are 5% cheaper or have one or two features that stand out–this is a formula for slightly better mediocrity.
The goal ought to be to compare yourself not to the best your peers or the competition has managed to get through a committee or down on paper, but to an unattainable, magical unicorn.
Compared to that, how are you doing?
Related articles
- Seth’s Blog: Learning how to see (sethgodin.typepad.com)
- Seth’s Blog: A diet for your mind (sethgodin.typepad.com)
Best of Tom Peters Cool Friends — Sally Helgesen
Tom Peters has some very cool friends. He is also very kind to introduce us to them. I haven’t read much from Sally Helgesen yet but she is going on my list. I am particularly intrigued by “The Web of Inclusion“.
With three interviews to her credit, Sally Helgesen is not only one of our favorite Cool Friends, she’s tied for first place in frequency of Cool Friends solo interviews (with the prolific Seth Godin!). She also has a section of Tom’s Mother of All Presentations devoted to her work. Best known for her 1990 classic, The Female Advantage, Sally has a focus on women’s work issues, but her insights are universal—perhaps essential for all who would succeed at work in the 21st Century.
Interview No.1, posted 2000. Book under discussion: The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations.
Interview No.2, posted 2002, and the book: Thriving in 24/7: Six Strategies for Taming the New World of Work.
Interview No.3, posted 2010, and the book featured (coauthored with Julie Johnson): The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work.
We’d suggest you read all three interviews and maybe pick up a couple of Sally’s books, too!
Where does trust come from?
Here is a great question. Where does trust come from? We all want it. It isn’t always easy to get or build.
Hint: it never comes from the good times and from the easy projects.
We trust people because they showed up when it wasn’t convenient, because they told the truth when it was easier to lie and because they kept a promise when they could have gotten away with breaking it.
Every tough time and every pressured project is another opportunity to earn the trust of someone you care about.
Why wait? Speed makes a difference
This is such a great question. Why wait? Seriously. Why wait? Seth Godin says it well. Speed can make a difference.
If you’re on the critical path, if someone is waiting for your contribution, ship now.
We have deadlines for a reason, but the key word is ‘dead’. In fact, you don’t have to wait for the deadline or get anywhere near it, especially if you want to speed things up.
Related articles
- Meeting Seth Godin today, and lessons learned (janefinette.com)
Powerful stories have impact. What are we telling our self?
Seth Godin has some great thoughts on the stories we tell. The ones we tell ourselves are so very important. What is our story? How frequently do we tell it to our self?
I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.
But what about the story you tell yourself?
Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you’re a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?
You’ve learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.
I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.
What is the danger of starting at the top?
It is so easy to fall into this trap. As a buyer of technology, I can’t tell you how many times people thought if they just got to me they would get the sale. Even worse was when they actually thought they were going to talk to the CEO. Seth has nailed this one.
When making a b2b sale, the instinct is always to get into the CEO’s office. If you can just get her to hear your pitch, to understand the value, to see why she should buy from or lease from or partner with or even buy you… that’s the holy grail.
What do you think happens after that mythical meeting?
She asks her team.
And when the team is in the dark, you’ve not only blown your best shot, but you never get another chance at it.
The alternative is to start in the middle. It takes longer, it comes with less high-stakes tension and doesn’t promise instant relief. But it is better than any alternative.
Starting in the middle doesn’t mean you’re rushing around trying to close any sale with any bureaucrat stupid enough to take a meeting with you (or that you’re stupid enough to go to, thinking that a sale is going to happen.)
No, starting in the middle is more marketing than sales. It’s about storytelling and connection and substance. It’s about imagery and totems and credentials and the ability to understand and then solve the real problems your prospects and customers have every day. It’s this soft tissue that explains why big companies have so many more enterprise sales than you do.
You don’t get this reputation as an incidental byproduct of showing up. It is created with intention and it’s earned.
What is going away? That is where things are going.
Some days it is hard to fathom the speed at which things are changing. But changing they are. Seth Godin has some good advice on figuring it out. This makes perfect sense.
What is going away frames where things are going.
We remove shelf space as a limiting factor in books.
We remove the cost of polycarbonate as a cost factor in CDs.
We remove paper as an expense in magazines.
We remove the number of channels as a limiter in the broadcast of TV.
These are not small changes. These are revolutionary shifts in what’s scarce and what’s not.
If you are still organized around them, you will fail. If you embrace their removal, you’ve got a chance.
Related articles
- Seth Godin on Why You Need A Home Business (amokarts.wordpress.com)
- Crowdfunding 201: Seth Godin’s Miracle Campaign is No Miracle (turnstylenews.com)
- Seth Godin’s Kickstarter campaign for new book beats $40k goal in 3.5 hours (paidcontent.org)
- SETH GODIN: Here’s The Problem With Competition (businessinsider.com)
What do you do when they don’t understand?
English: American entrepreneur, author and public speaker Seth Godin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a great point. And technology really helps solve the problem. My blog writing tool (WordPress) has plug ins that recommend links, tags, photos and related articles for me. It is improving my writing (I hope). What used to take a long time to do manually is now speeded up and I can focus on what I want to say.
Many sources, from textbooks to websites, take the position that if you don’t understand a concept or a nuance, it’s your loss. I think that’s an strategic failure on the part of the writer. (I’ll give scientists and other professional writers a pass.)
Just recently (a decade or so) we opened two doors that change the way we communicate: we can link now, which means that any time you’re worried you’ve hit something too complex, you can easily link to more data and more explanation, and second, you can keep writing. Length (given appropriate organization) is no longer an issue.
At the same time, there’s an onus on the reader to look up words and references that are easily found in a search engine before giving up.
Ikea, then, should quit trying to jam nonsense instructions with no words on tiny sheets of paper and should instead post videos or detailed instructions in native languages online. Annual reports should get significantly longer (with better hyperlinked indexes), not shorter.
No one is going to read the whole thing, ever again. But we need to make it much easier to read the part of the thing that someone really cares about.
via Seth’s Blog: What do you do when they don’t understand?.
Related articles
- Meet The 22 Most Influential Advertising Bloggers (businessinsider.com)
- Visualizing How a Link Spreads Through the Twitterverse (hubspot.com)
- Hard Work or Smart Work? (gailschapergordon.com)
- Seven Tools I Use to Blog in Bursts (jonwellman.com)
Business Technology Partner 