The difference between impossible and nearly impossible
Is as big as any difference we encounter. All we need is 'nearly' and we have completely transformed the problem--changing it from one to avoid to one to commit to.
Here's the hard part: having the ability to see (and to announce) the 'nearly' part.
Almost every breakthrough comes from someone who saw nearly when no one else did.
Is better possible?
The answer to this is so obvious to me that it took me a while to realize that many people are far more comfortable with 'no'.
The easiest and safest thing to do is accept what you've been 'given', to assume that you are unchangeable, and the cards you've been dealt are all that are available. When you assume this, all the responsibility for outcomes disappears, and you can relax.
When I meet people who proudly tell me that they don't read (their term) "self-help" books because they are fully set, I'm surprised. First, because all help is self help (except, perhaps, for open heart surgery and the person at the makeup counter at Bloomingdales). But even this sort of help requires that you show up for it.
Mostly, though, I'm surprised because there's just so much evidence to the contrary. Fear, once again fear, is the driving force here. If you accept the results you've gotten before, if you hold on to them tightly, then you never have to face the fear of the void, of losing what you've got, of trading in your success for your failure.
Burning bridges
In action movies, the hero doesn't mind destroying the aircraft, road or bridge he just crossed, because it's always a one-way journey.
Retreating armies used to burn bridges as they crossed them so those in pursuit couldn't follow.
And that very mindset, the mindset of, "I am so intent on my goal that I am willing to push through this person, push through this relationship, push through this interaction, whatever it takes," is precisely how we burn our bridges.
The difference, of course, is that life is long and very few paths are only one way. You will need to come around here again.
The launch meeting
You've probably been to one. The organization is about to embark on something new--a new course, a new building, a new fundraising campaign. The organizer calls together the team, and excitement is in the air.
Choose which sort of meeting you'd like to have:
The amateur's launch meeting is fun, brimming with possibility and excitement. Everything is possible. Goals are meant to be exceeded. Not only will the difficult parts go well, but this team, this extraordinary team, will be able to create something magical.
Possibility is in the air, and it would be foolish to do anything but fuel it. After all, you don't get many days as pure as this one.
Law and order
At some point, the world (the project, the moment) becomes so chaotic or dangerous that we sacrifice law in exchange for order.
The question is: when.
When is it time to declare martial law? (or your version of it)
When do you abandon your project plan because the boss is hysterical? When do you go off the long-term, drip-by-drip approach to growth because cash flow is tight? When do you suspend one set of valued principles in order to preserve the thing you set out to build in the first place?
Without a keyboard
When the masses only connect to the net without a keyboard, who will be left to change the world?
It is possible but unlikely that someone will write a great novel on a tablet.
You can't create the spreadsheet that changes an industry on a smart phone.
And professional programmers don't sit down to do their programming with a swipe.
The most important thing
The next thing you do today will be the most important thing on your agenda, because, after all, you're doing it next.
Well, perhaps it will be the most urgent thing. Or the easiest.
In fact, the most important thing probably isn't even on your agenda.
Why don't authors compete?
There's an apocryphal story of a guy who went for his final interview for a senior post at Coca-Cola. At dinner, he ordered a Pepsi. He didn't get the job.
And most packaged goods companies would kill to be the only product on the shelf, to own the category in a given store.
Yet, not only do authors get along, they spend time and energy blurbing each other's books. Authors don't try to eliminate others from the shelf, in fact, they seek out the most crowded shelves they can find to place their books. They eagerly pay to read what everyone else is writing...
Can you imagine Tim Cook at Apple giving a generous, positive blurb to an Android phone?
Lessons from the Eiffel Tower
Instead of, "do what you love," perhaps the more effective mantra for the entrepreneur, the linchpin and maker of change might be, "love what you do."
If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work.
Project management for work that matters
What everyone reads
Everyone used to read the morning paper because everyone did. Everyone like us, anyway. The people in our group, the informed ones. We all read the same paper.
Everyone used to read the selection of the book of the month club, because everyone did.
And everyone used to watch the same TV shows too. It was part of being not only informed, but in sync.
Today, of course, that's awfully unlikely. Only 1 or 2 percent of the population watch the typical 'hit' show on cable. Of course, it's entirely possible that everyone in your circle, the circle you wish to be respected by, is watching the same thing, but that circle keeps getting smaller, doesn't it?
Literacy (and unguided reading)
Two hundred years ago, the government of Sweden changed everything: They required all their citizens to be literate. It transformed every element of the culture and economy of Sweden, an effect that's felt to this day.
Television, of course, is a great replacement for the hard work of learning to read and write, but, if you think about it, so are autocratic governments and dogmas that eliminate choice. Unguided reading is a real threat, because unguided reading leads to uncomfortable questions.
Teach someone to read and you guarantee that they will be able to learn forever. Teach an entire culture to read and connections and innovations go through the roof.
What are you seeking at work?
Some people want safety and respect. They want to know what the work rules are, they want a guarantee that the effort required is both predictable and rewarded. They seek an environment where they won't feel pushed around, surprised or taken advantage of.
Other people want challenge and autonomy. They want the opportunity to grow and to delight or inspire the people around them. They seek both organizational and personal challenges, and they like to solve interesting problems.
Without a doubt, there's an overlap here, but if you find that your approach to the people around you isn't resonating, it might because you're giving your people precisely what they don't want.
The self-driving reset of just about everything in our cities
Self-driving cars are going to be a huge transformational disruption, and they're probably going to happen faster than most people expect.
Starting in cities, starting with car-sharing, the economics and safety implications are too big to avoid:
Understand, for example, that the suburb exists because of the car, as does the big amusement park and the motel. All of them were built by people who saw the changes private mobility would cause.
The self-driving car benefits from Moore's Law, which explains that computers get dramatically cheaper over time, and Metcalfe's Law, which describes the increasing power of networks as they get bigger and more connected. Both of these laws are now at work on one of the biggest expenses and most powerful forces in our world: transportation.
Two elements of an apology
Compassion and Contrition
"We're sorry that your flight was cancelled. This must have truly messed up your day, sir."
That's a statement of compassion.
"Cancelling a flight that a valued customer trusted us to fly is not the way we like to do business. We messed up, it was an error in judgment for us to underinvest in pilot allocation. Even worse, we didn't do everything we could to get you on a flight that would have helped your schedule. We'll do better next time."
LTL as a strategy
I confess I had to look it up.
A truck passed me on the highway and on the side, it said that they did both LTL and FTL shipments.
FTL means "full truckload." For the longest time, a full truckload was the only efficient way to ship goods around. A company would expand operations (not just trucking, but just about everything) so that it could use all of an available resource. No sense having half a shipping clerk or half a secretary or half a truck shipment--the rest was going to go to waste, so might as well use it all.
As Lisa Gansky wrote about in her seminal book the Mesh, the massive shift in data (and knowledge) produced by the net means that FTL isn't nearly the advantage over less than a truckload it used to be. Since it's so cheap and effective to coordinate activity, that extra space isn't wasted, not at all. It's shared.
Avoiding S-curve error
The future is bumpy. It comes in spurts, and then it pauses.
It's tempting to connect two dots and draw a line to figure out where the third dot is going to be.
In the long run, that's a smart way to go. For example, if we look at the cost per transistor in 1970 and again today, we can make a pretty smart guess about where it's going in the future.
But we won't get there in a straight line.
It's only high school if you let it
"I'll show them!"
Creative people need fuel. Overcoming the resistance and quieting the lizard brain takes a lot of work. Often, we seek external forces to excite us, inspire us or push us to take the leap necessary to do something that might not work.
And so we read what the critics write, mistakenly believing that it will help improve the work.
Or we go to a conference and mentally start comparing ourselves to everyone. He seems to get more respect. He has a better speaking slot. They forgot to list me in the program. She didn't make eye contact. They must have known that I didn't want to talk about that. Someone at the reception didn't look closely at my favorite painting...
Thirty years of projects
I realized the other day that most people grow up thinking in terms of professional affiliations. "I'm going to be an accountant." "I'm going to work for General Dynamics."
Somehow, I always thought of my career as a series of projects, not jobs. Projects... things to be invented, funded and shipped. Sometimes they take on a life of their own and last, other times, they flare and fade. But projects, one after the other, mark my career. Lucky for me, the world cooperated and our entire culture shifted from one based on long-term affilitations (you know, 'jobs') to projects.
I had a two-part approach to building a career about projects. The first was to find a partner who was willing to own the lion's share of the upside in exchange for advancing resources allowing me to create the work (but always keeping equity in the project, not doing it merely for hire). Publishers are good at this, and it enabled me to bootstrap my way to scale. The second was to grow a network, technology and the confidence to be able to take on projects too big for the typical solo venture. Complicated projects, on time, is a niche that's not very crowded...
The stages of a project—being stuck, seeing an outcome, sharing a vision, being rejected, finding a home, building it, editing it, launching it, planting the seeds for growth—I'm thrilled it's a cycle I've been able to repeat hundreds of times over the years.
