The unknowable path
...might also be the right one.
The fact that your path is unknowable may be precisely why it's the right path.
The alternative, which is following the well-lit path, offers little in the way of magic.
If you choose to make art, you are no longer following. You are making.
The fruitless search for extraordinary people willing to take ordinary jobs
When I write about linchpins and people on a mission, I often hear from bosses who ask a variant of, "Any idea how I can find people like that for my business?"
It's unreasonable to expect extraordinary work from someone who isn't trusted to create it.
It's unreasonable to find someone truly talented to switch to your organization when your organization is optimized to hire and keep people who merely want the next job.
It's unreasonable to expect that you'll develop amazing people when you don't give them room to change, grow and fail.
Word of mouse
Every fast-growing social movement, non-profit and brand of the last decade has grown because people have chosen to talk.
Not shelving allowances, coupons, A/B testing, Super Bowl ads, dancing tube men or Formula One sponsorships. Each can be a productive tool, but at the heart of real growth is a simple idea:
People decide to tell other people.
Start with that.
Pain and money and b2b selling
When you sell to someone at a business, it's worth remembering that the pain their problem is causing belongs to them, while the money they have to spend, doesn't.
Any time you can cure their pain in exchange for their boss's (or the shareholder's) money, that's a compelling offer.
The challenge is actually being able to cure the pain, because too often, when an organization moves forward, the fear of failure and the pain of change is worse than the problem they started with. Asserting it can be done is insufficient.
Taking names
Should you keep track of the people who say you're going to fail, who actively work against you, who troll your best work? Should you try to win over the haters and those that so cruelly root against you?
I wonder if it makes more sense to spend as much (or even more) time with the fans and supporters and sneezers who work so hard to help you succeed.
It seems to me that this is more productive, more fun and likely to make more change happen...
Yes, take names. Of the good guys.
What is a sale for? (48 hours)
When things go on sale, (while supplies last, our annual savings event, end-of-season markdowns) it is a combination of scarcity and abundance.
Abundance because there's more here for the person who takes action. More variety, more for your money.
And scarcity, because sales never last forever.
We can get a lot of mileage out of telling ourselves and our friends that we bought it on sale.
Pugilists
Fighters and pugilists are different.
The fighter fights when she has to, when she's cornered, when someone or something she truly believes in is threatened. It's urgent and it's personal.
The pugilist, on the other hand, skirmishes for fun. The pugilist has a hobby, and the hobby is being oppositional.
The pugilist can turn any statement, quote or event into an opportunity to have an urgent argument, one that pins you to the ground and makes you question just about anything.
Buzzer management
I started the quiz team at my high school. Alas, I didn't do so well at the tryouts, so I ended up as the coach, but we still made it to the finals.
It took me thirty years to figure out the secret of getting in ahead of the others who also knew the answer (because the right answer is no good if someone else gets the buzz):
You need to press the buzzer before you know the answer.
As soon as you realize that you probably will be able to identify the answer by the time you're asked, buzz. Between the time you buzz and the time you're supposed to speak, the answer will come to you. And if it doesn't, the penalty for being wrong is small compared to the opportunity to get it right.
A corollary to 'Too big to fail'
"Too big to listen."
Great organizations listen to our frustrations, our hopes and our dreams.
Alas, when a company gets big enough, it starts to listen to the requirements of its shareholders and its best-paid executives instead.
Too big to listen is just a nanometer away from "Too big to care."
The do over
Our culture places a huge premium on choosing the right answer, as if we're all on some sort of game show.
Much less credit is given to people brave enough to realize that they've made a mistake who go ahead and choose a new direction, a new strategy or a new set of tactics.
When we find ourselves in a deep hole, it's rarely because we encountered a single terrible glitch. Usually, it's the result of compounding, of doubling down on a worldview or a stand or a habit that just doesn't pay.
Given a choice between changing tactics based on data and staying on the road in the wrong direction, I think the best path is pretty clear. The hard part is figuring out what to tell the others. Do overs are possible, but they take guts.
Announcing my candidacy
Today, with just 495 days before the election, I'm announcing my run for President of the United States.
I'm well aware the that electoral politics have been transformed by the collision of semi-modern marketing techniques with the money necessary to implement them. The TV-Industrial complex demands ever more partisan politics, more tribal division, more vote-suppressing vitriol. As we've turned raising money into a game similar to box office returns (where quantity appears to equal quality), candidates have almost no choice but to sell themselves to the highest bidder of the moment, again and again and again.
Once you see this, it's hard to miss, even though candidates and the media work to conceal it with big promises and lots of apparently retail politics.
Is it any wonder that voters are cynical? Marketers and marketing made us that way.
What happens when things go wrong?
Service resilience is too often overlooked. Most organizations don't even have a name for it, don't measure it, don't plan for it.
I totally understand our focus on putting on a perfect show, on delighting people, on shipping an experience that's wonderful.
But how do you and your organization respond/react when something doesn't go right?
Because that's when everyone is paying attention.
The rejectionists
We can choose to define ourselves (our smarts, our brand, our character) on who rejects us.
Or we can choose to focus on those that care enough to think we matter.
Carrying around a list of everyone who thinks you're not good enough is exhausting.
When you do work that matters, the crowd will call you a fool
If you do something remarkable, something new and something important, not everyone will understand it (at first). Your work is for someone, not everyone.
Unless you're surrounded only by someones, you will almost certainly encounter everyone. And when you do, they will jeer.
That's how you'll know you might be onto something.
The Debate Channel
Watching the US candidates hustle and squirm about the upcoming debates shows a fascinating generational media shift, one that impacts all of us.
In this case, the system has announced that only the top 10 candidates in the polls get invited, which means that more than a handful won't make the cut, which of course feels like doom.
But TV isn't in charge any more. We each own our own TV broadcasting network—anyone who wants to put on a show, can.
If I were crazy enough to be running, I'd organize my own debate, challenging one or two of my competitors to an hour-long conversation, and then post it online. Even better, I'd challenge one of the candidates from the other party and have a substantive conversation. Bernie Sanders debating [pick your candidate]. It elevates both sides because each person had the guts to address the issues, to go head to head, to speak up and make a case.
Control or resilience
It's tempting to invest time, money and emotion into gaining control over the future. Security guards, written policies, reinforced concrete—there are countless ways we can enforce our control over nature, random events and fellow humans.
The problem is that while the first round of control pays huge dividends (keeping rabbits out the yard is a good way to make your garden grow), over time more control creates brittleness. The Maginot Line didn't hold up very well, and the hundred-year floodwalls don't work in face of a thousand-year flood.
The alternative is to invest in resilience, to build systems that can handle (or even thrive) when the unforeseen happens.
In one case, you can say, "when the roads are smooth, when you read the instructions, when conditions are ideal, this is the very best solution."
Do-able
Lean entrepreneurs can talk about the minimum viable product, but far more important is the maximum do-able project.
Given the resources you have (your assets, your time, your patience), what's the biggest thing it's quite likely you can pull off?
Our culture is organized around the people who get on base, who reliably keep their promises, who deliver. "Quite likely," is a comforting story indeed. [HT to Bernadette.]
Domino's could have offered five-minute pizza delivery, and sometimes, without a doubt, they could have pulled that off. But promising something they could do virtually every time earned them a spot on the speed dial of millions of phones.
Degrees of freedom
Does a college degree confer the ability to choose, to open the door to find a way to matter?
Three years ago I gave this TEDx talk about the future of education.
And the students who graduated from college this month each have an average of $35,000 in debt. For many people, this debt is debilitating. Instead of opening doors, it slams them shut.
Talented teachers and passionate students are the victims of an industrialized educational system, one that cares a great deal about standardized tests and famous brand-name institutions.
We are all social entrepreneurs
It's tempting to reserve the new term 'social entrepreneurs' for that rare breed that builds a significant company organized around the idea of changing the culture for the better.
The problem with this term is that lets everyone else off the hook. The prefix social implies that regular entrepreneurs have nothing to worry about, and that the goal of every un-prefixed organization and project (the 'regular kind') is to only make as much money as possible, as fast as possible.
But that's not how the world works.
Every project causes change to happen, and the change we make is social. The jobs we take on, the things we make, the side effects we cause—they're not side effects, they're merely effects. When we make change, we're responsible for the change we choose to make.
Terroir
You can taste it.
Heinz ketchup has no terroir. It always tastes like everywhere and nowhere and the same. A Dijon mustard from a small producer in France, though, you can taste where it came from. Foodies seek out this distinction in handcrafted chocolate or wine or just about anything where the land and environment are thought to matter.
But we can extend the idea to you, to your work, to the thing you're building.
Visit the City Bakery in New York. Every square inch contains the DNA of the whole place. The planking of the floor. The sound as you sit on the balcony. The parade of people coming in and out. The staff. It's not like anyplace else. It's not like everyplace else. It's like the City Bakery.
