EMBA的小眼睛

But not people like you

We're hiring, but not people like you.

I'm looking for a doctor, but of course, not someone like you.

We're putting together a study group, but we won't be able to include people like you.

Redlining is an efficient short-term selection strategy. At least that's what we tell ourselves. So the bank won't loan to people in that neighborhood or people with this cultural background, because, hey, we can't loan to everyone and it's easier to just draw a red line around the places not worth our time...

The last minute glitch

I got a note from Joni Mitchell yesterday.

Well, not just me. Everyone who got her new boxed set got the note.

The note takes responsibility for some of the tracks on the CD not matching the order of the liner notes. Apparently, the brilliant artist needed more time, and cared enough about her work to re-arrange it until the last minute, and was brave enough to speak up and take responsibility.

So, it's not just you. The last minute looms large.

Decoding Apple as a luxury tools company

Hundreds of years ago, Hermes and Louis Vuitton started out as luxury makers of tools. If you needed a saddle or a suitcase, they offered an extraordinary option, both elite and useful.

Over time, they shifted gears, no longer competing on whether or not their luggage was the most useful, or their saddles the most efficient. They competed on luxury, which is a fundamentally different promise than the optimal design of a tool.

Patagonia is still a luxury tools company. The coats they sell cost more, but some professionals choose them regardless of brand, because in addition to tribal affiliation and the placebo that comes from buying a luxury good, they're still extraordinarily functional.

High end consulting and design firms also sell luxury goods. So do many conferences and elite restaurants and travel destinations. A big part of what you pay for is the story, the experience and the process, not the advice or the logotype or the learning you end up with...

Organizing for growth

Maybe it’s (finally) working. Maybe demand is up, opportunities keep presenting themselves and people want to work with you.

So why are you so stressed out? It might be because different organizational choices lead to different paths for growth.

Consider a house painter. His business has always been okay, but thanks to his skill and a local building boom, jobs keep showing up.

The traditional method: He lays out the money for paint, he does the work, he sends a bill, and soon, he gets paid.

The fear of freedom

What will you do next?

What can you learn tomorrow?

Where will you live, who will you connect with, who will you trust?

Are questions better than answers? Maybe it's easier to get a dummies book, a tweet or a checklist than it is to think hard about what's next...

Slacktivism

This is far from a new phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago there were holier-than-thou people standing in the village square, wringing their hands, ringing their bells and talking about how urgent a problem was. They did little more than wring their hands, even then.

In our connected world, though, there are two sides to social media's power in spreading the word about a charitable cause.

According to recent data about the ice bucket challenge making the rounds, more than 90% of the people mentioning it (posting themselves being doused or passing on the word) didn't make a donation to support actual research on an actual disease. Sounds sad, no?

But I think these slacktivists have accomplished two important things at scale, things that slacktivists have worked to do through the ages:

Who named the colors?

We did.

It's not a silly question. It has a lot to do with culture and crowds and the way we decide, as a group, what's right and what's not.

A quick look at some colors confirms that there is no algorithm, no accepted pattern for color names. They range from short and obscure (puce) to long and obvious references, like cotton candy.

No color has a name until a significant group accepts that name. You can start calling the sky, "gluten," but it's not going to be useful until others do as well.

What's it for?

and How will we know if it worked?

Answer these two questions first, please. If it's worth doing, it's worth knowing before you do it.

A hammer is for getting nails into wood, and it's pretty easy to tell if it does the job well. That's one reason why we have so many good hammers available to us--real clarity about what it's for, and whether it works or not.

Too often, we wait until we see what something does before we decide what we built it for.

Simple, guaranteed, easy and free

That's the perfect advice, and the advice that spreads, the advice we seek.

Of course, advice that's simple, guaranteed, easy and free isn't worth very much, because if it worked, we would have done it already.

No, the advice worth seeking out is really difficult to execute. It costs time or money (or both), and it just might not work.

Hey, if it's worth asking for advice, it's worth doing the hard stuff once we get it, right?

Doing the hard things

One model of organization is to find something that you're good at and that's easy and straightforward and get paid for that.

The other model is to seek out things that are insanely difficult and do those instead.

Dave Ramsey does a three hour radio show every day. He books theaters and has a traveling road show. He has the discipline to only publish a new book quite rarely, and to stick with it for years and years as it moves through the marketplace. He has scores of employees. And on and on. By doing hard work that others fear, he creates unique value.

Rick Toone makes guitars that others would never attempt. Rollin Thurlow does the same with canoes.

This is ours

Last night on the bike path I passed a well-dressed citizen, walking along with a bottle of water. I was stunned to see him finish his water and hurl the bottle into the woods.

I stopped and said, "Hey, please don't do that."

He looked at me with complete surprise and said, "what?" as if he didn't understand what 'that' was. His conception of the world seemed to be that there was two kinds of stuff... his and not-his. The park wasn't his, so it was just fine to throw trash, in fact, why not?

The challenge we have in the connection economy, in a world built on ever more shared resources and public digital spaces is that some people persist in acting like it belongs to someone else. When they spit in the pool or troll anonymously, when they spam or break things, it's as if they're doing it to someone else, or to the man.

Experiencing something other than the prevailing system

Sandeep points us to 'Sign', a restaurant in Toronto where every waiter is deaf and the only way to order is with ASL.

This isn't a tourist attraction or merely a remarkable gimmick. What it does is reverse systemic bias by requiring paying customers to adapt to a system that isn't of their choosing. If you want to eat here, you need to play by a different set of rules.

The original reason for systemic biases is usually benign. "Most people" can't use this, or most people don't look like you or most people won't benefit. Over time, though, the bias in favor of most people becomes more ingrained, and often serves as a barrier to change, reinforcing the power of the dominant group.

I'm well aware that much of what I create is difficult to engage with for people with certain disabilities or cultural backgrounds. And the dynamics of the market often mean that this standard is maintained, usually longer than it needs to be. Signed is a beautiful reminder that we need to actively re-think some of the paradigms about race, gender and disability that we've assumed are normal.

Is authenticity authentic?

Perhaps the only truly authentic version of you is just a few days old, lying in a crib, pooping in your pants.

Ever since then, there's been a cultural overlay, a series of choices, strategies from you and others about what it takes to succeed in this world (in your world).

And so it's all invented.

When you tell me that it would be authentic for you to do x, y or z, my first reaction is that nothing you do is truly authentic, it's all part of a long-term strategy for how you'll make an impact in the world.

"I don't get it"

"I don't like it"

"I don't understand it"

Those are the only responses your new idea can possibly generate from many around you if your new idea is actually a great idea, something ownable, something you can build work around.

The popular, obvious, guaranteed ideas have definitely been taken, or are so small that they're not really worth your blood and tears.

Tribes and their perceived threats

Intermarriage has always been a problem, all the way back to Romeo and Juliet (and West Side Story, of course). Intermarriage de-demonizes the ‘other’, and the insecure tribe member sees this as an existential threat, the beginning of the end of tribal cohesion.

Gangs in LA view high school as a threat. A kid who graduates from high school has options, can see a way up, which decreases the power of the gang and its leaders. Public school is seen as a threat by some tribes, a secular indoctrination and an exposure to other cultures and points of view that might destabilize what has been built over generations. And digital audio is a threat to those in the vinyl tribe, because at some point, some members may decide they’ve had enough of the old school.

Lately, two significant threats seen by some tribes are the scientific method and the power of a government (secular, or worse, representing a majority tribe). One fear is that once someone understands the power of inquiry, theory, testing and informed criticism, they will be unwilling to embrace traditional top-down mythology. The other is that increased government power will enforce standards and rituals that undermine the otherness that makes each tribe distinct.

If a tribe requires its members to utter loyalty oaths to be welcomed [“the president is always right, carbon pollution is a myth, no ____ allowed (take your pick)”] they will bump into reality more and more often. I had a music teacher in elementary school who forbade students to listen to pop music, using a valiant but doomed-to-fail tactic of raising classical music lovers.

Producers and consumers

In the short run, it's more fun to be a consumer. It sure seems like consumers have power. The customer is always right, of course. The consumer can walk away and shop somewhere else.

In the long run, though, the smart producer wins, because the consumer comes to forget how to produce. As producers consolidate (and they often do) they are the ones who ultimately set the agenda.

Producers do best when they serve the market, but they also have the power to lead the market.

The more you produce and the more needs you meet, the more freedom you earn.

Trading favors

Those people who owe you—because you mowed their lawn, drove carpool, promoted their site, gave them advice, listened to you in the middle of the night—they will probably let you down.

Favors aren't for trading, they wear out, they fade away, they are valued differently by the giver and the receiver.

No, the best favors are worth doing for the doing, not because we'll ever get paid back appropriately.

A kick in the asterisk

What's the point of being open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, especially if you get zero calls between 3 am and 4 am?

Why take the risk of offering a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee when you know that a few people are going to show up with ridiculous requests for refunds?

Do you really want to offer an all-you-can-eat buffet? What about the trolls that eat too much? Shouldn't you have limits?

Simple. Because you've just eliminated a reason for people to wonder. They don't have to wonder about your rules or your hours or your fine print, because you took away the doubt.

Understanding substitutes

This is a pretty long post, and I know that you could easily substitute another round of Angry Birds instead of reading it. I hope you’ll find it useful.

One of the key elements of pricing is realizing that people have choices, and that substitutes are available. This is more nuanced than it sounds, though, and I want to highlight key things to keep in mind when you think about how much to charge and how people might react.

Marketers make two mistakes over and over. They create average, commodity products and expect that people will pay extra for them. Or, in the other direction, they lose their nerve and don't charge a fair price for the extraordinary work they're doing, afraid that people will find a substitute.

"Why should I buy this from you, that guy over there sells something just like it?"

But the Beatles were out of tune

The pedant (that's what we call someone who is pedantic, a picker of nits, eager to find the little thing that's wrong or out of place) is afraid.

He's afraid and he's projecting his fear on you, the person who did something, who shipped something, who stood up and said, "here, I made this."

Without a doubt, when the Beatles played Shea Stadium, Paul was a little out of tune. Without a doubt, the Gettysburg Address had one or two word choice issues. Without a doubt, that restaurant down the street isn't perfect.

That's okay. They made something.