EMBA的小眼睛

Raising money is not the same thing as making a sale
Both add to your bank balance...
But raising money (borrowing it or selling equity) creates an obligation, while selling something delivers value to a customer.
Raising money is hard to repeat. Selling something repeatedly is why you do this work.

#WeAreAllWeird (3 contest updates)
1. You can win four books, signed by the authors, with a tweet. Rules are here. Tell us why you are not part of the lockstep masses.
2. I recently blogged about long odds (one in a quadrillion) and how hard it is to predict the future. It turns out that of the 897 people who entered my presidential bracket game, there’s only ONE contender left. Even though only two candidates have dropped out, there's already more than a 99% failure rate in predicting this future. And I think the prize is safe, because the only remaining contender has picked Christie and Bush as the next two to go.
3. Within 24 hours of recent events virtually determining the first question I surveyed, we also have an answer to the second one. Today’s the day my blog hit 500k followers on Twitter. As you can see, the crowd was off a bit on this as well. I’ve emailed the seven top entries to send them a prize.

Dreams and fears
Sooner or later, important action taken comes down to this.
Fear: Of being ashamed, feeling stupid, being rejected, being left out, getting hurt, being embarrased, left alone, dying.
Dreams: Of being seen, being needed, becoming independent, relieving anxiety, becoming powerful, making someone proud, fitting in, seen as special, mattering, taken care of, loved.

Tires, coffee and people
The most important part of a race car is the tires. Good tires will always beat bad ones.
The most important part of a cup of coffee is the beans. The grinder, the machine, the barista pale in comparison to the quality of what you start with.
And the most important parts of an organization are the people you begin with. Not the systems or the policies or even the real estate. Great people make everything easier.

Will this be on the test?
The test, of course, offers nothing but downside. No extra credit, just points marked off. The test is the moment where you must conform to standards, to say what is expected of you.
Perhaps a better question is, "Will this be in the Playbill?"
The Playbill is the little program they hand out before the Broadway musical. The Playbill is all about extra credit, about putting on a show, surprising, elevating, doing something more than people hoped for.

Taking it personally
Yesterday, I visited a shop that only sells children's books. The store was empty and I asked the clerk, "Do you know where I can find Yertle the Turtle?"
He walked over to the computer, typed a few keystrokes and said, "I don't think we have it, do you know who the author is?"
Stunned silence.

Empathy
Empathy doesn't involve feeling sorry for someone. It is our honest answer to the question, "why did they do what they did?"
The useful answer is rarely, "because they're stupid." Or even, "because they're evil." In fact, most of the time, people with similar information, similar beliefs and similar apparent choices will choose similar actions. So if you want to know why someone does what they do, start with what they know, what they believe and where they came from.
Dismissing actions we don't admire merely because we don't care enough to have empathy is rarely going to help us make the change we seek. It doesn't help us understand, and it creates a gulf that drives us apart.

Compared to...
Without a doubt, there's someone taller than you, faster than you, cuter than you.
We don't have to look very far to find someone who is better paid, more respected and getting more than his fair share of credit.
And social media: Of course there are people with more followers, more likes and more of just about anything you'd like to measure.

How idea adoption works--The Idea Progression
I've been sharing Rogers production adoption curve for a long time, but I realize that it doesn't viscerally explain what's actually happening. Here's a better way to think about it:
The idea progressions.001
[Click to enlarge]

A fly on the wall
It's easier than ever to listen in, to hear what your customers say about you, to read what your friends are posting, to eavesdrop. Keep surveying your employees, tap their phone lines, hang out in a stall in the break room...
If you try hard enough, you can hear what people are saying about you behind your back.
The thing about the fly on the wall, though, is at the end of the day, he spends a lot of time eating dung.