Seth Godin's Blog, page 118

The problem with complaining about the system

...is that the system can't hear you. Only people can.

And the problem is that people in the system are too often swayed to believe that they have no power over the system, that they are merely victims of it, pawns, cogs in a machine bigger than themselves.

Alas, when the system can't hear you, and those who can believe they have no power, nothing improves.

Systems don't mistreat us, misrepresent us, waste our resources, govern poorly, support an unfair status quo and generally screw things up--people do.

If we care enough, we can make it change.

            

Taking notes vs. taking belief

Is there anything easier than listening to a lecture or reading a book and taking notes?

And is there anything more difficult than setting aside our preconceptions and the resistance and acting 'as if', being open to belief, at least for a moment?

If taking notes is making it easier for you to postpone (or avoid) the possibility of belief, better to put down the pencil and focus.

Facts are easy to come by. Finding a new way to think and a new confidence in our choices is difficult indeed.

            

Bigger for?

Is bigger better for the investor or is it better for the customer?

At a huge hotel in Nashville (more than 1,000 rooms), there's always a long line at the check in desk, the gym is full at 5 in the morning and the staff has no clue who any guest is.

It's clear that doubling the size of the hotel helped the owner make more money (for now). But it's worth taking a moment to think about whether bigger is the point.

Maybe better is?

            

"So busy doing my job, I can't get any work done"

Your job is an historical artifact. It's a list of tasks, procedures, alliances, responsibilities, to-dos, meetings (mostly meetings) that were layered in, one at a time, day after day, for years.

And your job is a great place to hide.

Because, after all, if you're doing your job, how can you fail? Get in trouble? Make a giant error?

The work, on the other hand, is the thing you do that creates value. This value you create, the thing you do like no one else can do, is the real reason we need you to be here, with us.

When you discover that the job is in the way of the work, consider changing your job enough that you can go back to creating value.

Anything less is hiding.

            

You can't ask customers what they want

... not if your goal is to find a breakthrough. Because your customers have trouble imagining a breakthrough.

You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask your customers to do your design work for you.

So, if you can't ask, you can assert. You can look for clues, you can treat different people differently, and you can make a leap. You can say, "assuming you're the kind of person I made this for, here's what I made."

The risk here is that many times, you'll be wrong.

But if you're not okay with that, you're never going to create a breakthrough.

            

You can't ask customers want they want

... not if your goal is to find a breakthrough. Because your customers have trouble imagining a breakthrough.

You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask your customers to do your design work for you.

So, if you can't ask, you can assert. You can look for clues, you can treat different people differently, and you can make a leap. You can say, "assuming you're the kind of person I made this for, here's what I made."

The risk here is that many times, you'll be wrong.

But if you're not okay with that, you're never going to create a breakthrough.

            

The saying/doing gap

At first, it seems as though the things you declare, espouse and promise matter a lot. And they do. For a while.

But in the end, we will judge you on what you do. When the gap between what you say and what you do gets big enough, people stop listening.

The compromises we make, the clients we take on, the things we do when we think no one is watching... this is how people measure us.

It seems as though the amount of time it takes for the gap to catch up with marketers/leaders/humans is getting shorter and shorter.

            

"The way we do things"

There are two pitfalls you can encounter in dealing with focus and process:

In moments of weakness, you take on a project or client that's outside your focus zone. After all, you need the work.
In moments of blindness, you fail to expand what you do, relying on the fading glory of yesterday instead of realizing that you are perfectly positioned to go forward.

In 1994, I ignored the web, defining our business as being email pioneers, not, more broadly, pioneering digital interactions. It took three years to catch up from that error.

On the other hand, we raced to do business with online services from Apple and Microsoft. Not because they were in our focus, but because we could. 

The easiest way to see these errors is in hindsight, which does you no good at all.

The best way to avoid these two errors is to regularly decide (in a moment of quiet, not panic) what you do and where you do it. With intention.

            

Stretching without support

One of the fundamental equations of our self-narrative is: If I only had more support, I could accomplish even more.

Part of this is true. With more education, a stronger foundation, better cultural expectations, each of us is likely to contribute even more, to level up, to make a difference.

The part that's not true: "If only."

It turns out that every day, some people shatter our expectations. They build more than they have any right to, show up despite a lack of lucky breaks or a cheering section. Every day, some people stretch further.

You might not be able to do much about the support, but you can definitely do something about the stretching. It's under your control, not someone else's.

And practicing helps.

 

[Sunday is the last day to sign up for the summer session of the altMBA. We are only running two sessions through the rest of the year, and we'd love it if you would consider joining us in our quest to help people like you contribute more than they thought possible.

We do this by giving you a safe space to stretch. 

We do this by raising expectations at the same time we give you access to tools and to a group of fellow travelers eager to make a difference.

We can't possibly give you all the support you need (no one can). But we can help you imagine the stretch.]

            

The ruby slippers problem

Most of what we're chasing is that which we've had all along.

In our culture, the getting is ever more important than the having.

There's nothing wrong with getting, of course, as long as the process is in sync with the life you want to lead.