Seth Godin's Blog, page 3

Junction City

A dozen states in the US have a Junction City.

A place with the claim to fame that it’s on the way to somewhere else.

You can do well being a stepping stone, a pathway, a place people go to get somewhere else.

Or you can be a place where people seek to be.

Yahoo grew as a place to stay. They built one service after another, hoping for time on site.

Google, on the other hand, began as a place to visit when you wanted to go somewhere else. That’s their entire business model. Time on site wasn’t as important to them as the accuracy of their direction. Come to leave.

Facebook, on the other hand, is organized to be a one-way street, with people staying on the site as long as possible.

Of course, it’s not simply web sites that work this way. Either we organize for junctions and trajectory, or we build our place as a destination, physically or as metaphor.

 

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Ahead of the curve

When you’re traveling ahead of the curve, it’s silly to imagine that the road will be straight and flat.

It’s actually more like a cliff. With bumps.

That’s all part of the deal. That’s why it’s not called the curve. You’re in the void, uncharted, ahead of what’s behind.

In fact, ahead of the curve, the weather is pretty lousy too. Often with catastrophic lightning storms.

On the other hand, if you choose to work inside this messy metaphor, you get the thrill of finding a new path instead of merely following the old one.

            

“Don’t pee in the pool”

For generations, people dumped crap into the Hudson River. The river was so large and so swift that they assumed that the effluent wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

Of course, it did, killing the oyster beds and poisoning the public.

How big does a body of water have to be before we forget that we’re swimming in it? That it all comes around…

Why are we are okay at yelling at a stranger, but not our neighbor? We will abuse the department in the other building, but not down the hall…

It turns out that the pool/river/tub that we live in is far smaller than it seems. The culture of the place we work, the vibe of the community where we live. It’s all more connected than we realize.

            

Roads or buildings?

If you want to make a long-term impact, build the roads.

Stewart Brand points out that if you compare two maps of downtown Boston–from 1860 and 1960, for example–virtually every single building has been replaced. Gone.

But the roads? They haven’t changed a bit. The curbs and boundaries and connections are largely as they were. With the exception of a Big Dig, a Robert Moses or an earthquake, the roads last forever.

That’s because systems built around communication, transportation and connection need near-unanimous approval to change. Buildings, on the other hand, begin to morph as soon as the owner or tenant decides they need to.

When creating an organization, a technology or any kind of culture, the roads are worth far more than the buildings.

How do we do things around here?

            

Surrounded by yes

It’s good news and bad news.

The web knows what you like and it’s working hard to surround you with reminders that you’re right.

This is good news because it can help an outsider feel more normal. If you have something you’re interested in, you’ll see more of it, news about it, affirmations… all of which will help you find the confidence to speak up and lead. Everywhere you look, you’ll see reminders that the world is actually just the way you hoped.

And this is bad news because it amplifies bad behavior. It normalizes behavior that successful cultures work hard to diminish. This reinforcement makes your bubble ever thicker and makes it easy to believe that in fact, the world does revolve around you.

Everyone doesn’t agree with you, the web just makes it feel that way.

            

Of course they’re wrong

It seems like our take on culture is that we’re right.

We shake hands properly, use a napkin properly, speak up at events properly and even greet one another on the street properly.

When I’m in a foreign city, I’m always amazed at how (friendly/offputting/aloof/intimate) everyone else is.

But of course, everyone else is right as well. They’re the home team, so they’re even more right than I am.

The conflict seems pretty obvious:

We can’t all be wrong, which means we can’t all be right, either.

Culture, by its very definition, isn’t the work of being right. It’s the work of being in sync.

Culture is people like us do things like this.

So sure, the way WE do this is ‘right’ if right means, ‘the way we do this.’ But there’s little room for absolutes. Culture abhors the absolute, it is based in the specific instead.

The next time you bump into a culture that you disagree with, perhaps it might be more useful to wonder about how it got that way, and would happen if we did it that way?

How long would it take us to go from, “this is wrong,” to, well, sure, “that’s how we do things around here”?

            

The key part of new media

It’s the new part.

“How am I supposed to use this?” is the common question. You’re supposed to have a certain tone in your tweets, a certain format to your Facebook posts. You’re supposed to have comments on your blog and your YouTube videos should have a certain look, feel and length.

When MTV was the hitmaker of the music industry, it quickly became clear what a music video was supposed to look like.

Nonsense.

Matching the vernacular is a fine starting point if you don’t want to spend time or energy questioning the form. But in fact, questioning the form, embracing the new part of the medium is precisely where forward motion happens.

Our new instagram account is pioneering minibooks and other non-traditional ways to use the medium. This blog hasn’t had comments in a long time. Trailblazers have run telethons, talk shows and other surprising formats on Facebook. I don’t use Twitter ‘properly’ but that’s okay. A podcast doesn’t have to have guests. In fact, it could be a minute long or eleven hours long.

The only right way is the way that helps you make the change you seek.

PS Here’s my favorite music video, done incorrectly of course. For inspiration, the best of Spike Jonze, breaking the rules of an older new media can be found here…

            

Cognitive load and the convenience problem

Why do smart people trade away so much money and freedom for just a little convenience?

We do it all the time. We take the easy path, the simple shortcut or the long-term bad deal simply because it feels easier.

The reason? Thinking is not worth the hassle.

Cognitive load overwhelms us. Too many choices. The stakes feel too high. Every day, we make 1,000 times as many different decisions as our cavemen ancestors did. We’re exhausted from all the decisions, and more than that, from the narrative we have about making them poorly.

Over the years, marketers have offered us one wonder or another in exchange for just a little cognitive load. And those promises have often been empty. Not worth the hassle.

So now, we’ll press the re-order button like a pigeon in a lab. It’s easier.

If you want people to stop and think, you’ll need to do two things: Make a very big promise… and then keep it.

            

On winning

Most people try to win.

The real question is, “at what?”

If you focus your sights on winning the local bowling league, the effort can consume you, and you will be aware of your progress and your competition.

Or, if you turn the poetry you’re writing into your game, with the goal of winning that next stanza–not in the eyes of a publisher, an editor or a reader, but in your eyes–you can turn that into your thing.

If, instead, your goal is to raise more money at a higher valuation in the Valley, then that’s the game you’ve chosen.

Or, perhaps, your game is to bend others to your will, to prey on yet another human you see as weaker than you are…

Often, we choose games we can’t possibly win. That approach might be working for you, as it lets you off the hook because you won’t have to work out what to do if you win.

And sometimes, we choose games where we can’t win unless someone else loses. And these games can often have long-term, toxic after-effects.

As you can see, modifying a game you’re already playing because you don’t like how it’s turning out isn’t nearly as useful as picking the right game in the first place.