Seth Godin's Blog, page 35

What gets maximized?

When an organization succeeds, the owners decide what to maximize. Some of the choices:

Salaries for the bosses
Distributions to the shareholders
Stock price
Salaries for everyone else
Positive impact on customers
Positive impact on the culture

So, if you’re the local cable company, you can decide to invest extra profits in customer service or lower rates, even if those choices don’t maximize long or short profitability. If you’re a public company, you might try to hype the stock price with a buyback. Or, if you’re a company with a mission, you might re-invest in that mission.

The myth is that the only purpose of a company is to maximize profits. That’s a fiction, and a dangerous one. Organizations exist to make things better for people, not the other way around.

One reason that social entrepreneurship is a useful concept is that it announces the priorities from the start. Be profitable enough to grow, but put most of that profit to work serving your customers and their neighbors.

You don’t have to have a fancy label to build an organization that you’re proud of. You simply need to decide what you’re trying to accomplish, and then go do that.

 

[Also! the new episode of Akimbo is out now, and a new podcast called Everything is Alive is the next thing you might want to listen to after that. I’ve listened to two episodes and they’re extraordinary acts of originality and genius.]

            

The motor

Here’s a simple hierarchy:

The self-driving car

Cruise control

Manual driving

Hitchhiking

Bicycling

Walking

The arc? As you move down the list, it gets harder and harder to coast. It moves from “set it once and forget it” to “one step at at time.”

The growth of audiobooks is outpacing reading. Why? Because audiobooks come with their own motor. Even readers are pointing out that they’ve forgotten how to read. But of course, that’s not true–we can still read a word, or even a sentence, it’s pushing ourselves through a chapter that’s difficult.

The internet is the greatest self-teaching resource ever developed. But few take advantage of it, because it doesn’t come with a motor. No tests, no certificates, no cruise control.

The decline of our personal momentum might be the great untold story of our time. That electronic media, incoming, ‘breaking’, please reply, didn’t you see that, react right now, click here… this has a cost. And the cost is our internal drive to initiate instead of to just react.

Someone’s driving. It’s either you, going where you choose, or someone else, pushing you.

            

A source of stress

Wanting to do two things at the same time.

If you’re on the stairmaster at the gym, you’re engaged in a workout voluntarily.

But if your job involved standing on a stairmaster all day, every day, you’d be stressed out. Because you want to stay (you need the paycheck) and you want to leave.

A volunteer fireman feels totally different about a burning building than someone who is trapped in one.

That’s because the volunteer goes in on purpose.

The distinction (and the stress) comes down to the word “but.”

I need to do this but I hate it.

I have to stay but I want to go.

The external forces might not be changeable, but our use of the word “but” can be.

If it’s what you want to do, then do it. Dropping the “but” costs you nothing and saves you stress.

            

Old buildings on the edge of town

“We’re not going to be here long.”

That’s because this project isn’t going to work and we can’t afford to stay, or because this project is going to work and we’re going to move up.

That’s a pretty profound thing for some real estate to say about its corporate tenant. And the employees absorb it each and every day.

Compare that to a bank in the big building in the middle of town… They’re in maintenance mode, how could they not be? It’s too hard to move—up, down or out.

Choose your metaphor, choose your narrative. It’s not just your office, of course. It never is.

 

[For those intent on moving up, consider applying to the altMBA. The last session of the year happens this fall.]

            

Our engineering ratchet

Quietly, over the last thirty years, engineering has become dramatically more efficient and effective.

Insulated glass, cars that don't break down, keyboards with just the right feel to them… Mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering are all moving faster than ever.

Several factors are at work:

Computer aided design and engineering means that smaller teams can do more, faster.
The internet shows engineers the state of the art immediately, so everyone is working off the latest benchmark.
Markets are more open to levelling up… new innovations that translate to productivity are adopted more easily.
There's an expectation that better is possible, so organizations are hooked on seeking out better. The ratchet turns the ratchet.

When we're in the middle of it, we don't see it. But travel back in time just a bit and you'll see that few things worked as well as they do now.

            

Smooth water

Everything moves better in smooth water. Engineers spend a lot of time and energy to avoid cavitation, the often dangerous bubbles that are caused by pumps or propellers. And sailors and surfers prefer to do their thing without excess chop.

As we apply pressure to an organization, the same thing happens. At first, people engage with change as an opportunity, doing their best work in the face of small shifts. But once fear sets in, so does cavitation. The cavitation, the bubbling, the uncertainty, the expansion and collapse of bubbles of doubt and disagreement—this becomes the primary problem, more than the fear that originally caused the issue.

The challenge is to avoid this before it happens. To insert pressure relief valves, smooth out the bends, and give the energy a place to go.

The stories we tell each other will lead to the actions we take.

            

Walking away from fast twitch

Sports gurus are happy to talk about the difference between fast and slow twitch muscles. And it resonates with us, because we fully understand the ping-pong reflexes that are so often celebrated and often fun to do as well.

On our project, it’s tempting to spend all of our time in fast twitch mode. To scan the incoming, grab the urgent, set it up and slam it back.

But if we spend all of our time twitching, we’ll never do the difficult work of the non-urgent. Important work requires a daily commitment, one that isn’t sidelined by every emergency, because there’s always an emergency, isn’t there?

            

Everything is an experiment

If we’re seeking to make change, to make a contribution, the outcome is part of the work. If the outcome repeatedly doesn't measure up, we should change what we're doing.

And evidence is everywhere. More proof, more data, more insight about how it worked…

The thing is, much of the time, we willingly ignore the evidence. When we’re the consumers of the change, we insist on evidence-based treatment. We want doctors and software and teachers that do something that works. We want to get better, we want the computer to not crash, and we want to learn things effectively and quickly…

But often, as practitioners, we ignore the evidence in favor of what feels ‘right’, or because of our attachment to a narrative or what we’ve done before. We stand on principal, not results.

So, before presenting the evidence, before assuming that people will change their work in response to the data, we need enrollment. We have to ask for a commitment. “If the evidence shows that there’s a better way to do this, are you open to changing?”

It takes guts to answer this honestly. It takes guts to say, "no matter what the evidence says, no matter how effective or ineffective this is shown to be, I'm going to stand on principal or status or tradition or belief…"

It took more than twenty years for Ignaz Semmelweis’ clear evidence about the cause of maternal deaths to be accepted. And more than a century later, it took just as long before doctors in the 1960s and 70s accepted that ulcers were caused by bacteria, not pastrami sandwiches.

What are we doing about the evidence related to incarceration for low-level drug offenses, for Head Start, for Meals on Wheels, for teaching to the test, for gun deaths, for philanthropy?

The first agreement is to look at the evidence. Or not.

            

Do you know enough?

When did you reach the point where you didn't need to read another research report, didn't need to absorb another scouting analysis, didn't need to stop by the bookstore… because it simply wasn't useful or efficient to learn another thing about your field?

It's not that difficult to extend this thinking. Of course, you know enough about literature to teach literature, or enough about AC engineering to do your job. But where to draw the line? Do you know enough about the arguments and goals of political movements you're not a part of? The innovations of new restaurants in your town? The impressive new music coming out of Nigeria?

Too much too choose from, too little time.

But certainly, we don't know enough. About anything.

            

Books worth reading

The Art of Gathering, by Priya Parker. A long overdue and urgent manifesto for anyone who has the temerity (and generosity) to organize the time and energy of a team in order to call a meeting.

The Artist’s Journey, the latest from Steve Pressfield, an essential compass, road map and kick in the pants.

Coming soon, the much anticipated Eat Their Lunch from Anthony Iannarino.

Full House, twenty years old, from Stephen Jay Gould, about variation, evolution and of course, Ted Williams.

Tom Peters’ latest: The Excellence Dividend, is classic Tom on every page.

Chasing Space, by Leland Melvin is a memoir from a real hero.

Annie Duke knows how to make decisions. You should too.

The Heart to Start is solid advice from David Kadavy. It’s not too late.

Scott McCloud‘s classic book on comics will change the way you see.

Fresh India, by Meera Sodha, is the book I’m cooking from the most lately. And everyone who eats should own a copy of The Food Lab.

And if you haven’t read Your Turn, today’s a great day to leap.