Seth Godin's Blog, page 49

Exit, voice and loyalty

We often have a choice: speak up or leave.

In commerce, if we don't like a brand, we leave. The always-present choice to stay or to go drives bosses, marketers and organizations to continually be focused on earning (and re-earning) the attention and patronage of their constituents.

Sometimes, instead of leaving, people speak up.

For most of my life, the biggest separation between government and economics was this distinction.

In many cases, government has generally taken the idea of exit off the table. If you don't like your country, you could consider leaving it, but that's an extraordinarily disruptive act. Not voting may express your apathy or disgust, but you're still a member of the society.

Capitalism ceases to be an efficient choice when those served have no ability to exit. For-profit prisons, for example, or cable monopolies. If you can't exit, you're not really the customer, and you are deprived, as a result, of voice.

In the case of effective government, voice is built in on behalf of those that have no ability to exit. A well-functioning representative democracy opens the door for people to be heard and action to be taken.

Suddenly, it's easier than ever for rich people to exit instead of speak up. They can wire funds (when wealth was held only in real estate, that wasn't an option, you can't take land with you) and they can live an almost post-national existence. As a result, since they're not tied down and often pay little or nothing in taxes, they're less inclined to work hard to make their place better for everyone. The same applies to private school (for the few) compared to public school (for the rest).

Voice matters.

Loyalty, then, could be defined as the emotion that sways us to speak up when we're tempted to walk away instead.

When your loyal customers speak up, how do you respond? When you have a chance to speak up but walk away instead, what does it cost you? What about those groups you used to be part of? I've had the experience several times where, when my voice ceased to be heard, I decided it was easier to walk away instead.

Voice is an expression of loyalty. Voice is not merely criticism, it might be the contribution of someone who has the option to walk away but doesn't.

In Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Albert Hirschman explains how this overlooked mechanism of the world works.

            

Words on slides

If you use Powerpoint, a few principles and tips to keep in mind when using type on a slide:

Don't read the words. It's bad enough that people use Powerpoint as a sort of teleprompter. Much worse that you don't trust the audience enough to read what you wrote. If you want them to read the precise words, stand quietly until they do. If you want to paraphrase the words, that can work. 
But even better, remember that slides are free. You can have as many as you like. That means that instead of three bullet points (with two sentences each) on a slide, you can make 6 slides. Or more. The energy you create by advancing from slide to slide will seduce most of the people in your audience to read along to keep up. Slides that people read are worth five times more than slides that you read to them.
Better still, don't use words. Or, at the most, one or two keywords, in huge type. The rest of the slide is a picture, which I'm told is worth 1,000 words. That way, the image burns itself into one part of the brain while your narrative is received by the other part. The keyword gives you an anchor, and now you're hitting in three places, not just one.
When in doubt, re-read rule 1. Don't read the slides.
Many organizations use decks as a fancy sort of memo, a leave-behind that provides proof that you actually said what you said. "Can you send me the deck?" A smart presenter will have two decks. One deck has plenty of text, but then those pages are hidden when the presentation is performed live.
Reconsider the memo. They're underrated when it comes to educating numbers of people in an efficient way. Follow up with a test if you're worried about compliance. Live meetings attended in sync are a luxury. Don't waste them.

If you're interested, I'm happy to read this blog post to you if you want to meet me in room 6-A at 2 pm today.

[Here's the full post from 11 (!) years ago.]

 

            

Effort in the face of near-certain rejection

Every day, we shoot for unlikely outcomes. We send out our resume, pitch our book, ask for a donation, swipe right on a social network...

There are two ways you can go:

ONE: Realize that the odds are against you, and go for volume. This means that you should spray and pray, putting as little effort into each interaction as possible, giving you the resources to have as many interactions as you can. This is hiring a virtual assistant to spam your contacts, or sending out 200 resumes, or pounding your email list again and again for orders. This is your reaction to an unfair world, in which you deal with the noise by making more noise.

TWO: Invest far more in each interaction than any rational human would advise. Do your homework. Invest more time in creating your offer than you expect the recipient will spend in replying to it. Don't personalize, be personal. Create an imbalance of effort and care. Show up. Don't spam, in any form.

The thing is, people can tell. And they're significantly more likely to give you an interview, make a donation, answer your question or do that other thing you're hoping for if you've signalled that you're actually a caring, focused, generous human.

 

[PS Today's the last day to sign up for The Marketing Seminar. More than a hundred days of peer-to-peer interaction designed to help you spread your ideas and make an impact.]

            

We can do better than meeting spec

Well, that's over. Google AI now sounds indistinguishable from a human. And it'll only get more nuanced and more flexible.

It can read aloud better than you can.

Which means that anything that's ever been written can be perfectly read to you. Which means that anything a computer figures out or computes can be delivered to you with audio quality that meets spec.

That's what AI keeps doing... things we said were impossible.

Most of us shrugged when computers could drill holes or assemble machines with more accuracy and speed than a person can.

And we avoided the topic when we discovered that computers could read x-rays with great skill as well.

But now, it ought to make you shudder to discover that something as basic as speech is now better than the typical human's. Any speed, fully customized, in clear tones with great pronunciation.

Once it's done a little, it will quickly become commonplace.

And as we all know, when you do something that's commonplace, it's not worth that much.

The goal can't be quality, not for people anyway. It needs to be humanity. The rough edges of caring, of improv and of connection.

If all you can do is meet spec, better be sure you can do that faster and cheaper than an AI can. 

 

Here's this week's episode of Akimbo, my new podcast. Coincidentally, about quality. And rough edges.

            

Which is worse...

Failure or fear of failure?

Fear or fear of fear?

Trying and failing or not trying at all?

Speaking up and not being heard, or suffering in silence?

Caring and losing, or not caring at all?

Doing or wondering?

            

Whose meeting is this? A simple checklist

Can your next meeting (not conversation, not presentation, but meeting) pass this test?

There's one person responsible.

The time allocated matches what's needed, not what the calendar app says.

Everyone invited is someone who needs to be there, and no key party is missing.

There's a default step forward if someone doesn't come.

There's no better way to move this forward than to have this meeting.

The desired outcome is clearly stated. The organizer has described what would have to happen for the meeting to be cancelled or to stop midway. "This is what I want to happen," and if there's a "yes," we're done.

All relevant information, including analysis, is available to all in plenty of time to be reviewed in advance.

If you score a seven, count me in.

 

[Join us for a Facebook Live at 3 pm today. We'll be discussing mindfulness and making an impact with the remarkable Susan Piver. Also! Application deadline for the next altMBA is next week, April 9th.]

            

Happy Anniversary

Today's the seventeenth anniversary of the founding of Acumen, a groundbreaking non-profit that's changing the world sees poverty (they've already made a difference to 100,000,000 of the poorest people on Earth.). In addition to a great idea and passionate leadership, the secret is obvious--showing up.

Showing up day after day after day.

Today's the first anniversary of Sam joining our team at the altMBA. Sam's secret: Her consistent contribution, showing up day after day after day.

And today, give or take, is the sixteenth anniversary of this blog. Not quite on April Fool's Day a bunch of years ago, but close enough. I feel badly that so many people were fooled by this morning's post, and I'm grateful to those that wrote in with concern. But no, I was making a point, not telling the truth. It turns out that showing up is a great way to find new ideas, and I have no plans on stopping.

It's easy to come to the conclusion that someone's generous or inspired and so they do the work. But it's more likely that doing the work makes you generous or inspired.

Go make your ruckus. See you tomorrow.

            

I used them all up (a warning to creatives)

When I was 12, I brought 100 comic books with me to summer camp. That's a lot of comic books, an essentially infinite number.

So, if someone wanted to borrow one, I said, "sure."

Within a week, they were all gone. I was comicless for the rest of the summer.

Well, I didn't think it would happen, in fact, I said it would never happen, but now, in April 2018, after so many blog posts, after 18 books, dozens of projects and a bunch of ebooks and videos and podcasts, I'm now completely out of ideas. Big ideas, small ideas, any ideas. All gone. Used up.

I have none left.

I always believed that creativity was generative, that one led to two, that holding back was selfish and foolish. More connection begets more value begets more creation. A virtuous cycle for the ages.

And yet, here I am, sixteen Aprils in a row on this blog so far, and now, finally, zilch. Empty. Nothing even close to a new idea, a generous insight or a whisper of novelty. Nothing to say that might prompt you to do more important work. I don't even know what to make for dinner tonight.

So, be warned.

Apparently, all each of us get is seven or eight thousand ideas. I wish I'd known in advance, perhaps I would have been more circumspect with them. Hoarded them. Watched them more carefully.

There you go. Better be careful not to waste yours.

 

 

[PS for those of you not looking at the calendar... happy april]

            

What is and what might be

They have much less in common than you might expect.

The key step in creating a better future is insisting that it not be based on the assumptions, grievances and dead ends of the past.

The future won't be perfect. We won't be perfect. But we can be kind. We can listen. We can give opportunity the benefit of the doubt.

The future won't always work. We won't always succeed. But we can be alert and seek out the possible instead of the predicted.

The future won't always be fair. But we can try. We can care. We can choose to connect.

It can be better if we let it.

 

[Have you read about The Marketing Seminar? This is our last session before the fall.]

            

The Podcast Fellowship (a summer program)

[If you know a full-time student in need of a worthy summer project, please share with them...]

Summer internships are a problem. Too often, you're working for free, doing very little of value and learning less. Two out of three might be okay, but that's a lousy combination.

Too often, careers are shaped based on too little input from a busy office. And far too often, privilege and existing relationships play a role in who gets to do something productive.

In real life, after college, you're less likely than ever to have a real job in a real office. You're also hoping to be doing a job you actually like, where people aren't telling you what to do all day. Why train for the worst outcome all summer in a dead-end internship?

Alex DiPalma and I are pleased to invite you to consider an experiment, open to a hand-picked group of students this summer. A virtual program, available wherever there's a laptop and an internet connection. Alex is a successful podcast producer, who has worked on Akimbo, with Minnesota Public Radio, with Cal Fussman, with Food4Thot, among other shows. She knows what's up.

The idea: You should build a podcast. A thirty-episode series, a podcast that captures insights and experiences in an area you care about.

Are you hoping for a career in urban planning? Make your podcast about that. Over the course of the thirty episodes, you can interview leaders in your field. You can capture your thoughts on the big (and small) issues of the day. You can lead and you can teach. And no one can stop you.

It doesn't matter how many people listen to it. It doesn't matter that it doesn't have a sponsor. It matters that you made it.

By the end of the summer, you'll have published your work to anyone who cares to subscribe. You'll have developed assertions, made connections and most of all, shared with generosity. You won't be a technical wizard, you'll have something better than that--the confidence that comes from having built and shipped generous work.

The program itself works like this: We'll accept applications until April 10th, 2018 at 5 pm. Alex will go through the applications and invite a cohort to join the program. It will run every weekday from June 28 to August 15th, using an online community platform we're customizing just for you. You can live anywhere in the world. You can already have a summer gig. All you need is the desire and a commitment to put in the time.

[We're accepting applications from non-students, but students get priority.]

Throughout the program, we'll be teaching you useful techniques, challenging you to invent new ones, and most of all, connecting you with other students who are going where you're going. This online mastermind group will take a real commitment, a few hours a day at minimum. But if you put in the time, you'll earn the body of work you'll end up creating.

The program costs $10 a day, because we want people to have skin in the game. Financial aid is available. The application is here, and we hope you'll consider it.