Seth Godin's Blog, page 61

Reading at work

Most organizations think nothing of having twenty valuable employees spend an hour in a meeting that's only tangentially related to their productive output.

But if you're sitting at your desk reading a book that changes your perspective, your productivity or your contribution, it somehow feels like slacking off...

What would happen if the next all hands meeting got cancelled and instead the organization had an all hands-on read instead?

Of course, I'm biased. I think if you read Your Turn or The Dip, your work would change for the better. But I'm fine if you read any of 100 or 1,000 other books about work, the market, contributions, marketing or anything else that will help you leap.

Here are more than twenty books you might want to read at work today. You and ten co-workers reading together... it might change everything:

Four Steps to the Epiphany

Body of Work

The True Believer

Secrets of Closing the Sale

The Art of Possibility

On Self Reliance 

The Coaching Habit

Software Project Survival Guide

The Mythical Man Month

Creating Customer Evangelists

The Tom Peters Seminar

Tribe of Mentors

A Beautiful Constraint

The Mesh

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

Impro

To Sell is Human

The Art of Work

Do the Work

Hunch

Whiplash

Start with Why

Resonate

Web Analytics 2.0 

            

How does the ball know?

"Follow through."

That's the advice you'll hear in golf, in tennis and in baseball. That your follow through changes everything.

But how can it? After all, the ball is long gone by the time you're done with your swing.

Here's the thing: In order to not follow through, you need to start slowing down before you're done hitting the ball. The follow through isn't the goal, it's the symptom that you did something right.

And of course, the same thing is true of that conference you run, or the customer service you provide, or the way you engage with a class or a job... if you begin slowing down before the last moment, the last moment is going to suffer.

            

Your soft skills inventory

The annual review is a waste. It's not particularly useful for employee or boss, it's stressful and it doesn't happen often enough to make much of an impact.

If you choose to, though, you can do your own review. Weekly or monthly, you can sit down with yourself (or, more powerfully, with a small circle of peers) and review how you're shifting your posture to make more of an impact.

Some of the things to ask:

What am I better at?

Have I asked a difficult question lately?

Do people trust me more than they did?

Am I hiding more (or less) than I did the last time I checked?

Is my list of insightful, useful and frightening stats about my work, my budgets and my challenges complete? And have I shared it with someone I trust?

If selling ideas is a skill, am I more skilled at it than I was?

Who have I developed?

Have I had any significant failures (learning opportunities) lately, and what have I learned?

What predictions have I made that have come to pass? Am I better at seeing what's going to happen next?

Who have I helped? Especially when there was no upside for me...

Am I more likely to be leading or following?

            

The most important journeys come without a map

That's why we need to care enough to make assertions.

We're taught to follow instructions, to avoid significant risk and to be good at compliance. The system prefers it that way, at least when things aren't in flux. But we can learn to make assertions instead.

Every once in awhile, we see a change in the world and have the chance to speak up, to lay out a plan, to make an argument about how to proceed. We have a chance to lead.

And so we built the altMBA. To help people practice the skill of making assertions. 

An assertion begins with your take on the world, but it also requires action. It has to be open to debate. An informed team member should be able to disagree with you, and your engagement with them can make your assertion even more insightful and powerful.

But it's not easy.

If you make an assertion, you might be wrong.

And if you make an assertion, someone might ask you to dig deeper, or to run with it and lead.

And if you take action, you might not succeed.

And failure is no fun.

But assertions are the real work. To take a stand and make a principled argument. Not merely a matter of opinion, but your take on where to drive, even when you don’t have a map handy.

Every session of the altMBA has been fully subscribed. It's an intensive workshop, a peer-driven opportunity to see differently, choose differently and learn to do work that truly matters.

The next available session is this spring, and we're accepting applications now. Please don't wait too long--if you apply this week, we'll let you know soon and you can plan around it. This is the best time to plan for the next time.

PS I'm doing a Facebook Live at 11 am today (NY time). We'll be talking about assertions and I'll be taking your questions.

            

How much does it cost?

It depends.

Before we can even begin to discuss the price (how much to charge), it's important to understand what something costs to make. And the answer isn't always obvious.

If you want to know how much it costs to make the first one, to scale the operation up, to get the machinery, the systems, the staff... it might be a million dollars for a piece of toast or a billiard ball. Perhaps ten million.

Or the question might be: How much does the last one off the assembly line cost? After the entire system is up and running, after everyone's been paid by everything else that was produced today—the last unit the shift produced, what's the marginal cost of that one? In the case of our mythical billiard ball, it might be just a nickel.

But maybe we're talking about this particular unit, the one that was hand sold, that was customized, that was delivered to precisely the right spot at precisely the right time—all of that just in time customization and risk reduction cost a fortune.

And what about the externalities? What does it cost the environment, the community, the team?

Finally, perhaps we ought to consider the opportunity cost. How much better would it have been for us to spend our time and our capital and our risk to do something else, something more useful or profitable?

In the long run, all we need to do is divide our total costs by the total number of units we made. But in the long run, we're all dead. In the short run, the cost depends on what sort of decision we're trying to make.

            

Two kinds of practice

The first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and your process to get yourself ever more skilled at doing it (whatever 'it' is) to spec. This is the practice of grand slalom, of arithmetic, of learning your lines or c++.

The other kind of practice is more valuable but far more rare. This is the practice of failure. Of trying on one point of view after another until you find one that works. Of creating original work that doesn't succeed until it does. Of writing, oration and higher-level math in search of an elusive outcome, even a truth, one that might not even be there.

We become original through practice.

We've seduced ourselves into believing that this sort of breakthrough springs fully formed, as Athena did from Zeus' head. Alas, that's a myth. What always happens (as you can discover by looking at the early work of anyone you admire), is that she practiced her way into it.

            

The unfair advantage

Here's a sign I've never seen hanging in a corporate office, a mechanic's garage or a politician's headquarters:

WE HAVE AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE:

We care more.

It's easy to promise and difficult to do. But if you did it, it would work. More than any other skill or attitude, this is what keeps me (and people like me) coming back.

            

Better than who you know

The old-boy's network is powerful indeed, an unfair impediment to those that would seek to make a contribution, but it can be defeated with a combination of:

Skill (the result of practice and effort)

Technique (developing a point of view)

Extraordinary effort

Charisma (the confidence to care about connecting with others)

Passion

Generosity

Experience

Risk-taking (and not being confused by false fear appearing real)

Persistence

Consistency and keeping promises

Honest storytelling

It would be fair, efficient and honest if everyone had an easy introduction and got the benefit of the doubt. Until that happens, though, outsiders of all kinds will have to rely on all of these skills instead.

            

Do they celebrate on Saturn?

A hundred years ago, "everyone" wore a hat. If everyone meant men of a certain social stratum in certain cities. And people wore the hat because everyone else did.

And everyone is taking the day off and everyone is watching the big game and everyone is busy checking their status on Facebook.

Except...

Except that in other time zones or other communities, everyone isn't doing anything of the sort. And on Saturn, they've never even heard of it.

Peer pressure is a little like barometric pressure. It's constant, it's all around us and we assume that it's universal.

If it's not helping you achieve your goals, ignore it.

            

Getting clear about risk

There are potential horrible things in the future, perhaps your future or mine.

Unthinkable illnesses, weird accidents, lightning bolts of misfortune at random moments.

If you decide to focus on them, you can fill your days with despair.

On the other hand, pretending that it's not stupid to text while driving, to swim during a thunderstorm or to ride a bike without a helmet is dangerous indeed. Our awareness of potential bad outcomes can cause us to make really good choices to avoid those outcomes.

So, what's the difference between being concerned about an asteroid hitting the Earth and being aware of how dangerous driving a Corvair at high speed is?

Here's the simple approach: How much would it cost you (in time, money, effort, distraction) to make yourself ten times less likely to be at risk?

It turns out that wearing a helmet is a cheap way to avoid a lifetime spine injury. You get a 10x improvement for very little effort. Knowing about the risk is really helpful, and any time you're tempted to run the risk, remind yourself of its implications.

On the other hand, the only way to becoming one-tenth as likely to die from choking on food is to stop eating anything but soup. Hardly worth it. 

If there isn't a way to improve your odds, it's not clear why it's worth a lot of time or worry.

Worry is useful when it changes our behavior in productive ways. The rest of the time, it's a negative form of distraction, an entertainment designed to keep us from doing our work and living our lives.