Seth Godin's Blog, page 69

Beware of false averages

Some people like really spicy food. Some people like bland food. Building a restaurant around sorta spicy food doesn't make either group happy.

It's tempting to look at pop music, network TV and the latest hot fashion and come to the conclusion that the recipe for success is to focus group everyone, average it up and make something that pleases the big hump in the middle, while not offending most of the outliers.

But few things are up for a majority-rule vote. Instead, the tail keeps getting longer, and choice begets more choice. As a result, people don't need to abandon their hump to head to the non-existent middle.

Yes, there are true averages (like how high to mount a doorknob). But more often than not, trying to please everyone a little is a great way to please most people not at all.

[image error]

            

Selfish marketing doesn't last

If it helps you, not the customer, why should she care?

Sometimes there's an overlap between your selfish needs and hers, but you can save everyone a lot of time and hassle if you begin and end with a focus on being of service.

In the long run, your selfishness will catch up with you. Day by day, the long run keeps getting shorter.

            

Fitting in all the way

It seems like a fine way to earn trust. Merely fit in. In every way. Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself, to be left out, to challenge the status quo. Go along with the crowd to get ahead.

That doesn't build trust. It simply makes you easy to overlook.

We build trust when we make promises and then keep them.

And the majority recoils from the challenge of making a promise, because that requires caring and risk and the willingness to make change happen.

You can't fit all the way in, but you can definitely choose to stand out.

            

Appropriate collusion (organizing the weaker side)

Businesses with power are prohibited from colluding with one another to set prices or other policies. For good reason. Public officials and economists realize that it’s quite tempting for an oligopoly to work to artificially create scarcity or cooperate--it creates significant short term profits and hurts those without the power to do something about it.

(but that doesn’t mean that organizations don’t continually try anyway).

Organizations with power now use data mining and software licenses to gain ever more one-sided relationships with those they used to serve. They trade data about your credit and your surfing habits, among a thousand other things.

But what about the opposite? What about the power shift that could result from the disconnected masses working together to push organizations to make change or to limit their upsides? By banding together and coordinating information, they can prevent asymmetrical information and leverage from causing as much harm. What would happen if 10,000 Wells Fargo customers had found each other years ago?

Years ago, twenty of AOL’s largest content providers got together (I think it was in a hot tub) at an event AOL was running. We exchanged information about our contracts, our advances and our royalty rates. As a result of the shared information, everyone who participated got a better deal the next time around. Coordination led to a shift in market power.

Kickstarter gives a small hint of this. A creator says to disconnected people--if enough of you get together and indicate an interest, we’ll do this thing. This is also in the spirit of Fred Wilson's Union 2.0. Organization creates market power.

But the internet can let us take this much further. It can create enforceable group dynamics and help people find one another. And once found, they can insist on policies and offerings that the powerful organization would never have proposed. And it turns out that this more equal engagement can help both sides in the long run.

This is particularly effective in high-value business to business settings, where a company might sell a very expensive service to 20 or 30 companies. Knowledge about the best deal and coordination of desired features can make a huge difference for all concerned. That's why computer user groups were so important back in the day.

What would happen if the 1,000 top high school football prospects all agreed not to play a few games unless colleges paid them for engaging in the health-endangering sport that makes these non-profits so much money they can afford to pay their coaches millions of dollars?

What would happen if the fifty cities in the running for Amazon’s second HQ established a binding agreement on what they wouldn’t do with taxpayer money? By creating a mutually shared line in the sand, they’ve ensured that the flow of capital won’t bankrupt any of them. The auction will still happen, but not in a destructive way.

They could make a similar deal about future sports stadiums or Olympic bids, a sucker bet in which the winner almost always loses.

Creating “I will if you will” contingent agreements is significantly easier once we use the blockchain and the real-time coordinating power of the net. A conceptual example (hard to do with four weeks notice, though): The fifty cities agree that if all fifty cities agree, any tax break from a city or state to Amazon must be matched by that city or state with a 5x amount invested in their public schools. If the mutual agreement doesn’t reach the critical number, no deal happens. If it does, then every mayor and every governor has a great reason to use other less costly incentives to win the ‘auction’ without violating the mutual agreement (or invest in schools, which is okay too).

The alternative is that we’ll continue to see large, powerful corporations and institutions peel away individual players (people or cities), one by one, without the famed free market there to ensure equity. You probably have more in common with your neighbors than you think. If only you could coordinate the discussion...

            

Impossible, unlikely or difficult?

Difficult tasks have a road map. With effort, we can get from here to there. It might surprise you to realize that difficult is easy once you have the resources and commitment. Paving a road is difficult, so is customer service and fixing software bugs.

But impossible and unlikely are where we get hung up.

On Tuesday, Apple launched a thousand dollar phone. The engineers and designers had unlimited time (ten years since the first one), unlimited resources, unlimited market power. It's possible that there hasn't been that much unlimited in one place in our entire lives. And, yet, all they could build was an animated emoji machine. A slightly better phone. A series of difficult tasks, mostly achieved.

It's not that another breakthrough is impossible. It's not that we've explored all the edges of human connectivity, of alternative currencies, of education, of personal transformation or generosity. It's not that we've already performed all the leaps in safety, in technology, in identity. Or even productivity. Of course not. It's not impossible to leap again with the magic computer we all have in our pocket.

What tripped up Apple, as it trips up many successful organizations or careers, is that the next leap isn't impossible... it's merely unlikely. It was unlikely that the original iPhone would have actually been transformative, but Steve took a huge leap and got lucky on the other side. It could easily have gone sideways. He tried for something that was unlikely to work, but it did.

That same sort of leap, the one into the unlikely, is available to all of us, at different scales. It's unlikely that our next brave novel, our next breakthrough speech, our next scary but generous project will succeed. Unlikely but worth it.

Unlikely never feels quite the same as difficult, and sometimes it appears impossible. It's neither. It's something risky, and something without a map or a guarantee. We hesitate to do it precisely because it might not work, precisely because it's more than difficult.

Working on an unlikely project takes guts and hubris. It requires us to have the insight to distinguish it from the impossible, and the desire to not merely do the difficult.

What percentage of your time are you spending on the unlikely?

            

Building on maximized systems

If you eat beef, you're probably using a maximized system. It's a commodity, and every part of the chain is under huge pressure to increase yield and cut corners. The animals are pushed to the brink, and so are the humans that work on them.

And if you keep your money in the bank, it's likely that the same thing is happening. Every investment is chosen for maximum short term benefit, because that's the only way for the bank to beat the other banks.

A race to the bottom.

The challenge gets worse when a maximized system is pushed just a little further. "Maximized" means that more demands and more inputs lead to degradation, lower output and eventual system failure.

{previously}

            

Optimized or maximized?

I once drove home from college at 100 miles an hour. It saved two hours. My old car barely made it, and I was hardly able to speak once I peeled myself out of the car.

That was maximum speed, but it wasn't optimum.

Systems have an optimum level of performance. It's the output that permits the elements (including the humans) to do their best work, to persist at it, to avoid disasters, bad decisions and burnout. 

One definition of maximization is: A short-term output level of high stress, where parts degrade but short-term performance is high.

Capitalism sometimes seeks competitive maximization instead. Who cares if you burn out, I'll just replace the part...

That's not a good way to treat people we care about, or systems that we rely on.

As a valuable contributor seeking to build a career, you benefit when you develop a unique asset, because that asset gives you the leverage to choose a niche in a system that respects optimization instead. 

PS today's the last best day to sign up for the year's last session of The Marketing Seminar. We start the lessons today, Tuesday. If you've been considering it and wondering if it's for you or not, I'm hoping you'll take two minutes to read a few of the more than fifty reviews that people have contributed... 

            

Toward cooperation

It's tempting to be oppositional. To see the different as the other. To dominate, to win, to move up as others move down (because in the zero sum game that we've built around us, that's the only way).

But a networked world, one based on connection—one held together by the sheerest gossamer—can't tolerate the tension and pain that bullying and dominance require.

An alternative is with-ness.

The practice of talking so we can be heard, and listening so we can understand.

We're weaving something every single day, but entropy and fear leads to a raveling that can undo all of it.

            

The musclebound baby

That's pretty unlikely.

When we see someone with well developed abs, we don't say, "oh sure, he was born that way." Instead, we realize that a lot of effort went into it.

The same thing ought to be true for people who understand science, or make good decisions, or are capable of emotional labor. You don't get to let yourself off the hook by pointing out that it doesn't come easy to you. That's beside the point.

We're all capable of huge leaps of insight and empathy if we're willing to go to work to learn how.

            

The power of community learning

It's easy to imagine that some things have to be the way they've always been. That music has to be delivered on a round platter. That an overnight stay needs to be in a hotel. And that learning is solely the result of top-down lectures plus tests for compliance.

The internet is a transformational technology, not merely a faster way to send an email. People all over the world are learning more deeply, transforming their expectations and changing their role and their contribution. It's time for your voice to be heard.

One of the surprising benefits of combining video with peer-to-peer learning is that you get to talk about your work, explore your specifics and work with others in discovering what can work for you, not just learn in the abstract. This is something we can deliver in a format that's almost impossible in a book or lecture alone.

The impact that the Marketing Seminar has had on the thousands of people who have enrolled is just stunning. It's a transformative three month experience that helps people see things differently and gives them the support and momentum to go make their ruckus.

Here's a note, unedited, from a recent graduate of The Marketing Seminar.

100 days is a long time.

Many have shared their challenges and victories and tagged fellow and sister students who illuminated our path.

Many more are still on the journey. They’re overcoming setbacks, distractions and competing priorities.

It’s now Day 107. In the past week, I’ve shifted gears from intense learning to intense doing. I’ve shipped more in the past week than I’d shipped in the previous several months. They weren’t all products going out the door. Some were decisions and turning points that clarified where Web Story Builder is headed and why. It’s saying “no” at a key moment when four months ago I would have said “yes,” believing that I could be everything to everyone.

It’s tempting to start tagging people that made an impact on me. I’m not doing that because it’s easy to tag those who have commented or posted the most. That would leave out an important group: Those who don’t talk as much. Those who read and liked. Or just read. All of them, every single one of you, made an impact on me.

The Discourse stats say that I have visited 98 days with a cumulative viewing time of four days, posted 58 topics and 392 replies (and counting), and clicked the “like” button almost 800 times. And there are currently 210 topics that I haven’t read and oodles more that need replies. A single comment can change my world. Or yours.

So it turns out that 100 days is just enough to create new habits and cement new ways of thinking. The world is different now. We are different.

... Godspeed!

Thanks for listening,

Anne