Seth Godin's Blog, page 98

"I don't know the first thing about this issue"

Actually, you do.

It's likely that you don't know the last thing. But the first?

You know enough to know you don't know everything.

You know enough to know that there might be a pitfall or a trap ahead, and that you need to tread carefully.

You know enough to reach out and ask for help.

That's three things, things that others less thoughtful than you don't know.

So, give yourself some credit and begin.

            

You've reached the beginning

I was paging through a photo set that someone sent along and when I hit the left button one too many times, the screen popped up and said, "you've reached the beginning."

I guess that's right here.

And right now.

Always.

Sunk costs are real, but when making a new decision, they're immaterial. This is the beginning. Again.

            

It's never enough

It's not enough.

There are more people, better off, with more freedom, more agency and more power than at any other time in our history.

That's not enough.

As we use technology and culture to create more health, more access and more dignity for more people, we keep reminding ourselves how inadequate it is in the face of the injustice and pain that remains.

That's how we get better.

We must focus on the less fortunate and the oppressed not because the world isn't getting better but because it is.

It's our attention to those on the fringes that causes the world to get better.

            

Times 10

We're woefully unprepared to deal with orders of magnitude.

Ten times as many orders.

One-tenth the number of hospital visits.

Ten times the traffic.

One-tenth the revenue.

Ten times as fast.

Because dramatic shifts rarely happen, we bracket everything on the increment, preparing for just a relatively small change here or there. 

We think we're ready for a 1 inch rise in sea level, but ten inches is so foreign we work hard to not even consider it. 

Except that messages now travel 50 times faster than they used to, sent to us by 100 times as many people as we grew up expecting. Except that we're spending ten times as much time with a device, and one-tenth as much time reading a book. 

Here it comes. The future adds a zero.

            

The road to imperfection

If you need to be perfect, it's hard to press the 'ship it' button. Difficult to hire someone who makes things happen (because you'll be responsible for what happens). Frightening to put yourself into a position where you're expected to introduce new work.

The only way is forward. Forward moves us from what we have now (perfect, or at least we're no longer living in fear of what's not right) to a world filled with nothing but imperfect.

If you want motion, the only way is through. We get to the work we seek by passing through imperfection.

            

Omotenashi and the service split

It is possible to deliver amazing service without being servile.

Omotenashi is the Japanese word for treating people the way you'd want to be treated, for a posture of customer service that builds long-term trust and loyalty.

Why the split?

In a self-service world, the person who provides the service is us. We get what we want precisely because the system has been built to make us our own provider of service. This is why most people would rather order from a menu, pick our own travel itinerary or brush our own teeth.

When done right, self-service is a great option to offer customers. When done to merely cut costs, or when done with a poor understanding of the user, it's mostly annoying.

The alternative, then, is to provide actual customer delight via service. To bring Omotenashi to the table, to offer human service that's even better than the customer could provide for herself.

One way to think about this is to consider the airlines. In almost everything they do, the airline experience today is inferior to what it was on Pan Am in 1972. Every time the airline gets involved, their efforts to cut costs exceed their commitment to service.

On the other hand, in the ways that the airlines have given passengers control of their choices (seeing available flights, for example, or choosing their own onboard pasttime), satisfaction has had a chance to increase.

If you're going to do it for us, do it beautifully.

            

Tricked into playing the wrong game

The intelligent writer who dumbs down her work in order to make it more popular.

The successful small businessperson who gives up the edge that made the business work in order to make it bigger.

The entrepreneur who stops leading in order to chase a trend and get funded.

The interesting website that stops caring about content so it can focus on clicks.

The happy kid who abandons good friends in a search to be the cool kid instead.

The beloved brand that walks away from integrity in order to chase mass.

The engaged employee who gives up the craft in order to move up and become an unhappy manager instead...

Bigger isn't better. It's merely bigger. And the mass market might want what the mass market wants, but that doesn't mean that it's your market.

            

When your marketplace shifts

It might happen to you.

Many markets have a base (people seeking a solution), a middle (people seeking some originality, something new, something a little better) and a top (educated and passionate consumers willing to go extra miles to get something special).

Here's what happens (imagine travel agents, for example, or the farmers' markets in France):

A. a disruption happens to the marketplace, instantly sucking the base out of the market. When was the last time you called a travel agent? Or, in the case of France, the hypermarche destroyed the need to wait for the weekly market to get some eggs and some carrots.

B. without a base, merchants have to struggle to attract enough business to stick around and to invest in getting better. Many of these merchants either don't have the skills, the resources or the good taste to build a business without the base. They slowly, and painfully, disappear.

C. A few flee to the top. These are the folks with great heirloom tomatoes for sale, or the ones who specialize in high-end cruises or adventure travel. But it's tough going, because without the base and the middle, every sale is on a knife's edge, every customer realizes how much power she has.

The marketplace disruption puts huge pressure on any merchant who merely created a commodity. This means vineyards, graphic designers, photographers, etc.

When you see it coming, there are only two choices:

Run like hell to a new market, or,

Move up, faster and more boldly than anyone thinks is rational.

            

Two quality spirals worth avoiding

The downward quality spiral: You cut some corners, saving some time and some money.

For a little while, you can coast on that.

But then demand goes down, you can't get the same pricing, there's less money, which means you can't invest, which means quality goes down again, and again, and then you lose.

Or, consider the other direction:

You improve what you make, you invest the time and effort and resources and you make the best thing you can imagine.

The crowd goes wild, you get more invitations, more revenue, more opportunities.

And then you exceed expectations again.

It's great, until. Until you become paralyzed. Until you decide (mistakenly) that you are in the exceeding expectations business. That can't possibly scale forever. So you stop.

And then we all lose.

Seeing a spiral coming is the key step in avoiding it.

The productive professional realizes that keeping promises is often enough. Randomly exceeding those promises is magical. But the key is 'randomly'. Unexpected delight is priceless, and something you can deliver on.

We need you to keep showing up.

[Today, Monday, is the last day to order my titanic new collection, What Does It Sound Like When You Change Your Mind, if you want delivery before the holidays. You can find out more about it right here. I'm so pleased at how it all came together. (Canadians, alas, your copies are caught in Customs, but we're trying mightily.)

Here are some unboxing photos...

And Your Turn, my most recent full-length book can most probably get to you in time for gift giving as well. Thanks.]

            

Most vs. Enough

It's easy to be confused about the difference.

"Most" as in the best, the fastest, the cheapest.

"Enough" as in good enough. And that means just what it sounds like.

If you run an ambulance company, you need to be the fastest at response. (The "most quick"). Anything else is a reason for potential users to switch.

On the other hand, if you're delivering flowers, 'fast enough' is plenty fast.

Everyone competes on something. That thing you compete on is your most. The other things you do, those need to be enough.

The two mistakes organizations and freelancers make:

They try for 'most' at things where 'enough' is just fine, and they waste their effort.
They settle for 'enough' when the market is looking for the one with the 'most'.

The only way to maximize your most is to be really clear where your enough is.