This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

by Seth Godin

177. What Does the System Respond To? Systems are all different, but they often behave in similar ways. If we know what people are looking for, it’s easier to find it. Here are a few, many of which are rooted in Western commercial culture. • Reassurance: This is the dominant one. The system wants what the system wants. And one thing it wants is to persist. If there’s a way to spend time and money to ensure that everything will remain okay, to avoid the current emergency, that action relieves tension. • Faster: The race for productivity continues unabated, and faster-moving ideas, devices, and processes often gain traction, usually by people who like moving faster, which means the adoption is faster as well. • More connected: Since 1850, we’ve been wiring the world into a network. Systems are the original networks, and with increasing rapidity, systems are adopting approaches that further enmesh the nodes. • More convenient: Tim Wu has pointed out that the wealthy consumer will trade almost anything for convenience. Dishwashers and one-click shopping are all part of the same spectrum. • Cheaper: If all other things are equal (though they rarely are), people pick the cheap one. • More remarkable: In a market filled with choices, few things are talked about. But remarkable items, by definition, are. • More status: This is a form of reassurance. The system wants insiders and outsiders to profess respect and root for it to succeed.