Any sufficiently overheated industry will eventually resemble high school. High school is filled with insecurity, social climbing, backbiting, false friends, faux achievements, high drama and not much content. Much of this insecurity comes from a market that doesn't make good judgments, that doesn't understand how to reliably choose between alternatives. So it turns into a popularity contest.
As Tom Hanks reportedly said, "Hollywood is like high school, but with money."
Or the fashion magazine industry, which is high school but with more makeup.
Add to that the Internet, which is like high school but with a modem.
Or Twitter, which is high school but only 140 characters at a time.
As in high school, the winners are the ones who don't take it too seriously and understand what they're trying to accomplish. Get stuck in the never ending drama (worrying about what irrelevant people think) and you'll never get anything done. The only thing worse than coming in second place in the race for student council president is… winning.
Not only the networks of all political persuasions that come to mind, but the mindset they represent…
When I was growing up, Eyewitness News always found a house on fire in South Buffalo. "Tonight's top story," Irv Weinstein would intone, "…a fire in South Buffalo." Every single night. If you watched the news from out of town, you were sure that the city must have completely burned to the ground.
Cable news thinking has nothing to do with fires or with politics. Instead, it amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction:
Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.
Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.
Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
Confusing opinion with the truth.
Revising facts to fit a point of view.
Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.
If I wanted to hobble an organization or even a country, I'd wish these twelve traits on them. I wonder if this sounds like the last board meeting you went to…
No successful web company (not eBay, Flickr, Amazon, Facebook…) succeeds because of a significant technological barrier to entry. It's not insanely difficult to copy what they've done. Yet they win and the copycats don't.
Few organizations succeed in the long run because of proprietary technology. Not Starbucks or CAA or Nike, certainly. Not Caterpillar or Reuters either.
Technologists often tell me, "this product is very hard to build, that will insulate us from competition and protect our pricing." It might. For a while. But once you're successful, the competition will figure out a way. They always do.
So, what to do?
You can own something that's hard to copy (like real estate).
You can race down the pricing and scale curve, so it's cheaper for you to do what you do because you have a head start.
You can create switching costs, so that the hassle and cost of moving to a cheaper competitor is so great, it's just not worth it.
You can build a network (which can take many forms–natural monopolies are organizations where the market is better off when there's only one of you).
You can build a brand (shorthand for relationships, beliefs, trust, permission and word of mouth).
You can create a constantly innovating organization where extraordinary employees thrive.
The reason the internet is such a home to wow business models is that it's easier to create a network here than any other time in history.
It doesn't have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
In fact, make several. Make more decisions could be your three word mantra.
No decision is a decision as well, the decision not to decide. Not deciding is usually the wrong decision. If you are the go-to person, the one who can decide, you'll make more of a difference. It doesn't matter so much that you're right, it matters that you decided.
Of course it's risky and painful. That's why it's a rare and valuable skill.
I haven't done a public seminar in six months or so. It's clearly time.
All the details are here. There is one in New York City on November 19th and for the first time, a small roundtable session in my office on November 13th. The small session is by application only.
If you're interested in either one, I hope you'll sign up soon, because they sell out quickly.
There are people who I will never encounter in a restaurant.
That's because when these people go out for dinner, they go to chain restaurants. These are the tourists in New York who seek out the familiar Olive Garden instead of walking down the street to Pure.
That's fine. It's a personal choice.
But it got me thinking about the difference between apparent and actual risk, and how that choice affects just about everything we do.
The concierge at a fancy hotel spends her time helping tourists and business travelers avoid apparent risk. She'll book the boring, defensible, consistent tour, not the crazy guy who's actually a trained architect and a dissident. She'll recommend the restaurant from Zagats, not from Chowhound.
Apparent risk is what keeps someone working at a big company, even if it's doing layoffs. It feels safer to stay there than to do the (apparently) insanely risky thing and start a new venture.
Apparent risk is what gets someone who is afraid of plane crashes to drive, even though driving is more dangerous.
Apparent risk is avoiding the chance that people will laugh at you and instead backing yourself into the very real possibility that you're going to become obsolete or irrelevant.
When things get interesting is when the apparently risky is demonstrably [less safe] than the actually risky. That's when we sometimes become uncomfortable enough with our reliance on the apparent to focus on the actual. Think about that the next time they make you take off your shoes at the airport.
A big car on a wet frozen lake goes nowhere. No traction, no motion.
A small bug working its way across a gravel driveway takes forever. Too much friction, too little motion.
If you're stuck, it's probably because one of these two challenges.
There's not enough traction online. Too many choices, too few boundaries. It's easy to get stuck because there's nothing to push off of, no box to think outside of.
There's too much friction in stuck industries. The walls have been expanded for so long, you just can't get over them.
The power of online platforms is that they create traction. No, you can't write more than 140 characters, no you can't design any layout you want, no you can't spam everyone with your inane sales pitch. You have something to leverage against, but it's that thing, the friction, that makes it work.
The best marketers I know make up rules for themselves and they don't break them. It's very easy to surrender to the moment and walk over to the next hill. It's more productive to climb this hill instead.
Tom's Shoes continues to make a difference, combining an innovative business model with brilliant storytelling.
Which leads to parodies, of course, which Tom's loves. Spread the word, share the story. If it's worth telling, it's worth parodying. When will we be able to parody what you do?
The last one is the real deal, of course. (PS here's the correct address if you're an ecommerce rockstar looking for a job at Tom's: ecommerce@tomsshoes.com).
You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:
Sales
Additive effort
Initiation
Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.
Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you've produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor's office–she's just filling a chair.
The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you're the person who can initiate useful action, if you're the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.
This is a question that defines the person asking it. It is very different from, "here's what you might need…"
If you ask people for the next task on the list, if you allow them to define the thing they are buying from you, you have abdicated responsibility. Your work product becomes dependent on the insight and guts of the person giving you an assignment. This is especially dangerous for consultants and freelancers, because the answer might be, "nothing." Or it might be a paying gig that's profitable in the short run but a career deadener over time.
Far better to reach a level of confidence and skill that you can describe solutions rather than ask for tasks.
October 8, 2009
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