The law is simple to describe, fair and useful: It should be as easy to unsubscribe from an online service as it is to sign up.
Other than powerful brand bullies, who is against this?
It took me five minutes to sign up for a data connection for my car a few years ago. Yesterday, after selling the car, it took me more than three hours to get AT&T to stop charging me for the service. Went to the store, they won’t do it. Went to their website, they won’t do it. Went to online chat, half an hour later, discovered they won’t do it (I have the transcript if Kellyn Smith Kenny wants to see it). I called, waited on hold for half an hour, was disconnected, you get the idea…)
Yes, this is bad marketing by AT&T. It’s unlikely that making it inconvenient to turn off service for a car you no longer own is going to dissuade someone from doing it. It hurts their brand, demotivates the employees and destroys loyalty. It’s short term-thinking by a lazy brand manager.
But they do it anyway.
When organizations get too big and too short-term focused to pay attention to the market, it’s a perfect moment for consumers to band together and give them a guardrail.
If I can sign up with a few clicks, I should be able to unsign up with a few clicks.
If you apply for something with a 99% rejection rate (which is more common than it sounds–job openings, sales pitches, fellowships, journals, etc.) that’s pretty close to 100%. Something with a 99% certainty is generally considered a sure thing.
Hence this Journal, which promises to reject every single person who submits an article.
The absurdity of it is the point. Submitting to them feels effortless and without a lot of drama, because you know you’re going to get rejected. So instead of becoming attached to the outcome, you can simply focus on the work.
That’s a useful approach to the rest of the things we apply to.
The simplest way to run a business is to have no also.
We maximize profit, period.
At least you’re being honest about it.
If you say, “and we also care about the environment,” or “we also care about our people and treat them like family,” or even, “we’re here to serve our customers…” now you’re doing one of two things:
Either you’re asserting that doing those things is the way to maximize your profit…
Or you’re committing to not maximizing your profit, as your purpose is more human and connected than something that simple.
If it’s the latter, if you’ve decided that making just enough profit to maximize your real goal is the purpose of the organization, what an extraordinary opportunity. Organizations of humans with a clear measured goal and just enough profit to get there can make a huge impact.
But it’s worth being honest about whether you’re running that full-page ad with a koala in it because you’re here to help the koala or simply because you see it as a stepping stone to making more money.
Starting at the top seems like great advice. Deal with the people with power and authority.
Except…
Power and authority aren’t often in the same place.
The real power is usually foundational. What happens when humans interact. The way things are around here. Often, the people who are ostensibly in charge are simply choosing from a few culturally acceptable choices, and those choices are dictated by the foundation.
It might seem like a detour, but it’s actually the cause of change.
Who benefits when we hesitate to look at money clearly?
When we avoid doing a P&L, thinking about pricing, or creating a budget, we’re avoiding the fear that comes with these choices. And we’re also decreasing our odds of success.
Good cooks talk about salt. Successful athletes talk about training.
Money isn’t the point. But talking about money enables you to find your footing and clarify your direction.
[Semi-unrelated, all tangentially about talking about money, a handful of new books from friends and colleagues I’m happy to recommend.]
Adding another feature is cheap compared to the benefits it offers to new users or existing ones.
Once a feature is added, it is almost never removed.
When enough features are added, the system breaks down and fails.
This isn’t just software. It’s the menu at the diner. It’s the buttons on the dashboard of a car. It’s the variety of choices parents are offered of which dates summer camp starts or ends. Anything where a lot of hard work can be slightly improved simply by adding an innocuous option.
At one point, Yahoo had 183 links on their home page. Google, which had two, ultimately grabbed all of their search traffic. The app on my phone can now open the trunk of my car if I press enough buttons.
Features are useful (that’s why we call them features). And yes, serving the underserved and the unseen is important. But creep cannot continue forever. At some point, there’s system bankruptcy and the cycle begins again.
While we might not easily say no to a new feature, we can be smart and proactive when it comes time to clear the slate and start over.
We evolved to care about things that were close by or in the near future.
That makes sense. It’s a useful survival skill in a primitive world.
Today, though, our instinct for the close and the imminent is being used against us. Media and those in search of our money or attention bring the far nearby, amplify the reality of threats and emphasize sunk costs in pushing us to stay stuck.
We need to get much better at investing in the future, and being distracted by loud, sudden noises isn’t helpful.
You probably know that Bruce Wayne is actually Batman. That’s a secret identity that most of us are aware of.
And if you’re up on pop culture, you know that the best Batman was played by the late actor Adam West.
Visit the visual search engine Lexica, though, and you’ll see that it knows that Adam West was Batman. A search for “Adam West” (with no mention of roles, DC comics or secret identities), shows us this:
It’s important to note that none of these are pictures of Adam West, in or out of costume. It simply “knows” that Adam West is Bruce Wayne is Batman, and shows us some reconstructed images of Batman from the 1960s. It also knows that we might be looking for Batman, even though it’s a secret. The new algorithm it’s using is more than twice as good at figuring out what a picture is a picture of.
When a human does something mysterious like this sort of leap, we simply call them smart. It’s a simple way to describe something we don’t understand. Complexity and breadth mixing in mysterious ways.
And now computers are doing it all the time. (Except when they don’t–lots of the searches are not quite ready for the public.)
PS check out this story about West and the phone book.
September 10, 2022
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