When the stakes are high, when it has to be a HIT, in all capital letters, we overinvest.
The big stars. The lack of creative risk. The inflated budget and the meetings overrun with meddlers.
After all, it’s big.
Our insistence that it be guaranteed to work almost ensures that it won’t.
Forcing something to be big makes it small.
Even the longest biography is only 66 hours on audio. This means that the author has to leave out almost everything.
We write our own autobiography each day by deciding what to focus on, what to rehash, and what to worry about.
The same life story can be told in many ways, and the way we tell it changes who we are and who we become.
Who is editing your version?
Cars aren’t like companies. Most cars on the road will be sold, again and again, until they end up as parts. Companies usually start and end with their founders.
Sometimes, a small, stable company is sold to an individual operator, usually for a multiple of the expected annual profit. It’s an investment in future cash flows, but it can be fraught, because, unlike a car, you can’t take a company for a test drive, and they usually need more than a periodic tune-up and charging station visit.
The market for used companies isn’t as efficient or reliable as the one for used cars, as surprising as that might sound. The individual who seeks to buy and operate a used company is rare, and doesn’t often have access to significant capital.
The company sales we hear about tend to be more strategic, where the buyer believes that the purchased company offers synergy (1 + 1 = 3) with their existing businesses. Perhaps the buyer has a salesforce, investment capital, systems or structures that make the combination of the companies far more successful than they would be alone.
One way to look at this is the think of the assets you’ve built. They could include:
More elusive than some of these are things like:
Some of these things can be predicted and patiently built. Others are easy to see after the fact, but they’re more opportunistic than intentional.
Perhaps the single best indicator of whether a company will be considered for a strategic acquisition is that it has investors and board members who have done this before. Because these acquisitions are rarely simply rational calculations on a spreadsheet, there is often a need for cultural fit and a shared reality distortion field to create the conditions for them to get put on the agenda.
Someone said that to me the other day and it was heartbreaking.
The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed.
Just about everything else we need people to do is the result of effort, practice and care. It’s true that variations of that work are easier for some folks, but no one finds all of it easy going.
The correct thing to say is, “I don’t care that much.” I don’t care enough to do the reading, to fail along the way, to show up, to make a promise, to learn as I go, to confront failure, to get better at the work.
All of that might be true.
But you’re almost certainly smart enough.
When abundance showed up, first in manufactured goods, then in information, it all seemed like a simple win. More of what we want, thanks.
But of course, more of too many things is too much.
We are leaving the age of information and entering the age of choice.
Not just choosing what we’ll consume, but who we will become. Who will we connect with, lead, trust, honor, dignify, isolate or believe?
And how will we choose to walk through the world and what will we leave behind…
That’s what it said on the side of the tractor-trailer on the highway. Since 1924, they’re almost 100 years old.
But it’s unlikely that it’s everyone’s favorite.
Being everyone’s favorite is such an attractive goal, and almost impossible to achieve.
Ask someone about their favorite pie and they’ll talk about the one they ate as a kid, or one that a grandparent bakes, or perhaps, one from the bakery down the street.
To collate all of these favorites into one singular popularity contest is unlikely to yield much success.
It might be America’s most convenient pie, or the bestselling one. It might be the best value or the easiest to obtain. But none of those things mean “favorite.”
Often, when we set out to do our work, we focus on popularity and breadth at the expense of the magic and singular experience that could create a favorite. Something we’d miss if it weren’t there.
I wonder if seeking to be someone’s favorite is more satisfying than trying to be popular to everyone.
I’m sure that if you want to be the most popular, the way to do that is not to seek to be the favorite of everyone (unless that is a side effect of being popular.)
Without a doubt, the world has become more connected, noisier and more complex. But along the way, we’re still applying our instincts from a century ago, from a planet of villages and different expectations.
Rhetorical questions worth considering as we think about what’s normal. Where does here end and there begin? Is there a line between freedom and responsibility?
Is it okay to:
No right answers, but urgent questions at scale.
Big companies act like big companies. We don’t take them seriously when they say they care, because there is no “they.” When they send a holiday card or an email, we don’t really think it was from a person we could connect with.
Individuals act like individuals. When they write us a note or show up in person, we know that we’re dealing with a human.
In between, though, problems arise.
Did your friend really write that tweet, or did the staff do it?
That email that you just got, BCC… when you hit reply, will it go to the person who purported to send it, or to a team, or the infinite void?
The voice in our head changes when the identity of the sender differs.
When individuals try to scale, they often think they can bring their care, personality and person-hood along for the ride. And inevitably, it ends up disappointing everyone. It’s possible you can trick us for a while, but if you succeed in persuading us that you’re a real person, we’ll feel tricked sooner or later.
If it’s not from you, say so.
I’m not sure we have a common word for this.
“Yes” can mean, “yes, I’m prepared to do the minimum” or it could mean, “yes, this commitment is something I wholeheartedly embrace and will devote myself to exceeding expectations at every turn.”
Life’s way better if we find partnerships that are the second kind.
“All in” is rare, but it actually means something.
Satisfaction is often driven by the story we tell ourselves.
How does this rank compared to what I expected? Compared to what I used to have? Compared to the person sitting next to me?
The richest person in the world used to sleep on the floor and eat moldy food, but still felt great because it was more than the person in the next cave.
The good news is that our perception of comparison is up to us.
