That’s great news.
The thing you need, the road ahead, the element that will transform your project–it appears to be inconvenient.
That’s terrific, because it means that most other people can’t be bothered. It’s valuable because the very inconvenience of it makes it scarce.
The stuff that matters is almost always inconvenient. If it’s not, you might be mistaken about what matters.
Every driver benefits from good brakes. It makes driving safer.
Only a few skilled drivers benefit from better acceleration.
Our habit is to compare top speed, horsepower, short-term returns and status. In every field, not just cars.
But it probably pays to make sure that there good brakes too.
There are two approaches:
Broaden your offerings, make them easier, cheaper and more available. Dumb them down and race to the bottom.
Or…
Focus on the customers who care enough about your idiosyncratic and particular offerings that they’ll not only happily walk away from the lesser alternatives, but they’ll tell the others.
What do we say when a customer or colleague says, “thank you”?
For a long time, it was “you’re welcome.” This indicates that you put in some effort and you’re willing to do it again on request.
Recently “no problem” has become more common. This implies that the effort could have been a huge hassle, but this time, it was okay.
For people who are choosing to do the work of hospitality and connection, though, the most accurate answer might be, “my pleasure.” After all, you had a choice, and you chose to do this work precisely so that it could have an impact on someone else. The story we tell ourselves about the work can be fuel for finding ways to do it better.
If it’s not a pleasure, and you’re doing things like this all day, it might be a good time to find something else to do.
Horst Schulze promoted this idea at the Ritz Carlton, but it works just about everywhere.
A few years ago, I posted about the hardware setup you can use to look better and feel better when working in a distributed organization.
Since then, I’ve tried many hacks for how to integrate Keynote presentations into this environment. I used some fancy software that was heartbreakingly disappointing and then figured out a much better solution, from a much more responsive company, using a little-known technique in Ecamm Live. All the details of how it’s done are here.
In short: you can create and control a Keynote presentation with a green screen built in so your face shows through–one screen for you and your slides that is easy to control and not awkward the way screen sharing is. (Keynote now also lets you embed your camera in the slides directly, but the quality isn’t as good).
Have fun.
I hope this helps. Life’s too short for ugly presentations.
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional wrestlers pretending to be political leaders. But it often seems more difficult to take a moment to watch people building something that matters instead.
We’ll probably spend billions of dollars and millions of hours transfixed by media coverage of one disaster after another this year.
What would happen if we watched Bryan Stevenson, Nazanin Ash, or Jim Killoran build something instead? Not just watched, but actually helped?
What sells is drama, conflict, and emergencies. So that’s what we get.
What if we spent our attention on a different thing? What if we built something better?
It’s easy to imagine that culture is immutable and that we have no choice but to pander for attention. But in fact, the culture keeps changing, and when we shift what we make and change what we pay attention to, the culture follows.
The race to the bottom has been won.
Anything cheaper than what’s on offer is a waste of the customer’s money, because it won’t get the job done.
Once we’ve cut every corner, all that’s left is the brutality of less.
One slogan is: You’ll pay less than you should have, and waste it all.
An alternative is: You’ll pay more than you hoped but get more than you paid for.
The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win.
Most things that consumers acquire are bought, not sold. We decide we’re interested in something and we go shopping to get it. Potato chips, wedding venues and cars are all purchased by people who set out to get them.
Selling is a special sort of marketing. It’s interactive, generous and personal. Selling brings individual attention, connection and tension to each customer. And selling takes time, effort and money.
Many companies believe they have a new product that will sell itself from the first day. But that’s unlikely.
We shouldn’t disrespect selling by pretending we don’t need it.
We’re not in races very often. Usually, what we’re doing is more like a walkathon, or perhaps, a hike.
And yet, we’ve been pushed to believe that the only performance that matters is a scarcity-based victory.
They close the parkway near my house on Sundays. As people pedal along, you can see the ripple of anxiety that spreads when a fast biker ends up passing everyone else.
The route is a loop. No one is getting anywhere you’re not getting. They’re just leaving this place faster.
They’re toxic, wasteful and a tempting trap.
It’s one of the most important topics in my new book.
(And here’s a new podcast on it).
We need proxies. You’re not allowed to read the book before you buy it or taste the ketchup before you leave the store. We rely on labels and cultural cues to give us a hint about what to expect. We do judge a book (and a condiment) by its cover, all the time.
And hiring and managing people is far more important and risky than buying ketchup. So we look for proxies that may give us a clue as to how someone will ultimately contribute to our project.
False proxies include: Height, race, gender, attractiveness, charisma in meetings, famous college, etc.
It’s easy to imagine that we don’t fall prey to these irrelevant signals, but a quick look at the height of elected officials makes it clear that we do–we keep picking the tall ones.
When building the Oakland A’s into a championship contender, Billy Beane discovered that every other team was using these sorts of proxies to scout who would be worth drafting. By finding an actual proxy, a useful one, he was able to assemble a skilled team on a budget.
Just because someone interviews well, is friendly, or looks like you doesn’t mean that they can do the work that needs to be done.
Now that we can measure so many things, we might as well put that to use. Attitude and skill are useful proxies, while the easy-to-measure stuff is simply an expensive and hurtful distraction.
