Adults make choices and live with the consequences.
No one else should tell us what flavor of ice cream we prefer, or what career to choose. We’re good at knowing what we want.
In practice, this works really well for certain kinds of decisions. But when we add the network effect, profit-seeking industrial entities, statistics, long-term impact and side effects, it often falls apart.
Few people with terminal lung cancer made a fully informed decision when they started smoking cigarettes decades ago. Millions of teens who got hooked on a Juul certainly didn’t. We’re tempted to take the “free” case of bottled water that the local market is offering, without considering what’s going to happen to those bottles when we’re done with them. And while it’s easy to overregulate the testing and distribution of pharmaceuticals, it’s even easier to underregulate them.
There’s no right answer, there’s simply a spectrum.
Ideally, we’d each be able to make smart, long-term decisions with accurate information. I consider myself pretty rational, but, like most people, I don’t do a longitudinal study before taking a pill or buying a new product. We use buzz, hype and status to make decisions without statistics or peer-review.
Society might not know the ideal answer about where to draw the line between individual choice and community standards, but it’s worth asking the questions. Are people likely to be misled, confused or tricked into taking actions that hurt themselves and others? Are there incentives in place for consent to be skipped, or profits to be made when people are not fully informed? Are there bugs in our human decision-making processes that are likely to be hacked by organizations that have a different goal than we do? Are there public health implications that have more impact than the benefits to an individual?
Like microeconomics, classic marketing theory happens in a vacuum, not the real world. To put it into widescale practice, we need to think hard about the impact of millions of decisions, often made without clarity or perspective.
September 3, 2023
When a friend shows you work in progress, your best contribution is to imagine the point of view and preferences of the person it is being created for. “I don’t like it,” isn’t useful, because it’s not for you. “I could imagine that someone who wants x, y or z would be looking for…” is much more helpful.
You don’t have to be three years old to be a toy designer, and you don’t have to be three to give useful feedback on a new design.
On the other hand, when a friend shows you something that’s finished, the most important thing you can do is find two or three truthful and positive things to say. When someone trusts you to share their work, and cares enough about the world to bring the work forward, that’s already two things worth applauding.
September 2, 2023
If you want to be a poet, write poetry. Every day. Show us your work.
If you want to do improv, start a troupe. Don’t wait to get picked.
If you want to help animals, don’t wait for vet school. Volunteer at an animal shelter right now.
If you want to write a screenplay, write a screenplay.
If you want to do marketing, find a good cause and spread the idea. Don’t ask first.
If you’d like to be more strategic or human or caring at your job, don’t wait for the boss to ask.
Once we leave out the “and” (as in, I want to do this and be well paid, invited, approved of and always successful) then it’s way easier to do what we said we wanted to do.
September 1, 2023
A great use of ChatGPT and other AI is to paste relevant text into the chat box and ask for a summary.
I did this with 300 suggestions that came via a Google form and it did the work better, faster and with more clarity (and less bias) than a person would. Often, we’re clouded by early or vivid data, instead of being patient enough to work our way through it.
Or consider taking the transcript from a Zoom call… if you send the AI summary to all participants, you’re probably more likely to get responses that include useful congruence on what was actually said.
August 31, 2023
In a breakthrough study by Alex Berke at MIT, she and her team showed that labeling a menu item as vegan significantly decreased how many people would order it. In similar conditions, it turns out that more people choose exactly the same item if it doesn’t carry that label.
One conclusion people might take away from this study is that the brand name “vegan” carries a lot of baggage. We see that people generally like food without meat, but when it’s labeled as a particular sub-category, they avoid it.
Consider that in other studies, researchers have shown that when food without meat is listed as the default option, far more people will choose it. Simply shifting the choice from “on request” to the convenient, regular kind, dramatically increases selection.
But the real insight is that if a marketer wants to reach the masses, the regular kind becomes worth understanding.
When Italian food was considered novel and was stocked in the ethnic aisle, marketers had to run commercials simply to persuade people that it was okay to serve spaghetti for dinner on Wednesdays. It didn’t really matter which kind, simply that it was normal.
An alternative is to seek the smallest viable audience instead, to create connected communities that change the status quo. The tiny symbols on many packaged goods that indicate kosher status are ignored by most people, but often closely inspected by enough small groups that use it as a certification of what they’re buying. When you can encourage a small group to look for something that the larger group doesn’t even see, it can shift how large producers (corporations, politicians, employers) treat the entire population.
While organizing a few is helpful to those seeking to create change, it also creates a risk for a brand that is comfortable with its position as a market dominator. They’re no longer leaders, because leaders make change happen and embrace opportunity. Instead, a brand that sees itself as the regular kind is relentless in seeking to serve everyone and offend no one. Which, inevitably, they will fail to do.
And so the creative destruction occurs that leads to a shift. A shift in what’s only available on request, on what’s stocked on eye level, and on what’s safe to serve at the big gathering.
August 30, 2023
Belief makes us human. Belief is our tool to dance with a possible future, confront our fears, and build community. Our personal taste and our preferences belong to us as well, helping us believe in ourselves.
For millennia, belief thrived in most parts of our lives. We didn’t need belief to know that fire was hot (it always is), but it certainly gave us hope and solace in the face of the unknown. And the unknown is where belief thrives
But resistance to knowing isn’t a useful habit. When Ignaz Semmelweis used statistics to prove that hand washing by doctors would save the lives of mothers giving birth, doctors who believed they knew better ignored it, causing countless deaths. When researchers showed that many ulcers are caused by bacteria, doctors who practiced with long-earned belief resisted the data for decades. And when experts in any field fight against research that might undermine their status, they’re doing their belief and those who trust them a disservice.
There’s more proof in the world than ever before, not less. It’s no longer, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” but instead, “I am confident enough to change my mind and informed enough to do the math and understand the concepts.” We have proof about mathematics, about black holes and about the efficacy of vaccines. We have statistical proof of what people click on and how humans respond in a double-blind test.
This doesn’t make belief less important. In fact, as proof shows up in one area, it simply gives us the opportunity to bring belief somewhere else, somewhere we can put it to good use. Personal taste, placebos and the way we dance with the unknown future are powerful ways to connect, to express ourselves and to find solace.
But the time we spend arguing about proof that we’re not prepared to accept is simply wasted. Belief needs proof the way a fish needs a bicycle.
August 29, 2023
Sometimes it’s obvious, like the $1 that you get charged for using an ATM or a credit card, and it’s simply not worth the hassle to walk a few blocks.
And sometimes it’s not, like the cost we all pay for the conveniently wrapped fruits or vegetables at the market–wrapped in plastic that will not degrade in our lifetimes.
The convenience fee might be the time you spend at the drive-through at Starbucks, instead of walking inside, or, heaven forbid, brewing your own coffee at home.
Or choosing media to consume because it’s right there, not a few clicks away…
But the convenience fees, whether metaphorical or actual, keep rising.
It turns out that a life lived conveniently isn’t always a better one. The cost of convenience ends up being too high.
August 28, 2023
If your job feels like a dead end, it might be because you’ve traded agency and responsibility for the feeling of security.
But real security lies in creating value.
Creating value isn’t easy, but it’s resilient and generous and often profitable.
“How do I create more value?” is a much more useful question than, “how do I find a better job?”
August 27, 2023
The future isn’t the same as the past. Technology develops, systems change and most of all, someone cares enough to make things better.
The maverick isn’t the selfish gunslinger of myth. In fact, she’s focused on resilient, useful interactions that change what we expect, pushing back against the inertia of gobbledygook and bureaucracy.
Some principles to keep in mind:
- While it may seem reserved for the young, people of any age can choose the maverick path. It tends to skew younger because it’s exhausting and because changing the status quo can cause discomfort to those that change and those that are changed. Once someone is comfortable enough, it might be easier to stand by.
- Hustle is rarely the most useful action. Systems are built to resist short-term hurried effort. But patient, persistent and focused effort can pay off.
- Solo quests make good Westerns or legends, but almost all systems change is the result of teams of people, organized and connected in service of the longer goal.
- Sticky ideas that are built on the network effect dramatically outperform urgent media moments.
- Change begins with the smallest viable audience, not the largest possible one.
- Urgency defeats emergency.
The world is topsy turvy and yet, this is as normal as it’s ever going to be again. We need your leadership.
August 26, 2023
It’s possible that the memo or video is simply too long. A 14 minute video explaining how to have a 10 minute brainstorming meeting might benefit from some editing.
But it might be that your instruction manual would benefit from some more photos and better in depth explanation.
Matching the complexity of the problem to the method of solving it can really pay off.
August 25, 2023
