“Here we go again”

We all say that to ourselves.

The question is: when do you say it?

Do you say it when you're being rejected, failing, stuck, panicked, overwhelmed or alone?

Or do you say it when you're engaged, winning, changing things and in the groove?

Because the more you rehearse this feeling, the more it's going to happen.

We get what we expect.

And we expect what we get.

The easiest way to change this cycle is to alter the scale we play in. If you keep failing at the big stuff, it's worth honing the habit of succeeding at the small stuff first. And if you're finding yourself in a rut, a cycle of failure, walk away from that series of projects and find a new field to plant your seeds in.

From Seth Godin's blog

The crowd, your work, and a choice

Seth Godin writes,

The crowd prefers sweets.

The crowd gets on its feet when your band plays the big hit, and sits down for the new songs.

The crowd will pay far more for a steak dinner than a vegetable one, regardless of cost or effort or value.

The crowd will always pick the movie over the book.

The crowd would rather wait in line for the popular attraction.

The crowd likes to be chased.

The crowd likes explosions, resolved plots and ample lighting.

The crowd would prefer a digest.

The crowd never liked Ornette Coleman very much.

The crowd's favorite words include fast, easy, cheap, fun, now and simple.

The crowd needs a deadline.

The crowd is the group of people who don't get what you do, who loom on the horizon as the reward for making your work more popular.

And yet, the crowd continually gets more than it deserves, because people like you make work that matters. Work that you're proud of.

The industrial age is going away. It's up to you to make an impact.

The recession is a forever recession. It's the end of the industrial age. Pick yourself; don't wait for somebody to pick you. Are you racing to the bottom, or racing to the top? Can you figure out how to do something interesting, or unique, or noteworthy? Are you just like everyone else, but a little cheaper, or are you the only one? Can you decide where to go? To be on your own? The internet is a revolutionary connection engine.

What is school for?

To comply? To fit in? To be interchangeable people? To become consumers? Are our schools factories to indoctrinate kids into compliance?



If it's work, people try to figure out how to do less. If it's art, people try to figure out how to do more.

Now we have the internet. The child can go home and turn on the internet and learn from experts for free whatever they want to learn.

Open book, open note, all the time: no reason to memorize. You want to know? Google it!

Access to any course, any time, anywhere in the world, any time you want to take it!

Precise, focused education, instead of mass batch stuff. Cooperation, instead of isolation.

Teacher's role transformed to coach.

Lifelong work learning.

Work happening earlier in your life.

The death of the famous college, which has no relevance to success or happiness!

Go build something interesting, and ask, if you need help!

Myth one: Great performance in school leads to happiness and success.

Myth two: Great parents have kids who produce great performance in school.

Are we asking our kids to connect dots, or collect dots?

Happy Birthday!

Today is Seth Godin's birthday. For birthday presents, he would like us to change the world:

When I was fifteen, I wanted a bike for my birthday. I dropped a few hints, and about a week before the day, I asked my mom for a hint as to what I could expect. "Well," she said, "it has feathers."

I was getting a parrot.

What could be cooler than a parrot? Alas, I got a down blanket. Can't win them all.

Today's my 55th, and it would be great if you wouldn't send me a gift, a card or even an email. Not because I have birthday issues, but because I think we might be able to plant the seed for a very significant culture change, something bigger than a bike.

Is it possible for your birthday to change the world?

Instead of dropping me a note, I'm hoping you'll join 5,000 other blog readers and give your birthday to charity:water. (Note: I'm not asking you to make a donation, at least not at first. Something more difficult but important: I want you to start a change in our culture with just a few clicks. Read on...)

This might sound a bit familiar. Five years ago, I gave away my birthday and asked you, my astonishingly generous readers, to make a donation. We ended up raising nearly $40,000 (and it's gone up since then) and ten villages, families with children, now have water as a result (try to imagine going just two days without clean water...)

The donations made a difference, but let's go further and establish a pattern, a standard where lots and lots of people give away their birthdays. What if it becomes normal for everyone over 22 years old to ask for donations instead of presents or cards?

So far, 65,000 people have given their birthdays. But with just three generations of friends telling friends can take that up by a factor of ten. 5,000 people telling ten people telling ten people, and we'd change the world.

5,000 people pledging to give their birthdays to charity: water would mean that when your birthday rolls around, you'd ask the people in your life to give their birthdays to charity: water as well. And then a few months later, they'd ask the people in their lives... In just a few cycles, perhaps we could change the expectation of birthdays from, "I'd like a bike," to, "Can we save someone's life?"

The mechanics are simple: go to this page and sign up to donate your birthday. While you're there, I hope you'll consider donating $10 (I'll match the $10 donation from each reader who pitches in). Done.

One more bonus, in case changing the culture and saving lives isn't enough: if 1,000 people sign up to share their birthdays today, I'll update this post tomorrow and release the audio from a speech about bravery (a recent gig I did for Endeavor) on the bottom of this post...

Change the culture, change the world.

Thanks. And happy birthday. Even better than a parrot.

What happens when things go wrong?

Today Seth Godin asks,

What happens when things go wrong?

Service resilience is too often overlooked. Most organizations don't even have a name for it, don't measure it, don't plan for it.

I totally understand our focus on putting on a perfect show, on delighting people, on shipping an experience that's wonderful.

But how do you and your organization respond/react when something doesn't go right?

Because that's when everyone is paying attention.

New truth

Are you looking for ways to improve your writing? Seth Godin has some ideas:

Writing and speaking (essays, non-fiction, copywriting, direct interactions, speeches) can be easily sorted into two groups:

The expected

The unexpected

We don't remember what most people say when they greet us (at a party, or even a funeral) because it's banal. Most college essays, tweets and advertising copy fit right into this category. The prose we consume every day gets instantly processed, filed away and ignored.

The other kind of writing is super risky. It is the original, vulnerable work of the edges. This is the interaction that adds real value because it's not something we could have already guessed you were about to say.

The unexpected doesn't work because it's surprising. It works because it's valuable. Valuable because it brings new truth, because it says something we didn't already know.

Of course, expected writing is often important. We need to check the boxes, pay the toll, make it clear that we know how to act and speak and write in a situation like this one.

But unexpected writing isn't merely important, it's a miracle. If we already knew what we needed to hear from you, we wouldn't need you to say it.

[Here's a first step in moving from one to the other: Cross out every sentence that could have been written by someone else, every box check, every predictable reference. Now, insert yourself. Your truth and your version of what happens next.]

Really? We can tell.

Seth Godin asks,

But do you want to get better?

It seems like a stupid question. Of course we want our organization, our work and our health to improve.

But often, we don't.

Better means change and change means risk and risk means fear.

So the organization is filled with people who have been punished when they try to make things better, because the boss is afraid.

And so the patient gets the prescription but doesn't actually take all the meds.

And the bureaucrat feigns helplessness because it's easier to shrug than it is to care.

There are countless ways to listen, to engage with users, to learn and to improve, but before you or your organization waste time on any of them, first the question must be answered, "do we want to get better?"

Really? We can tell.

Are you ready to take a leap?

Seth Godin writes,

100% certainty is not a variation of 96% or even 99%. It's a totally different category.

Certainty is binary, yes or no. The question, "are you sure it will work" is not about the work, it's about the sure. If you need to know that it's going to work, then you've committed to a very clear path. Some people go to work or school and do nothing except the things that they are sure about.

The other path is to do things that might not work. Work, projects designed to land on the spectrum of not sure.

When someone asks, "Do you have any case studies and rules of thumb from my industry about how someone in precisely the same circumstances did x and got y," it's pretty clear that they seek reassurance and a promise of certainty.

But all the good stuff comes from leaping. From doing the things that might not work.

Our reputation

What is your reputation? How did you get it? That's the topic over at Seth Godin's blog today:

Reputation is what people expect us to do next. It's their expectation of the quality and character of the next thing we produce or say or do.

We control our actions (even when it feels like we don't) and our actions over time (especially when we think no one is looking) earn our reputation.

Sometimes we should try the difficult, rather than the easy path

Seth Godin writes,

When we intentionally seek out the difficult tasks, we're much more likely to actually create value.

Read more here.

Today is Pi day

Seth Godin writes:

Today is Pi day, the 14th day of the 3rd month of the fifteenth year... 3.1415

Pi is our most famous irrational number. Not irrational in the sense that it's a foolish argument, a form of wishing for one thing while doing another. No, pi is irrational in a magical, beautiful sense. It can't be cropped off and fit into a box. The closer you look at pi, the more you see, forever.

And that sort of irrational magic is at the heart of our best work. Meeting spec works fine as long as you're the only person who has to meet spec. But in any competitive environment, fitting into a box does us little good.

To be transcendent and irrational is to always have a few more digits to spare, to demand that you not be rounded off and filed away. To be human.

Setting yourself apart

Seth Godin has a new twist on an old saying:

More trouble than it's worth

In five words, that's one secret to delight. When you do the work that others can't possibly imagine doing, you set yourself apart.

Seeking out the things that are more trouble than most people think they're worth is a powerful place to be.

The hard part, of course, is actually doing something that appears to be far more trouble than it's worth.

Another reason mass media is going away

Seth Godin writes:

We invented televisions so marketers would have a way to run TV ads. We have magazines so marketers can run magazine ads.

Make no mistake: mass media exists because it permits mass marketers to do their job.

Mass production, the ability to make things cheaply, in volume, demanded that we invent mass marketing--it was the only way to sell what was being made in the quantity it was produced.

The internet, though, was not invented so marketers could run internet ads.

And, at the same time, mass production is being replaced by micro production, by the short run, by customization, by the long tail.

Just in time, mass media is going away too.

Mass marketers don't like this and they often don't even see it. They're struggling to turn Snapchat and Twitter and other sites into substitutes for TV, but it's not working, because it's an astonishing waste of attention.

The Ed Sullivan Show existed to sell Jello to everyone. Today, there's no everyone, and certainly no media channel that can sell everyone, cheap, to the folks who market Jello.

This is an ongoing challenge for mass marketers, and the opportunity of a generation for everyone else.

For fifty years, TV and TV-thinking was the shortcut. Make average stuff for average people (by definition = mass) and promote to every stranger within reach. It worked.

But mass is fading, fading faster than our desire to be mass marketers is fading. The shortcut doesn't work every time now, and the expectation that success is the same as popularity is still with us.

Fifty years ago, producers and marketers got smart. They saw the miracle of mass marketing and they adopted it as their own. They amped up mass production and bet on the masses.

The smart creators today are seeing the shift and doing precisely the opposite:

Produce for a micro market.

Market to a micro market.

When someone wants to know how big you can make (your audience, your market share, your volume), it might be worth pointing out that it's better to be important, to be in sync, to be the one that's hard to be replaced. And the only way to be important is to be relevant, focused and specific.

Kick and scream, or sing and dance?

Seth Godin addresses a subject today that all of us face at one time or another:

Kicking and screaming (vs. singing and dancing)

Unfair things happen. You might be diagnosed with a disease, demoted for a mistake you didn't make, convicted of a crime you didn't commit. The ref might make a bad call, an agreement might be abrogated, a partner might let you down.

Our instinct is to fight these unfairnesses, to succumb if there's no choice, but to go down kicking and screaming. We want to make it clear that we won't accept injustice easily, we want to teach the system a lesson, we want them to know that we're not a pushover.

But will it change the situation? Will the diagnosis be changed, the outcome of the call be any different?

What if, instead, we went at it singing and dancing? What if we walked into our four-year prison sentence determined to learn more, do more and contribute more than anyone had ever dreamed? What if we saw the derailment of one path as the opportunity to grow or to invent or to find another path?

This is incredibly difficult work, but it seems far better than the alternative.

Some important inventions of the last hundred years

What do you think are the most important inventions of the last hundred years? Seth Godin mentions a few, and why they are important:

Air conditioning--which made it possible to do productive work in any climate

Credit cards--which enabled transactions to take place at a distance

Television--which homogenized 150 world cultures into just a few

Federal Express and container ships--which made the transport of physical goods both dependable and insanely cheap

The internet--which moved information from one end of the world to the other as easily as across the room

Cell phones--which cut the wires.

How have these inventions affected you?

Overcoming fear of public speaking

Are you afraid of public speaking? Seth Godin has a plan to help you overcome that fear. His final thoughts, after outlining his plan:

Every single important thing we do is something we didn't use to be good at, and in fact, might be something we used to fear.

This is not easy. It's difficult. But that's okay, because it's possible.

Read his plan here.

Please go away, or Please stay with us?

Seth Godin has some advice for those big companies whose "service" to customers can best be described as "Please go away!"

What if you had a big blue phone on your desk, and whenever you needed to, you could pick it up and instantly be connected with a smart and caring tech support expert (from your internet provider, your web host, the airline you use the most...)?

What are the chances you'd ever consider switching to a competitor that didn't offer similar service just to save a few bucks?

The current model of big company support is to throw undervalued, undertrained, underpowered human beings at perplexed customers, frustrating and disrespecting them enough that they shrug and give up.

These are the chat rooms staffed by people who merely repeat what's on the website.

The phone trees that bury 'talk to a human' at the very bottom of the options (or hide it altogether).

The reps who are rewarded for a short call and punished for escalating you to someone who can help.

And yes, the email correspondents who send notes from addresses to which you cannot reply.

In industries with drive-by customers, people you'll never see again, customer churn is no big deal. But in businesses where the lifetime value of a customer exceeds $15,000 (I'm thinking cable, phones, travel, banking), it's insane to blow someone off so you can save $17 in customer support isn't it?

How to execute this shift? Start with this: Use the conference call functionality built into every phone to create a team of customer advocates. They can even work from home with a cell phone you provide. Your best customers call an advocate, and then the advocate's job is to start calling internal resources until the problem is solved. Reward advocates not for short calls, but for delighted customers.

Start with six advocates and 600 customers and see what happens. The advocates will get smart, fast, about who to talk with and what to say, they'll start to see what works and what's broken, and they'll work to change the organization into one that keeps score of the right things.

Any customer that walks away, disrespected and defeated, represents tens of thousands of dollars out the door, in addition to the failure of a promise the brand made in the first place. You can't see it but it's happening, daily.

I wonder how these companies would act if every day, someone piled $100,000 in cash in the parking lot and lit it on fire. For many companies, the 'please go away' strategy is more expensive than that.

Are you unprepared?

Seth Godin addresses the subject from two angles:

Is there anything worse we can say about you and your work? "You are unprepared."

But the word "unprepared" means two things, not just one. There is the unprepared of the quiz at school, of forgetting your lines, of showing up to a gunfight with a knife… this is the unprepared of the industrial world, the unprepared of being an industrial cog in an industrial system, a cog that is out-of-whack, disconnected and poorly maintained.

What about the other kind, though?

We are unprepared to do something for the first time, always.

We are unprepared to create a new kind of beauty, to connect with another human in a way that we’ve never connected before.

We are unprepared for our first bestseller, or for a massive failure unlike any we’ve ever seen before. We are unprepared to fall in love, and to be loved.

We are unprepared for the reaction when we surprise and delight someone, and unprepared, we must be unprepared, for the next breakthrough.

We've been so terrified into the importance of preparation, it's spilled over into that other realm, the realm of life where we have no choice but to be unprepared.

If you demand that everything that happens be something you are adequately prepared for, I wonder if you’ve chosen never to leap in ways that we need you to leap. Once we embrace this chasm, then for the things for which we can never be prepared, we are of course, always prepared.

Found here.

We have a choice

I like this post by Seth Godin:

Make two lists

One list highlights the lucky breaks, the advantages, the good feedback, your trusted network. It talks about the accident of being born in the right time and the right place, your health, your freedom. It features your education, your connection to the marketplace and just about every nice thing someone has said about you in the last week or month.

The other list is the flipside. It contains the obstacles you've got to deal with regularly, the defects in your family situation, the criticisms your work has received lately. It is a list of people who have better luck than you and moments you've been shafted and misunderstood.

The thing is, at every juncture, during every crisis, in every moment of doubt, you have a choice. You will pull out one (virtual) list or the other. You'll read and reread it, and rely on it to decide how to proceed.

Up to you.

Found here.