If there’s a one-way track—stuff gets added, but it never gets taken away—then the ship is going to get slower and heavier and become much harder to handle until it eventually sinks. —Seth Godin, on legacy issues.
The problem with the newspaper industry is that being a publisher is not special anymore.
Power today lies in curation.
It’s all about aggregating the very best bits and building a compelling story that puts it all together. An exceptional, insightful and unique arrangement.
It’s that Instapaper account or Twitter user that earns your respect for consistently expanding your horizon. It’s TED and Radiolab.
More than anything, it could be you.
By now, the Twitterverse is probably clamouring for you to make your web app free or requesting you add new bells and whistles or complaining on how lame the new redesign is.
Anything that’s worth doing will get you backlash from a vocal few. The thing is, now, more than ever, the vocal minority can be heard loud and strong.
Tune it out.
I would be more worried if no one was complaining.
I don’t see the point of the Nobel prize. I’ve already got the prize, the prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out. —Richard Feynman, on his receiving the Nobel prize.
In the restaurant business, everything happens by personal recommendation. The only way you’ll try a different restaurant out of the overcrowded market is if a friend tells you it’s the best mexican food. Hence, you win if you genuinely nurture your core group of evangelists and make it easy for them to share their passion. It’s all about caring and building an amazing experience for them and ignoring the rest.
Whether you sell shoes or web apps or model planes, you’re probably also in the restaurant business.
Dissatisfaction is pain. If you’re starving, money gets you food and gets you motivated to leave that dissatisfaction status.
Satisfaction is about believing you’re doing something larger than yourself, something worthwhile you genuinely care for. It’s achievement, recognition, responsibility, advancement.
The fallacy here is to believe what got you out of dissatisfaction (money, adequate work environment) will get you in satisfaction. People are made dissatisfied by a low salary, but they are rarely made satisfied by a high salary.
The HR department probably focus on making you less dissatisfied instead of more satisfied. It’s all about salary, incentives, status and other gimmicks. Business scholar Frederick Herzberg calls it KITA — kick in the ass. It gets people moving, gets them running after a carrot. Everything becomes about the next (bigger) bonus. Over time, the entire business is built around avoiding pain. It becomes about reacting, not acting.
You can learn to avoid dissatisfaction in a book. Satisfaction, though, is your call. Only you can figure out how to initiate genuine motivation, create a culture that cares, and shows up on holidays.
It’s what gives you the stubbornness to keep believing.
Merely figuring out the housekeeping issues doesn’t cut it.
Your small group of loyal customers set the expectations for your business. They rule, not you.
Two ways to select them:
Your call.
This post was original published on TEDxConcordia’s blog. It’s relevant, so I’m posting here too.
TED’s head honcho, Chris Anderson, just released his first TEDTalk. He makes the case that online video is profoundly changing our lives and how we spread ideas. As you’d expect, it’s fascinating. You really should watch it.
Our ancestors were biologically wired for word-of-mouth. We learned in small communities and passed on our knowledge face-to-face.
Then Gutenberg came around. The printing press radically changed how we spread ideas. It upped the ante for everyone. And from Twitter to Wikipedia, we built our knowledge systems on the legacy of the written word. Never, in the history of humanity, have we had access to so much knowledge.
The problem is that the printed word required that we educate ourselves out of our evolutionary origins. Because of physical constraints, we traded the lack of face-to-face connection and the communal aspect of learning for scaling knowledge. It required that we artificially teach ourselves to actually enjoy reading. The medium disconnected us from the fundamental idea of tribal sharing.
We’re living through a second revolution. It’s not anymore about the vastness knowledge, but about the medium. Online video scales this powerful face-to-face intimate connection. It appeals to our basic instincts in a very fundamental way.
I finally understand why TED is so fascinating. I think.
Here’s the thing: if you want to make excellent stuff, start by producing lots of crap.
A lot of below average, mediocre work. Not all of it, of course, but enough to get you comfortable with shipping. It’s about experimenting, trying and occasionally failing. Seth Godin does it, and so does Google.
Remember, excellence comes with experience.
Are you shipping enough crap?
Business student and TED enthusiast (TEDxConcordia). Full-fledged geek, passionate about getting involved and doing more.
