David Chouinard

"If there’s a one-way track—stuff gets added, but it never gets taken away—then the..."

Tue, 24 May 2011 09:34:34 -0400

“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.

Creation vs. Curation

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:32:08 -0400

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.

Ignoring the vocal minority

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:24:39 -0500

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..."

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 17:52:49 -0500

“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.

The restaurant business

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:32:47 -0400

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 and satisfaction are not on a continuum

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:58:00 -0400

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.

How to be uncontroversial

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 13:00:00 -0400

Dumb down your work
Never say anything specific
Add as many compound-complex sentences as possible to your mission statement
Don’t say anything that matters
Don’t do anything that matters
Never take sides
Don’t talk about things people are particularly emotive about (this includes politics, religion and money)
Get John, the marketing MBA guy, to spruce up your corporate brochures and sales materials
Write your website like a press release
Write your press releases like a press release
Advertise in mainstream media
Never publicly take the blame for anything
Keep up to date on the latest buzzwords, jargon, and vapid expressions

Finding loyal customers

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Your small group of loyal customers set the expectations for your business. They rule, not you.

Two ways to select them:

Shout louder. Get full-page spots in New York Times and run Superbowls ads. Be as disruptive and intrusive as possible. Spend massivevly to break through the vastly overcrowded space. Spam those who don’t care until they do. Most will you ignore you, but few will become customers and still fewer will stick around and become loyal. The goal is to maximize the number of people who get in the funnel, predicting the vast majority will drop out somewhere before becoming loyal customers. Maximize for the number of eyeballs.
Nurture your current customers. Build around experiences, not products. Answer the phone on the first ring. Learn from the community. Reach out to those who give you permission. Make it easy to share your product, and trust your customers will. Believe in the community. Perserve, care. Wait.

Your call.

Gutenberg in the era of online video

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:12:44 -0400

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.

In praise of crap

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:19:00 -0400

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?

On standardized testing

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 09:26:00 -0400

The premise is that if you’re willing to go through a large amount of arbitrary work to rank high on standardized tests, you’ll also work hard when it comes to the important stuff.

What a shame.

It’s all about working harder. Not better or smarter or more creatively. Just harder.

There’s always someone who can work harder, faster and cheaper than you. Do-exactly-like-I-say people are a commodity and standardized testing selects exactly for these people.

On the other hand, the people who change history are the brilliant, insightful, risk-taking and creative individuals.

Who are you?

"If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything worthwhile."

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:00 -0400

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything worthwhile.”

- Sir Ken Robinson, paraphrased

Forget the mainstream

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:33:34 -0400

If you can’t find deep and genuine gratification in what you’re doing, trying harder to sell your commodity to the mainstream won’t cut it. You’ll have to sell your soul, water it down, pander to the usual suspects and then try to find pleasure in your golf game or bourbon.

The alternative is building something you care for. Like, really. It’s all about taking care of a small group of passionate and loyal followers. Your niche.

In spite of what you might think, that approach even works if you’re selling shampoo, deodorant or mayonnaise.

How we’ve built our businesses (and lives) on extrinsic...

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:00:00 -0400

How we’ve built our businesses (and lives) on extrinsic motivation, circa the Industrial era.

Lessons from public speaking

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:06:00 -0400

When I was younger, I did a fair amount of competitive public speaking (ended up finishing 2nd nationwide at one competition).

Turns out public speaking is great life school. Looking back, here’s what I can say:

That nerve-racking, tingling sensation you get in your gut is the best indication you’re doing things right. The more intense, the better. It’s an indication you’re doing work that matters and you’re pushing through were most have abandoned. Seth Godin calls it the lizard brain, that primitive part of your brain that wants you to shut up and be like everybody else.

Becoming good at public speaking not nearly as difficult as you might imagine. So is getting your startup running, learning origami or playing the violin. The hardest part is getting started: just do it.

Failing is not that big of deal. My biggest lesson: get over yourself. We systematically overestimate how terrible failure would be. As soon as you start paying attention to your inner chatter and buying into the “what-if” scenarios, you’re toast.

Hire the right customers.

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:58:13 -0400

Yes, you get to choose your customers, not the other way around.

Try to sell commodities at a desperately cheaper price than the competition and you’ll get one type of customer.

Be short-sighted and profit-obsessed and they’ll return the favour.

Or challenge the status quo and build genuinely interesting experiences and you’ll get get another type of customer.

You get to choose. The font on your website, your Twitter feed or the type of music you play in the lobby all set the tone for the conversation.

Choose wisely.

Where are the gatekeepers?

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 10:59:00 -0400

Not so long ago, you needed the approval of Bill in Washington or the blessing of Hollywood or a good review from the New York Times to succeed. Those who had succeeded in the game decided whether you’d succeed in it. They’ve forever been the gatekeepers, the defenders of the status quo.

The Internet is radically changing this. If you’ve built your plan on the idea of suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Stop waiting, put your ideas out there and build a movement now.

Go.

The gatekeepers have lost the keys.

Calling for a reform in business education

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:51:00 -0400

The following is an overview of a manifesto I will publish through ChangeThis. Update: Voting has ended — thanks all!

The evidence is explicit: achievement in business school is not correlated in any way with success in business.

In fact, even holding a business degree at all does not increase likelihood of success, increase either starting or ongoing salary nor increase happiness.

Nothing.

In spite of this, business education has grown exponentially in the last decade.

We believe the old Industrial-age model is flawed. This is a manifesto for a new generation of business schools, the first of which is planned to launch in January 2010. Here are the founding concepts:

No full-time professors. Telling people what to do full-time and doing nothing yourself is bound to corrupt your thinking (no matter how top-notch your research is). To keep teaching, professors must prove they continue to build outstanding and challenging businesses.

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything worthwhile. Too often, school is about suppressing mistakes and about making sure you follow the tried-and-true route. We disagree. To graduate from our school, you need to prove you’ve contributed to society in a meaningful way and built a sustainable business. That’s it. Take the time you want, we’re here to help. The school is part-time only.

The Internet is changing the way we see the world. We’ll make available plenty of TEDTalks and lectures from Khan Academy and Academic Earth. Stand up, discuss and defend your opinion, you’ll develop an understanding of the world like never before.

Meet amazing people. We think school should be about building genuine and long-term relationships and people you care for. We’ll make sure that happens.

It’s a miracle if curiosity survives formal education. That’s Albert Einstein speaking. We’re looking for diversity, creativity, people who get excited and passionate about their projects. And we strive at bringing back the “learning” part of education.

Away.

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:09:00 -0400

I took a counselling job on an intensive youth leadership camp. As part of that, I’m totally disconnecting myself of the Internet and focusing 100% on the kids for the next two months.

I won’t post until August 15, 2010. Sorry.

In the mean time, you can always snail mail me at:

Sgt David Chouinard - cie C
Centre d’instruction des cadets de l’Armée de Valcartier
Garnison Valcartier
CP 1000, succursale Forces
Courcelette, Qc
G0A 4Z0

As always, thanks for sticking around. It means a lot to me.

Metrics are overrated

Sat, 29 May 2010 22:23:06 -0400

That’s not the say they’re unimportant. But they’re certainly overrated.

Some metric-obsesed businesses have completely reshaped their industry for the better (I’m talking of Google, Henry Ford and Amazon here). We need data-focused businesses, no doubt.

But that market is vastly overcrowded.

So many business are built around metrics, whether it be clicks on your homepage, eyeballs a second, visitors, or man hours per unit.

Metrics are easy.

Instead of relying on your insight, passion and unique knowledge (the reason why you’re here in the first place) you chicken out. You can’t argue with metrics, nor do you need genuine understanding of your market. If the numbers say we should do A, then we do A. In no long, everyone in the industry is going to be doing A. A becomes the status quo, the tried-and-true route, the easy path.

Which leads to massive opportunity of doing B instead.

The big guys will always outclass you in that type of thinking. They have far smarter engineers than you, bigger, better, faster infrastructure and can dish out for massive studies.

Anything that’s worth striving for (and dedicating your life to) is not about numbers. The most important things you can’t measure. That’s a good thing, because your competitors suck at those unmeasurable things.

Build your business around genuine and human contact, a sense of identity and of accomplishment.

There’s no Google Analytics for that, sorry.