Seth Godin stories, thoughts and facts

Dissolve it

The best solution to a persistent, apparently non-solvable problem is to make the problem itself obsolete.

Go around it.

Cease to need it to be solved.

Redefine your process or goal so that the problem is no longer permitted to slow you down.

An unsolvable roadblock might be better called “reality.”

Pretending to be stupid

Intellectual horsepower is overrated.

“I’m too stupid to do that,” isn’t helpful and it’s probably not true.

We’re capable of learning Photoshop, We can figure out the arithmetic behind our analytics. We can follow a nuanced discussion of strategy. We can learn to read a balance sheet and we can get sophisticated about long-term decision making.

If we’re being honest, the real reason we don’t do this work isn’t that we’re stupid.

It’s probably that we haven’t made it a priority.

It might be that we’re afraid, that we’re lazy or that we’re underinformed.

All three are temporary conditions if we want them to be. Or we can live with them and assume that we’re stupid instead.

(Which is worse: to be seen as stupid or to have priorities that don’t match the opportunity?)

Busy is not the point

There’s a common safe place: Being busy.

We’re supposed to give you a pass because you were full on, all day. Frantically moving from one thing to the other, never pausing to catch your breath, and now you’re exhausted.

No points for busy.

Points for successful prioritization. Points for efficiency and productivity. Points for doing work that matters.

No points for busy.

“I was wrong”

That’s a hard sell.

It’s difficult to get someone (a client, a boss, a voter, a partner) to say those three words. Difficult to say on our own behalf, too.

Which is why we so easily get stuck.

We get stuck defending what we already decided. Because it feels easier to defend than it does to be wrong.

In 1993, in my role as founder of an internet company, I rejected the idea of the world wide web. I saw Mosaic (and then Netscape) and decided it was stupid, a dead end, a technology not worthy of our tiny company’s time.

That decision cost me a billion dollars.

Within nine months, I saw what others were seeing. I saw the power of widespread connectivity and how it was more powerful than a centralized host.

It still wasn’t easy to say, “I was wrong.”

The alternative is, “based on new information, I can make a new decision.”

We can make a new decision on what’s happening to our environment, based on new data and new science. We can make a new decision on corporate governance or on a recent political referendum.

“Why didn’t you tell me that it would lead to all these bad outcomes?”

Not wrong, simply underinformed.

The cost of a do-over is often less than the cost of sticking with a decision that was made in good faith, on insufficient information.

We don’t have to be wrong. But we regularly get a chance to make things more right.

Dancing with infinity

If your little bagel shop suddenly had everyone in the world waiting in line to buy a bagel, that would be stressful indeed. You’d need riot police to keep order and you’d run out of sesame seeds in no time.

On the other hand, it’s easy to hope that your YouTube video, your Facebook post or your professionally published book be seen by everyone in the entire world. Because digital scales. Because there’s apparently no useful limit. Because you believe in it and more is better.

But more isn’t always better.

Better is better.

And better might mean more specific. More respected. More exclusive. More trusted. More cherished.

Dancing with infinity isn’t free, and if you do it too long, it’s corrosive. You’re busy being busy, instead of doing what’s important.

Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time

John Cage pointed out they’re different processes. Doing one will interfere with the other.

What will you create today? You can analyze it tomorrow.

Consider A/J testing

The problem with A/B testing is that people don’t like to fail.

So they test option A against option B, where both options are quite similar.

Blue boxes vs. green boxes. $199 vs. $205.

Why not spend some time on A/J testing instead?

Test radically different alternatives.

Test eliminating the entrance fee. Test increasing the price 400%. Test making the movie thirty minutes long, or five hours…

You won’t be surprised very often, but when you are, bingo.

Toward full stack

Find the right clients

Earn their attention and trust

Identify the problem

Find their fear, embrace their objectives

Prototype possible solutions

Create an architecture that supports your solution to the problem

Build a minimum viable solution

Test it

Program a well-documented, resilient piece of code

Test it

Debug it

Ship it

It’s easy to get distracted by the part of the stack that we consider to be our job or simply our expertise. But it’s all connected.

If you want to change minds…

If you want to change the mind of a scientist, do more science. Do better science. Get your hands on the data set and prove your assertions.

If you want to change the mind of a bureaucrat, bring more power.

If you want to change the minds of the nerds, build something that’s new.

If you want to change the mind of a teenager, amplify the other teenagers.

If you want to change the mind of the audience, put more emotion into your story.

If you want to change the mind of a believer, bring in the perceived authorities.

If you want to change the mind of a banker, eliminate risk.

If you want to change the mind of an engineer, build a prototype.

If you want to change the mind of a hustler, show the money.

If you want to change the mind of a sports fan, win the game.

Other people don’t believe what you believe, and they don’t see what you see.