Seth Seiders, (Al Capone’s accountant) wrote a book about the “pivot man.” This is a key function in industrial organizations, bureaucracies and any organization with more than thirty people. It’s someone (often not a ‘man’) with a boss and with employees. In our modern world, th … | Continue reading
It might be your website, your brochure, the inside of your store… This is a fine thing to do, but it’s not particularly effective. The secret isn’t to optimize the landing page. it’s to optimize the reason people are coming to your site. You can’t convert people who don’t want w … | Continue reading
If the answer is over there, then we’re off the hook. If it comes from the future, comes from away, comes from someone else, then our job is to simply wait for it to arrive. But it could be that your organization already has all the resources it needs to change the dynamic in the … | Continue reading
We can’t change the past. But the future might be up to us. It might be best to daydream about what might be, not what already happened. | Continue reading
Each task brings three options. But first, let’s be clear what we mean by “delegate.” If I can hire someone to do a task so well that my customer can’t tell, I can choose to delegate this work. The Uber driver is probably capable of changing the oil in the car, but if the passeng … | Continue reading
Landlords collect rent, tenants pay it. Landlords own an asset that increases in value over time. Tenants have the freedom to move on. If you’re building a business, it pays to own an asset. Your labor doesn’t scale well, and success can be exhausting. It’s better to be Google th … | Continue reading
The second time you install vacuum tubes into a handmade 2A3 stereo amplifier, you’ll know that two of the four pins are slightly larger than the other two. And you’ll know that the tubes go in pretty easily, you don’t have to force them. You may know these things because the fir … | Continue reading
This is not a promise to be made lightly. It’s not, “I’ve got your back until it becomes difficult or inconvenient for me.” It puts us on the hook, without exception. This is a powerful promise, a commitment that can change the life of both parties. Don’t do it lightly, but do it … | Continue reading
Cities used to die slowly. Ancient Rome, Babylon, Memphis (in Egypt) and others took generations to fade from their peaks. The reasons were easy to see: Now, we can see it happening in a single generation. Rust Belt cities, projects in China, mining towns–they come and they go. T … | Continue reading
We wait and hope for the first kind, the magic that arrives just when we need it. This is the magic of inspiration, or of good fortune. The magic of opportunties offered and connections made. There never seems to be enough of this sort of magic. The other kind, though, is surpris … | Continue reading
The first things humans invented, before fire, the wheel or baked brie, was trust. Trusting the others in the village. Trusting that you could get a good night’s sleep. Trusting that what you heard was true. We’ve expanded the village from twenty people to billions. Walter Cronki … | Continue reading
When we’re a little behind, we borrow to catch up. Perhaps we borrow goodwill and spend less time than we might on a project. Or we need some money to pay the rent, so we borrow against a paycheck. And a good night’s sleep is tempting to borrow from as well. The borrowing compoun … | Continue reading
So many bits of information are flying around. Emails to us, articles, posts, videos, updates, memos, meetings, books… The most common (and apparently efficient) approach is to quickly look over the new information. If it confirms what you already know, check it off. If it contra … | Continue reading
It takes about 900,000 minutes to become a board-certified dermatologist. At that point, you might be very skilled and well-informed. It takes less than nine minutes to make your patient feel seen, understood and reassured. If you skip the 9 minutes, you wasted the 900,000. | Continue reading
Organizations and brands can choose their quadrant. It’s tempting to want the best of all four, but it’s going to take effort and focus. All of these terms are relative choices, not absolute judgments. Where does your offering fit in? | Continue reading
Visitors to your new bookstore are likely to have a phone in their pockets–they could buy a book from the competition without even walking into the shop. And diners at your funky restaurant have to pass dozens of other places to eat on their way to you. Places that are faster, mo … | Continue reading
It’s possible to consider the next event in our lives as something the world is trying to teach us. But it might be even more effective to realize that, whenever we choose, we can learn something from what’s going on. We’re not getting taught, we’re choosing to learn. There’s a l … | Continue reading
If someone with less skill and less dedication than you took over your job, could they degrade the quality of your work? It’s not difficult to make a list of twenty things that could be done to make it late, expensive or defective. Here’s the hard question: If someone with more s … | Continue reading
If there was a website you could visit to find out what the future held, how often would you visit it? We do that with the weather, sometimes daily. People are drawn to breaking news and social media buzz because they have an urge to know the now, which is a bit like the future, … | Continue reading
It’s difficult to spend the entire day working on outcomes. Sooner or later, there are tasks to be done, tasks we believe will get us to the outcome we seek. But it’s easy to spend the whole day on tasks, failing to recalibrate and ignoring the fact that the tasks might not be he … | Continue reading
It’s quite likely that your favorite TV show wasn’t written by a single person. There’s a room filled with professionals, bouncing ideas back and forth, provoking each other and creating a script. The songs on your favorite artist’s hit record might have been written by them, but … | Continue reading
It’s easy to believe we have an accurate understanding of ourselves. After all, we spend a lot of time looking in the mirror. It might be worth wondering about why the mirror is deemed to be accurate at reflecting what we see as our flaws, real or metaphorical, but indistinct and … | Continue reading
So many options, so little time. A friend asked if he should put his podcast on YouTube. After all, that’s how many people are consuming this sort of content, it’s low cost. The comments and subscriptions offer interesting tools for engagement, and it could grow their base. But j … | Continue reading
Luxury goods are special: they are scarce and expensive, and they earn us status with some folks because it shows that we paid more than we needed to. Luxury isn’t about quality, suitability or performance. Luxury isn’t a more accurate watch or a faster processor. Luxury is a mar … | Continue reading
Enrico Fermi found a paradox: If there’s intelligent life on other planets, why haven’t we heard from them yet? Perhaps the answer is this: Any civilization sufficiently advanced to travel great distances will have to work in community. This pro-social behavior, combined with the … | Continue reading
Even though it’s possible to design an oral thermometer that measures body temperature to a hundredth of a degree, there’s no reason to do so. In fact, 98.6 is overkill. 98 is enough information. More digits don’t give us more information, they simply distract or confuse us. The … | Continue reading
A powerful metaphor from a long hike: Every hiker is intimately aware of their backpack. They picked it out, choosing from dozens of options. They know which straps are loose and which are digging into their skin. They can tell you if it’s lopsided, and what is in each pocket. An … | Continue reading
Most people do the obvious thing, that’s why we call it obvious. A new product, idea or technology is rarely obvious, at least at first. So the work of scale is to be seen as inevitable. The stepwise process of becoming the obvious choice. Skipping steps requires insisting that w … | Continue reading
Create a document, several pages long, that explains who you are. What sort of learner are you? Do you have degrees or expertise? What sort of change are you making, who works with you, what are your standards? How do you want to engage? Periodically, upload the doc to the chat y … | Continue reading
If you want to make a change (or make a living) it might pay to find a topic that people hesitate to talk about. There’s enormous leverage in making the uncomfortable urgent enough to take action on. One of the easiest ways to improve public health and reduce cancer is by increas … | Continue reading
There’s “regular luck” and “earned luck.” When a stranger dies and leaves you $10,000,000, that’s regular luck. Undeserved, unearned, a bolt out of the blue. Someone is going to win the lottery and might be you. The other sort of luck happens after a lot of focus and effort. This … | Continue reading
Friendship is part of it, but it’s mutual forward motion that transforms a group. The shared journey and mutual respect of a cohort can change the arc of our work and our lives. When we’re in sync, we can find the courage to build something important. Fifteen years ago, I ran a t … | Continue reading
For many of us in the industrialized world, happiness is directly related to how big the container is. Overflowing vs. skimpy. Adequate vs. generous. Overloaded vs. slack to spare. We know that making the plate smaller helps us appreciate what we’re served. Get the bucket size ri … | Continue reading
There’s more software available for free than ever before, and a lot of it is really good. Handmade by real people, for real people. If we’re going to pay for it, it needs to be extraordinary. For the last few years, I’ve been using Superhuman, which costs me about a dollar a day … | Continue reading
A problem without a solution isn’t a problem, it’s a situation we have to live with. But most existing problems do have solutions. We just don’t like that solution. The solution might be challenging, or feel risky, or lead to an outcome we’re not happy about. It’s tempting to ann … | Continue reading
It doesn’t happen all at once. And it doesn’t work suddenly. A home pressure cooker doesn’t use more electricity than a hot pot. And it isn’t as fast as a microwave. Instead, it builds up over time, producing results with a surprisingly small amount of effort. We’re impatient, an … | Continue reading
We talk about networks but we are rarely clear about what we mean. A specific sort of network is the grid, and even that idea is complicated by two competing meanings. There’s the benign and powerful grid of peer-to-peer connection. Culture is built on this grid. This is friends, … | Continue reading
It’s easy to come to the conclusion that people with means and high cultural status choose things that are better. Organic vegetables instead of junk food. But there’s a long history of traditionally high-status cultural roles embracing demonstrably un-good choices. Things like b … | Continue reading
“I’m applying to work at Disney, do you know anyone who can give me a reference…” “My two partners and I are planning a new company, can we ask you for feedback on our business plan before we go out to raise a seed round?” “We’re moving to Centerville, which neighborhood should w … | Continue reading
When we win by having someone else lose, we set up a conflict. It’s clear, direct but not generative. But when we win by confronting our fear, everyone benefits. Often, people who choose to battle others are actually better off looking at their fear instead. | Continue reading
Our biggest commitments, the things we are most dedicated to, rarely pay us back in equal measure. That might be the point. | Continue reading
Convenience is seductive, and we trade precious things away for it all the time. Part of the reason it dominates our lives is that we only consider the cost once. After that, it continues to remind us of the benefits–the time and hassle and decisions we save. But convenience can … | Continue reading
This is the quickest and most direct way to manage. In the short run, compliance is predictable and might even be effective. Over time, it’s always outdone by the generative and resilient alternative of, “because it’s the course that most effectively helps us achieve our shared o … | Continue reading
On an airplane, we notice even tiny changes in acceleration (including direction) but we’re completely unaware that we’re traveling at hundreds of miles an hour. “Compared to what” is the unstated question that we ask ourselves, all the time. Consumers, employees and peers are un … | Continue reading
Start where you are. Start with what you’ve got. Start now. Now is the perfect moment. It only feels ‘fast’ if we’re rushing. Don’t rush. But act. With deliberate progress. | Continue reading
The next dish. It might be better than the one you have now. The presence of the next dish, its possibility, corrodes our experience. “Compared to what?” keeps needling us. The next email, the next text, the next blog post. It arrives, unbidden, unasked for. Here it comes. Next. … | Continue reading
Perhaps this metaphor will help: Nails are the easiest to use and require the least skill. Glue can make a more solid bond, but it’s often a one-way commitment–you can’t undo it without damage. And screws are the most resilient. They require good judgment in their selection and s … | Continue reading
Here’s a summary from a book industry newsflash about what’s selling right now: Dystopia, Dark Romance, Dark Literary, Horror, Paranormal, True Crime, Alternative Histories, Decline of Democracy, Humor, Digital Wellness, Cozy & Cute, and Escapism. Setting aside just how long it t … | Continue reading