How much does a puppy cost? At the shelter, maybe you need to put up a hundred dollar fee or donation. But that’s tiny compared to food, vet bills, time spent walking, chew toys, yak bones, bully sticks, groomers and those ridiculous dog costumes… perhaps $20,000 if you add it al … | Continue reading
Who’s it for? What’s it for? What change do you seek to make? What’s the hard part? If you could learn one skill that would help your project, what would it be? How can you tell if it’s working? Would it be easier if you had help? Would it be easier to make an impact […] | Continue reading
People always address now problems before they work on later problems. Every time. On one night in 2004, you might have had two choices. You could go out for a fancy dinner with friends, or you cou… | Continue reading
People always address now problems before they work on later problems. Every time. On one night in 2004, you might have had two choices. You could go out for a fancy dinner with friends, or you could buy one share of Google at their IPO. A couple of decades later, your dinner is … | Continue reading
It’s one of the best metaphors for life, marketing, achievement, community and possibility in all of TV cartooning. The coyote is always looking for a quick win. Because he doesn’t pers… | Continue reading
There are still pockets of our culture where a single individual can create and share a body of work that’s resonant and unique. I’ve become hooked on a podcast called A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. I’m now a backer on Patreon. The show is at https://500songs.com/ [My sugg … | Continue reading
The non-networked world was driven by push. The merchant stocked goods and waited for you to come buy them. The manufacturer made things in advance and advertised so you’d go buy them. The cab waited by the corner hoping you’d come out and hail it. The door-to-door salesperson we … | Continue reading
It’s one of the best metaphors for life, marketing, achievement, community and possibility in all of TV cartooning. The coyote is always looking for a quick win. Because he doesn’t persist with a plan that builds over time, all of his outlandish stunts add up to nothing but frust … | Continue reading
People often use the words to mean the same thing, but they’re different. If an exterminator puts signs and banners in front of a fancy house when they’re inside killing rats, that’s promotion. But it’s not good marketing. Marketing is creating the conditions for a story to sprea … | Continue reading
Smart is no longer memorization. It’s not worth much. Smart is no longer access to information. Everyone has that. Smart is: • Situational awareness • Clarity of goals • Good taste • Empathy for others • The ability to make decisions that further your goals The good news is that … | Continue reading
If you compare a Starbucks of ten years ago to a current one, they’re virtually the same. Compare this to the originals in Seattle, and the difference is startling. The same goes for the design of a typical McDonald’s. Apple launched the Mac with about a dozen full-time people wo … | Continue reading
For six years, if you wanted an electric car, you’d need to pay extra. It cost more than the regular kind. Of course, if you decided to buy one, you weren’t paying extra. You were buying sustainability, community awareness, cachet, status, safety, quiet and the feeling of being a … | Continue reading
Skepticism is a virtue. It requires a willingness to question conventional wisdom, and the guts to accept something after you discover that it’s actually true. Denialism, on the other hand, i… | Continue reading
Industries are often held together by unspoken hierarchies, signposts on the road to achievement. In the fancy parts of the book business, it’s not profit. Editors are often unaware of which books are truly profitable. They keep track of cultural impact, literary respect, the ide … | Continue reading
Skepticism is a virtue. It requires a willingness to question conventional wisdom, and the guts to accept something after you discover that it’s actually true. Denialism, on the other hand, is a willful rejection of reality. It’s safe and easy, and unproductive. Because there’s n … | Continue reading
Of course you’re interesting. There’s something about what you’ve done, what you say, how you show up in the world that’s worthy of interest. But that doesn’t mean that people are interested. We each have a noise in our heads, an agenda and something urgent that’s grabbing our at … | Continue reading
It’s not a luxury, it’s a choice. We can build slack into our lives. We can create cycles so that we don’t need to dance with a crisis around time on a regular basis. If there’s another train after this one, you don’t have to fret. If the deadline for the project is tomorrow, not … | Continue reading
There’s a time gap. Marketers raise expectations in order to get someone to sign up and try a product and service. And (hopefully) there’s satisfaction, delight and remarkability once t… | Continue reading
There’s a time gap. Marketers raise expectations in order to get someone to sign up and try a product and service. And (hopefully) there’s satisfaction, delight and remarkability once the organization actually delivers on what you promised. In between, the trough. You spend $400 … | Continue reading
Why would we want to wait until someone is perfect before we give them a chance to make things better? Each of us is part of a system, cogs in a process that rewards us for certain actions based on various inputs. When the system is broken, some of the most highly leveraged, awar … | Continue reading
Sometimes we’re not that good with time. If people got a hacking cough and a chronic disease an hour after smoking their first cigarette, it’s unlikely many people would smoke. If earthquakes happened a day after fracking for gas was tried, they would probably have stopped. And i … | Continue reading
It’s complicated. Because we made it complicated. Our culture is built on the principle that people are responsible for what they do. And then we spend time and effort diffusing the responsibility. If you work for a company and are just doing your job, are you responsible? What i … | Continue reading
In an episode of a podcast I really respect, three of the experts quoted used words that I was familiar with: Debunk, gaslighting and cult. These are powerful words, words with specific and evocative meanings. In all three cases, the people spoking used them ‘wrong.’ Being on a p … | Continue reading
As soon as we mechanize, measure and perfect something, it becomes far less interesting. There’s not a lot of discussion about which factory made your can of Coke, because they’re all the same. Implicit in the desire to have something handmade is that while it might be better tha … | Continue reading
Slowly then all at once For people who aren’t paying attention or actively involved, it can seem like cultural change is sudden. One big shift after another. In fact, cultural change always happens relatively slowly. Person by person, conversation by conversation. Expectations ar … | Continue reading
Make the choice to upgrade from Google. There are many good reasons to do so, and few downsides. Do it for your efficiency, for the health of the web and for the planet too. First, a quick clarific… | Continue reading
Make the choice to upgrade from Google. There are many good reasons to do so, and few downsides. Do it for your efficiency, for the health of the web and for the planet too. First, a quick clarification because this is confusing to many people: The thing you use to browse the int … | Continue reading
Ever since there have been taxes, people have been against paying them. If we define a tax as a “non-productive burden on our activities,” then it makes sense. And a payment doesn’t have to be to the government to be a tax. Is paying your electric bill a tax? Most people don’t mi … | Continue reading
The internet has provided all of us with an advanced class on using innuendo, piercing invective and anger to make a point with our writing. Now, instead of simply seething or ranting, just about anyone can write an email or a social media post that absolutely destroys someone el … | Continue reading
It’s a stepping-stone, not a compromise. The media and our culture push us to build something for everyone, to sand off the edges and to invest in infrastructure toward scale. But it turns ou… | Continue reading
It’s a stepping-stone, not a compromise. The media and our culture push us to build something for everyone, to sand off the edges and to invest in infrastructure toward scale. But it turns ou… | Continue reading
It’s a stepping-stone, not a compromise. The media and our culture push us to build something for everyone, to sand off the edges and to invest in infrastructure toward scale. But it turns out that quality, magic and satisfaction can lie in the other direction. Not because we can … | Continue reading
What if organizations had a division that simply did the bad stuff? The people who were responsible for creating system updates that slow down old computers, that cover up bad behavior by employees, the people who dump pollution into the river when no one is watching… If all the … | Continue reading
In 1993, when I was raising investment for one of the first internet companies, there weren’t any firms that specialized in this sort of thing. They were VCs from a different era, looking for the next Fedex or pharma company. I pitched dozens of them, and the answer was consisten … | Continue reading
Just because they’re easy to measure doesn’t mean they matter. If they appear in round numbers and are easily compared to those from others, we’re tempted to compare. But something that looks like a useful metric might not be. If you’re working with people who say they care about … | Continue reading
And that’s the paradox, because the closer possibility gets to reality, the more it engages with the unforgiving edges of the real world. As we begin to imagine something better, it’s important to have some insulation, room to believe and a chance to fill in the missing pieces. B … | Continue reading
This is a common sort of feedback/criticism/brainstorming, and it deserves a name. Show up toward the end, when most of the work has been done and it’s almost time to ship… Make a suggestion that would require changing a great deal of what’s been done. It might even be a good sug … | Continue reading
Krispy Kreme grew to become a doughnut behemoth in the US. The formula was simple: Scarce supply, high short-term taste satisfaction, and a dozen priced almost the same as just four. As a result, most people bought a dozen. But few could eat a dozen, and you can’t really save the … | Continue reading
The paradox of most tightly-knit communities is that they have an internal culture. And that culture often makes it difficult for a new person to join. It’s hard to have insiders if you don’t have outsiders. This is true for guilds of copy editors, fans of anime or branches of sc … | Continue reading
Well, not everyone. Just most people. When you do something that everyone else is doing, you’re likely to get what everyone else is getting. But in almost every population, “everyone” leaves out the people who go first, who change things, who are weird and who challenge the statu … | Continue reading
Data is everywhere, but turning it into information isn’t free. It takes focus, effort, consultation and time. More information is only useful if it helps you make a decision. Knowing the temperature on Saturn isn’t useful. Knowing it to even more accuracy is less useful. That’s … | Continue reading
When we’re close to an answer, there are two easy paths–name it, right now, and move on. Or avoid the answer and the responsibility that comes with it and stall. The best path is the third one. Wait for five beats. Kneejerk is not an admirable trait. A few breaths before we rip i … | Continue reading
Many knowledge-economy employees say that the main cause of dissatisfaction at work is lack of agency. Lack of control over our time and our decisions and our output is demeaning. It turns people into cogs. As the nature of work changes, innovation and small groups are adding far … | Continue reading
This is a great excuse for racing to the bottom. Corporations with power go ahead and take advantage of customers. “Well, if we don’t do it, a competitor will.” The public markets don’t require companies to throw out their principles to succeed. In fact, they reward companies tha … | Continue reading
Over the years, I’ve been sharing recipes as pages here on the blog, but never posting about them… you only got the link if I sent it to you. Well, your wait is over. For those seeking non-obvious but delicious and light-on-their-feet recipes, here you go: | Continue reading
If 2% of a population takes coordinated action, it makes a difference. If 5% do, it can change everything. This simple math also means that most people rarely do anything. Perhaps they don’t care. Perhaps they’re afraid to speak up and commit. And perhaps it’s simply easier to go … | Continue reading
The “free market” is a bit of a myth. Other than some board games, it doesn’t exist in real life. We eagerly regulate things like dangerous goods, fraud, insider trading, the warranty of merchantability, trademarks, dumping poison in the water supply, selling heroin to kids, etc. … | Continue reading
Some situations seem to call for an opponent. It might be our personality, the structure of the engagement or the way we’ve been taught to behave, but having an enemy seems to focus individuals and groups. For fifty years, America decided that the USSR was the enemy, and spent a … | Continue reading