Sometimes, we don't sell what we've got, we sell what could be. Book publishers, for example, buy non-fiction book proposals ($10 million for Bruce Springsteen's autobiography) not the finished book. The finished book almost never matches what they were hoping... | Continue reading
There's a gap between where you are and where you want to be. Many gaps, in fact, but imagine just one of them. That gap--is it fuel? Are you using it like a vacuum, to pull you along, to inspire... | Continue reading
It's entirely possible that people aren't listening closely to you any more. There's so much noise, so much clutter... hoping that customers, prospects, vendors and co-workers will stop what they're doing and listen closely and carefully enough to figure out... | Continue reading
Would you rather be the smartest person in the room or the least informed? If you're the smartest, you can generously teach others. On the other hand, if you're the least informed and hungry to level up, you couldn't ask... | Continue reading
Freedom doesn't mean no responsibility. In fact, it requires extra responsibility. Freedom is the ability to make a choice, and responsibility is required once you make that choice. Fairness isn't a handout. Fairness is the willingness to offer dignity to... | Continue reading
Is there a conflict? Does holding something back as you polish it make it more likely that you'll create something important? I don't think so. There's no apparent correlation. Instead, what we see is that, all things being equal, polished... | Continue reading
An open note to Google To the gmail team, You've built a tool for a billion people. Most of my blog readers use it every day, and so do I. Thanks for creating an effective way for people to connect... | Continue reading
Are successful entrepreneurs made or born? We’d need to start with an understanding of what an entrepreneur is. They’re all over the map, which makes the question particularly difficult to navigate. There’s the 14-year-old girl who hitches a ride to... | Continue reading
You will never regret offering dignity to others. We rarely get into trouble because we overdo our sense of justice and fairness. Not just us, but where we work, the others we influence. Organizations and governments are nothing but people,... | Continue reading
Most sushi restaurants serve a green substance with every roll. But it's not wasabi, it's a mix of horseradish and some other flavorings. Real wasabi costs too much. The thing is, if you grew up with this, you're used to... | Continue reading
What's it for? A graph only exists to make a point. Its purpose is not to present all the information. Its purpose is not to be pretty. Most of all, its purpose is not, "well, they told me I needed... | Continue reading
Every history student knows about the tragedy of the commons. When farmers shared grazing land, no one had an incentive to avoid overgrazing, and without individual incentives, the commons degraded until it was useless. We talk about this as if... | Continue reading
It's very difficult to reason with someone if their hair is on fire. Customer service (whether you're a school principal, a call center or a consultant) can't begin until the person you're working with believes that you're going to help... | Continue reading
Charisma doesn't permit us to lead. Leading gives us charisma. | Continue reading
You never do. Instead, you get paid what other people think you're worth. That's an empathic flip that makes it all make sense. Instead of feeling undervalued or disrespected, you can focus on creating a reputation and a work product... | Continue reading
When confronted with too many good options, it's easy to get paralyzed. The complaint is that we don't know what to do next, because we're pulled in many good directions--and doing one thing with focus means not doing something else.... | Continue reading
We do this in two ways: The first is refusing to be clear and precise about what the mission is. Avoiding specifics about what we hope to accomplish and for whom. Being vague about success and (thus about failure). After... | Continue reading
It's not unusual for something to be positioned as the high performance alternative. The car that can go 0 to 60 in three seconds, the corkscrew that's five times faster, the punch press that's incredibly efficient... The thing is, though,... | Continue reading
Of course, you have one. We all do. A theory about everything. You're waiting for 7:20 train into the city. Your theory is that every day, the train comes and brings you to work. Today, the train doesn't come. That's... | Continue reading
The creation of worthwhile work is a duet. The creator has to do her part, but so does the customer. One of the best airport restaurants I've ever encountered breaks my first rule of airport eating. The sushi bar at... | Continue reading
One thing that's often taught in amateur internet marketing school is the idea of keyword stuffing. List every possible thing that someone might want you to do on your website, so if they type that in, they'll find you. It's... | Continue reading
The fourth session of The Marketing Seminar is open for enrollment today. No shortcuts, no magic spells, no secrets. Merely an effective, day by day approach to making a difference in the new year. A community of leaders, freelancers, managers... | Continue reading
Most of us have two speeds. There's the grind, the day after day, a marathon, work work work. And there's the recovery, the sleep in, Netflix and chill zombie state that we compartmentalize into a day like today. But what... | Continue reading
Even though it's usually at the end, the acknowledgments are often the most important part of a book. This year, thousands of people have helped. They've inspired those they engaged with, built things that mattered, gracefully handled pain and loss,... | Continue reading
You can't make an hourglass with a boulder. But break the boulder into sufficiently small bits of sand, and you can tell time. You wouldn't want to eat a baked loaf of ice cream, mustard, fish, bread, capers and cheese.... | Continue reading
I bought a CD yesterday. That didn't used to be news. I used to buy a CD every week, week after week, year after year. It adds up. Hi-rez streaming changed that habit for me, but it took about a... | Continue reading
The volatility of bitcoin turns the people who own it into addicts. At any given moment, it's up $100 or down a thousand. When it's up, you think you're brilliant, that you somehow had something to do with it. And... | Continue reading
Next year is almost here. And doing what you did this year probably isn’t going to be sufficient. That’s because you have more to contribute than you did this year. You have important work worth sharing. To reach your goals,... | Continue reading
No new costs, no new machines, no new resources. Just smarter. Smarter about the process, about the effects, about planning. Smarter about leadership, about management, about measurement. How much is smarter worth? In my experience, smarter is almost always a... | Continue reading
It scales better than competitiveness, frustration, pettiness, regret, revenge, merit (whatever that means) or apathy. Kindness ratchets up. It leads to more kindness. It can create trust and openness and truth and enthusiasm and patience and possibility. Kindness, in one... … | Continue reading
Luxury goods are built on a foundation of waste. Using the center cut. Extra effort, often unseen. More space, more resources, more energy than is needed. The front lawn is a luxury good, a sign that you don't need to... | Continue reading
This is much better than, "start big, start later." One advantage is that you don't have to start perfect. You can merely start. | Continue reading
This or that, one or the other, it doesn't matter. It's actually possible that it just doesn't matter. A choice, but not a decision. We have to make choices like this every single day. What color, among three colors which... | Continue reading
For a culture that spends so much time and money buying things, you'd think we'd be more excited when someone tries to sell us something. But we're not. The semantics are important here. What we really mean is, "are you... | Continue reading
In a competitive business like the local taco shop, here's how it's supposed to work: Keep the place clean Hire friendly staff Make better tacos Offer a fun, connected, even memorable experience What often happens instead is that you coin... | Continue reading
If you ran the local 5 and 10 cent store, you could count on a steady stream of customers to buy your knick knacks, notions and bobbins. After all, you were the only game in town. And if you were... | Continue reading
Culture moves in two ways. Open and closed. If you're a teacher, in business, a politician, a parent, a leader, an oligarch, a media mogul, an oil baron, a salesperson or a marketer, you need to make a choice, a... | Continue reading
The hard part is "steady." Anyone can go slow. It takes a special kind of commitment to do it steadily, drip after drip, until you get to where you're going. | Continue reading
Want to go visit a nudist colony? I don't know, what's it like? You know, a lot of people not wearing clothes. Show me some pictures, then I'll know. Well, actually, you won't. You won't know what it's like merely... | Continue reading
"Go with your gut," is occasionally good advice. More often, though, it's an invitation to indulge in your fear or to avoid the hard work of understanding the nuance around us. Better advice is, "invest in making your gut smarter."... | Continue reading
What you say is not nearly as important as what we hear. Which means that the words matter, and so does the way we say them. And how we say them. And what we do after we say them. It... | Continue reading
The crowd doesn't understand this. They're always looking for a shortcut that looks like a shortcut. If you're merely following them, you probably won't get anywhere interesting. It's the detours that pay off. [PS speaking of shortcuts that look like... | Continue reading
Change, real change, is the result of focused persistence. It's easy to get a bunch of people sort of excited for a little while. The challenging part, and the reason that change doesn't happen as often as it should is... | Continue reading
When we come to a fork in our personal or professional or civic life, we get to make a choice. And often that choice is easier when we have a benchmark, a model to follow. You can decide to get... | Continue reading
That's the difference between saying, "what would you like me to do," and "I think we should do this, not that." A point of view is the difference between a job and a career. It's the difference between being a... | Continue reading
Don’t hide your work Offer help Ask for help Tell the truth Upgrade your tools Don’t hide your mistakes Add energy, don't subtract it Share If you're not proud of it, don't ship it Know the rules of your craft... | Continue reading
Failure (and the fear of failure) gives you a chance to have a voice.... Because failure frightens people who care less than you do. | Continue reading
The original kind of lazy avoids hard physical work. Too lazy to dig a ditch, organize a warehouse or clean the garage. Modern lazy avoids emotional labor. This is the laziness of not raising your hand to ask the key... | Continue reading