The typical performance chart has two axes. And one is time. We can’t do anything at all about time, so there’s really one axis. How fast did your profits grow? How many followers did y… | Continue reading
It’s possible that you no longer need to get better at your craft. That your craft is just fine. It’s possible that you need to be braver instead. | Continue reading
The local retailer says, “I’m sitting here all day, with a limited selection and a paid staff, waiting for you to come and buy something I have in inventory. I’m paying rent, just… | Continue reading
Sniffing at the others who care is a form of virtue signalling. It’s also an ineffective way to create real change. “My Prius Hybrid gets 140 miles per gallon.” “My Tesla is… | Continue reading
That fan at the game, the one who was cheering the whole time… That audience member, the one that gave a long standing ovation after laughing through the whole show… And that team membe… | Continue reading
If you run a rush delivery company, expect that the customers will be rushed. If you run a health food restaurant, expect that your customers will care about the ingredients you use. If you run a p… | Continue reading
Better, I think, to spec for the best instead. It’s comforting to hire a contractor, give them a rough spec and hope for the best. Wish to be positively surprised. Leave room for lots of unex… | Continue reading
When I quit my job in 1986 and went out on my own, it was shortly after my picture had appeared in a small feature in a national magazine. My grandmother proudly kept a copy of the magazine (not th… | Continue reading
Large organizations seek to decrease variability. Starbucks wants the very best latte you buy from them to be exactly the same as the worst one. If you define a spec and work hard to meet it, you c… | Continue reading
Large organizations seek to decrease variability. Starbucks wants the very best latte you buy from them to be exactly the same as the worst one. If you define a spec and work hard to meet it, you c… | Continue reading
Put a bag of cookies in the break room and it might sit for days. Open the bag and leave it out, and within an hour, all the cookies will be gone. We are happy to take a tiny slice off the thing th… | Continue reading
I recently saw two men arguing about who got to use the urinal next. As a result, neither got what he wanted, and neither could honestly say that his day got better. The need to win every interacti… | Continue reading
Every element of the organization has a spec, a minimum required performance. Accounting has standards, so does the department that measures the air quality. Everything beyond spec is marketing. Th… | Continue reading
The only way to get initiative is to take it. It’s never given. And some people hesitate to take it, perhaps because they’re worried that we’ll somehow run out. We’re not go… | Continue reading
Your job might be a series of tasks. Tasks are work where money is traded for time and effort. You put in a fixed amount of time, expending effort along the way, and you get paid. In the end, tasks… | Continue reading
I called the front desk early in the morning. “Where’s the gym located?” It’s a big hotel. They have a thousand rooms, and they’re part of a chain. Still, I was surpri… | Continue reading
In all markets, the market leader gets an unfair advantage. That’s because casual and unsophisticated customers choose the leader because it feels easier and safer. The strategy, then, is not… | Continue reading
If we give an isolated community access to the internet, very quickly, the quality of life will improve. Time will be saved, research into proven solutions will produce value, and people will becom… | Continue reading
Security theater is a rule requiring you to take off your shoes when you get to the airport. It doesn’t actually catch anyone, it simply makes people feel more secure, and it allows those in … | Continue reading
Security theater is a rule requiring you to take off your shoes when you get to the airport. It doesn’t actually catch anyone, it simply makes people feel more secure, and it allows those in … | Continue reading
Four years at MIT cost about $250,000 all in. Or, you could engage in more than 2,000 of their courses on their site, for free. What’s the difference? When you do education, you pay tuition, … | Continue reading
Your anecdote isn’t true. I know it happened. I know that your experience, your feelings, your outcomes are real. And they’re yours. Statistics suffer when compared to anecdotes. Becaus… | Continue reading
That’s unlikely. If I’m lucky, I can glance at them. But just for a second or two. Our fears burn so bright that if we truly face them, we think we might be blinded. Of course, we may t… | Continue reading
Is there something you do every day that builds an asset for you? Every single day? Something that creates another bit of intellectual property that belongs to you? Something that makes an asset yo… | Continue reading
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 mo… | Continue reading
Halloween is a month away. And over the next few weeks, a lot of cheap chocolate is going to get bought in preparation for the ringing doorbell. Cheap chocolate is made from beans picked by poor ki… | Continue reading
It’s worth remembering that if someone knows how to do something, that means, with sufficient effort, you could probably learn it too. You might not be willing to put in the time and effort, … | Continue reading
A checklist to get you started—you can either do the same thing or a different thing… More of the same Persist Get the word out Doing something different Change an element of what you do … | Continue reading
When anyone has the ability to announce breaking news, urgent updates, RIGHT NOW, steal attention and emergencies, then sooner or later, many will do just that. Attention is scarce, scarcer than ev… | Continue reading
That’s something worth building. Electricity is a ratchet with leverage. Once communities have access to a little electricity, a solar lantern, say, they quickly discover that they want/need … | Continue reading
But in fact, just about everything is a portrait. It’s our temporary understanding of the world as it is, not an actual experience of it. We see things through our filters, match them to our … | Continue reading
Democracy is a marketing problem. Health is a marketing problem. Climate change is a marketing problem. Growing your organization, spreading the word, doing work you’re proud of–these a… | Continue reading
Supposedly, going against the grain is really difficult. It turns out, though, that it’s far more dangerous to cut with a rip saw, a blade that goes along the grain. It often leads to a botch… | Continue reading
It’s pretty easy to know what you’re doing when you’re doing something that you’ve done before. Follow the path. It’s a lot more difficult when the task ahead is not q… | Continue reading
It’s absurd to trim trees like this. There are high power lines. There’s a helicopter. There are cables. Do the math. It turns out, apparently, that a swinging chainsaw is far safer tha… | Continue reading
The optimists who got excited about the ‘everyone has a microphone’ promise of the Net 20 years ago overlooked two flaws in human nature: First, given sufficient reward (money, attentio… | Continue reading
There’s just one way to become one: Do something creative. It’s a little bit like leaders. What they have in common is that they lead. Simply begin. | Continue reading
It’s tempting to claim the role of artist. Once you’re an artist, you’re free. Free to work your own hours, free to make what you want to make, free to express yourself. Except no… | Continue reading
Going faster increases the chances that you’ll find a landmark and become unlost. This rule has a corollary though: If you’re going the wrong direction, turn around. PS on… | Continue reading
If you’ve ever bought a mattress online, or a private label product from Amazon, you’ve experienced the value created by the last step. That mattress company didn’t make the mattr… | Continue reading
You can go to work offended by the idea that you might traffic in placebos. You can be certain that your aromatherapy, jewelry store, engineering consulting, stereo gear or home improvement practic… | Continue reading
The linchpin faces a fork in the road: You can try to make your job have more. More impact, more responsibility, more leverage. Or you can be industrial about it and try to have your job involve le… | Continue reading
Art is a human activity. It is the creation of something new, something that might not work, something that causes a viewer to be influenced. Art uses context and culture to send a message. Instead… | Continue reading
Not the limit of our skills. Not the limit of our knowledge. Not the limit of our physical capacity… It’s almost always the limits of our internal narrative. Our guts. Our willingness t… | Continue reading
That’s most of what we’ve got. We don’t actually remember much of what happens. Instead, we get what we’ve rehearsed. If we fail to rehearse, the memory will fade. And if th… | Continue reading
Tactics are great. Execution is essential. But a smart strategy is like having the wind at your back. It makes everything easier. Once we dig in on our tactics and invest in execution, it gets emot… | Continue reading
That’s precisely why you’re stuck. Every decision you’ve made, all the status quo you’re holding on to, the fears you have–they’re all reasonable. This is a matu… | Continue reading
People say that as if there’s something wrong with it. In fact, once you become an acquired taste, then those that have done the hard work to like what you make are likely to talk about it, l… | Continue reading