Seth Godin
The paradox of promises in the age of word of mouth
Word of mouth is generated by surprise and delight (or anger). This is a function of the difference between what you promise and what you deliver (see clever MBA chart to the right--->).
The thing is, if you promise very little, you don't get a chance to deliver because I'll ignore you. And if you promise too much, you don't get a chance to deliver, because I won't believe you...
Hence the paradox. The more you promise, the less likely you are to achieve delight and the less likely you are to earn the trust to get the gig in the first place. Salespeople often want you to allow them to overpromise, because it gets them through the RFP. Marketers, if they're smart, will push you (the CEO) to underpromise, since that's where the word of mouth is going to come from.
I have worked with someone who is very good at the promising part. She enjoys it. And when the promises don't work out, she's always ready with the perfect excuse. This is a great strategy if you have a regular job and the excuses are really terrific, but if you need internal or external clients, it gets old pretty fast. It certainly doesn't lead to the sort of word of mouth one is eager to encounter.
Surgeons have this problem all the time. They promise a complete, pain-free recovery and work hard to build up a positive expectation, particularly for elective surgery. And the entire time you're in bed, in pain, unable to pee, all you can do is hate on the doctor.
This is one reason why recovering from failure is such a great opportunity. If you or your organization fail and then you pull out all the stops to recover or make good, the expectation/delivery gap is huge. You don't win because you did a good job, you win because you so dramatically exceeded expectations.
The new dynamics of book publishing
In May, I did a talk for the Independent Book Publishers (site). The link above gives you a free and slightly abridged recording of the talk, probably of interest if you are focused on how industries are making (or not) the shift to the new rules of a digital age.
The new dynamics of book publishing
Self marketing might be the most important kind
Self marketing might be the most important kind
What story do you tell yourself about yourself?
I know that marketers tell stories. We tell them to clients, prospects, bosses, suppliers, partners and voters. If the stories resonate and spread and seduce, then we succeed.
But what about the story you tell yourself?
Do you have an elevator pitch that reminds you that you're a struggling fraud, certain to be caught and destined to fail? Are you marketing a perspective and an attitude of generosity? When you talk to yourself, what do you say? Is anyone listening?
You've learned through experience that frequency works. That minds can be changed. That powerful stories have impact.
I guess, then, the challenge is to use those very same tools on yourself.
Is everything perfect?
Is everything perfect?
Greetings have traditionally been an acknowledgment of the other person. "I see you." "Hello." "Greetings."
Then, we moved on to, "how are you?" or even, "how's business?"
Recently, though, our performance-obsessed, live-forever society has morphed the greeting into something like, "please list everything going on in your life that isn't as perfect as it should be."
In a business setting, this causes bad prioritization decisions. The owner of the bar says to the manager, "how was the night?" and the response is, "the cash register came up $8 short." Suddenly, there's an urgent problem to be solved. How to replace the eight dollars and who do we fire?
If the question instead had been, "what's up?" (as in literally up) the answer might have been, "well, there's a big party at table 12, another going away party. They've been buying champagne all night. And Mary told me she set a new record for tips. And the new beer we added on tap is..."
Highlighting what's working helps you make that happen more often.
Perfect is overrated. Perfect doesn't scale, either.
I'm not proposing you endorse theft or ignore the bad news. But it's clear that one more going away party on table 12 is going to make up for that one piece of bad news, every time.
The management of signals
The management of signals
There are two things we can get better at:
1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.
2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren't, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they're not.
Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what's important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.
Easier said than done.
A hierarchy of failure worth following
A hierarchy of failure worth following
Not all failures are the same. Here are five kinds, from frequency = good all the way to please-don't!
FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.
FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.
FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.
FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.
FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.
The thing is, in their rush to play it safe and then their urgency to salvage everything in the face of an emergency, most organizations do precisely the opposite. They throw their customers or their people under the bus ("we had no choice") but rarely take the pro-active steps necessary to fail quietly, and often, in private, in advance, when there's still time to make things better.
Better to have a difficult conversation now than a failed customer interaction later.
Information about information
The first revolution hit when people who made stuff started to discover that information was often as valuable as the stuff itself. Knowing where something was or how it performed or how it interacted with you can be worth more than the item itself.
Frito Lay dominates the snack business because of the information infrastructure they built on top of their delivery model. 7 Eleven in Japan dominated for a decade or more because they used information to change their inventory. Zara in Europe is an information business that happens to sell clothes.
You've probably already guessed what's now: information about information. That's what Facebook and Google and Bloomberg do for a living. They create a meta-layer, a world of information about the information itself.
And why is this so valuable? Because it compounds. A tiny head start in access to this information gives you a huge advantage in the stock market. Or in marketing. Or in fundraising.
Many people and organizations are contributing to this mass of data, but few are taking advantage of the opportunity to collate it and present it to people who desperately need it. Think about how much needs to be sorted, compared, updated and presented to people who want to choose or learn or trade on it.
The race to deliver this essential scalable asset isn't over, it's just beginning.
Information about information
Upstream and downstream
Upstream and downstream
Most of the time, we think of our job as a set of tasks that take place in a ---> [box] <---.
It turns out, though, that if we go upstream and alter the stuff that comes to us, it's a lot easier to do great work. And if we go downstream and teach people how to work with what we created, the final product is better as well. Now, it's more of a --> [ box ] <--.
A doctor can consider her work in the box of the examining room. But if she figures out how to get people to quit smoking before they come in, her results are better. If she figures out how to get people to take their meds after they leave, same thing.
A designer who receives a better project brief will deliver better work. A manufacturer who figures out how to teach users to use the object properly will get better word of mouth...
Marketers, of course, can have the biggest box of all. So the stuff we think of as 'marketing' can be altered long before the person ever sees an ad, and have an impact long after they've got the product.
The challenge lies in spending a lot of time and money on the upstream and downstream parts of the work, instead of always assuming that your [box] is just what happens inside your cubicle, or as a direct result of your actions.
Two kinds of schooling
Two kinds of schooling
Type 1. You can take a class where you learn technique, facts and procedures.
Type 2. You can take a class where you learn to see, learn to lead and learn to solve interesting problems.
The first type of teaching isn't particularly difficult to do, and it's something most of us are trained to absorb. The first type of schooling can even be accomplished with self-discipline and a Dummies book. The first type of class is important but not scarce.
The second kind, on the other hand, is where all real success comes from. It's really tricky to find and train people to do this sort of teaching, and anytime you can find some of it, you should grab it.
The sad thing is that we often conflate the two. We think we're hiring someone to do the second type, a once in a lifetime teacher, someone who will change the outlook of stellar students. But then we give them rules and procedures and feedback that turn them into a type 1 teacher.
Even worse, we often pay as if we're getting the scarce and valuable type 2 teachers but we end up hiring and managing type 1 teachers.
I spend a lot of time in colleges and other teaching institutions. Over and over I see the same thing--organizations that have painted themselves into a corner, keeping themselves busy but refusing to do the difficult work of teaching people to see. The dean of one college was so stuck in his type-1ness that he couldn't even bring himself to participate in a session run by a gifted type 2 teacher.
Is there anything more important to you and your organization (or your kids or your town) than figuring out how to obtain and share the wisdom that real teaching can deliver?
