What does it mean to be creative?
You could watch the most non-creative, linear-thinking, do-it-by-the-book cop work to solve a crime and you'd be amazed at how creative her solutions seem to be. Creative for you, because you've never been in that territory before, it's all new, it's all at the edges. Boring for her, because it's the same thing she does every time. It's not creative at all.
For me, creativity is the stuff you do at the edges. But the edges are different for everyone, and the edges change over time. If you visualize the territory you work in as an old Boston Bruins sweatshirt, realize that over time, it stretches out, it gets looser, the edges move away. Stuff that would have been creative last year isn't creative at all today, because it's not near the edges any more.
This gives you two useful tactics for problem solving:
1. If you want to be creative, understand that you'll need to get to the edges, even if the edges have moved. Being creative means immediately going to the place the last person left off.
2. If you are "not creative," if you are the sort of person that gets uncomfortable being creative or has been persuaded you're not capable, don't worry about it. Just stretch the sweatshirt in your spare time, watch the creative things other people have done, keep up with the state of the art. Then, when you do your "not creative" thing, most people will think it's pretty creative indeed.
January 27, 2009
Doing goal setting with friends and colleagues is always motivating and invigorating for me. You hear things ranging from, "I want to help this village get out of poverty," or "I want to double our market share," or "I want to be financially independent."
What you rarely hear is, "I don't want to fail," "I don't want to look stupid," or "I don't want to make any mistakes."
The problem is that those goals are really common, and left unsaid, they dominate. If your goal is not to be called on in class, that's a largely achievable goal, right?
Think about how often your goal at a conference or a meeting or in a project is, "don't screw up!" or "don't make a fool of yourself and say the wrong thing." These are very easy goals to achieve, of course. Just do as little as possible. The problem is that they sabotage your real goals, the achievement ones.
It's not stupid to have a stated goal of starting several ventures that will fail, or asking three stupid questions a week, or posting a blog post that the world disagrees with. If you don't have goals like this, how exactly are you going to luck into being remarkable?
January 26, 2009
It’s out this week. I strongly recommend you give it a look.
January 25, 2009
The box just said "Scharffen Berger" on the return label.
I opened it up and there was a simple hand-written note. It said, "Seth, have you ever tasted a chocolate bar like this before? Regards, Raymond Major." His business card was stapled to the note. His title? Senior Staff Scientist.
Attached: exactly one three-ounce chocolate bar, in grey cardboard. The bar itself was wrapped in a waxed-paper like substance, hand folded with a label.
And the chocolate (Tome-Acu 68%) was mind-blowingly good.
Handmade, anticipated and wonderful. From a division of Hershey!
So, what exactly happened here?
- They know me. I met John, the founder, years and years ago, and he gave me a plant tour and the story of his product blew me away.
- I read John's book. He was true and authentic and inspiring.
- I wrote something negative about an engagement with their customer service folks on my blog and they reached out and we had a great conversation on the phone.
- The note they sent was hand written.
- It was from not just a scientist, but from the senior scientist.
- The chocolate was clearly a limited, special item.
- And, yes, the chocolate was terrific. Better than terrific.
So, you ask, what if I (the marketer) don't know the blogger or the reporter? What if I don't have permission? What if they don't care about me? What if my product is mediocre?
Alas, the answer isn't good. The answer is: tough. Is this an unreasonable expectation? Lengths too great to have to go to? Well, it's cheaper than buying an ad on the Super Bowl or even buying shelf space at the Safeway.
The way to win is to make things that tiny (or large!) groups want to talk about, or care about, or engage in. That's the story that spreads.
PS as I finished writing this, I got a letter in the mail at home from the local Mexican restaurant. They probably purchased the address of every single person in town from a mailing list broker. It's cheap. Add a stamp and a return address that's interesting (why are they writing to me) and I'll open it.
It was a letter apologizing to the town for how lousy the restaurant had been since it opened three months ago and how hard they were working to fix it and how much they appreciated everyone's feedback. It had a real name at the bottom, a phone number and a $10 gift certificate attached. Wow.
I got a note yesterday that said, "I'll be curious to know if it's possible to succeed and to stay clean as I see a lot of dirty "crooks" out there. I am trying to work with good ethics, but I see a lot of successful people talking/teaching "black Hats" strategies that scare me."
Spiritual business is an interesting concept. Is what you do all day at work part of who you are? Is it possible to be a deceitful crook all week but a good person on the weekend?
Can you succeed financially by acting in an ethical way?
I think the Net has opened both ends of the curve. On one hand, black hat tactics, scams, deceit and misdirection are far easier than ever to imagine and to scale. There are certainly people quietly banking millions of dollars as they lie and cheat their way to traffic and clicks.
On the other hand, there's far bigger growth associated with transparency. When your Facebook profile shows years of real connections and outreach and help for your friends, it's a lot more likely you'll get that great job.
When your customer service policies delight rather than enrage, word of mouth more than pays your costs. When past investors blog about how successful and ethical you were, it's a lot easier to attract new investors.
The Net enlarges the public sphere and shrinks the private one. And black hats require the private sphere to exist and thrive. More light = more success for the ethical players.
In a competitive world, then, one with increasing light, the way to win is not to shave more corners or hide more behavior, because you're going against the grain, fighting the tide of increasing light. In fact, the opposite is true. Individuals and organizations that can compete on generosity and fairness repeatedly defeat those that only do it grudgingly.
January 24, 2009
January 23, 2009
Call your customers. Or write to them.
"I know that times might be tough for you. Is there anything I can do to pitch in and help?"
You'll end up doing a lot for your customers. Which is a wonderful privilege. Even for those that don't reciprocate.
I'll be doing a rare public event in London, UK in February.
All the details and tickets from the sponsor have just been posted. Hope to see you there.
January 22, 2009
- See (really see) what’s possible
- Know specifically what you want to achieve
- Make good decisions
- Understand the tactics to get things done and to change minds
- Earn the trust and respect of the people around you
It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4.
The reason it’s so difficult for people in traditional industries to embrace new models online is that the transition isn’t structured in an orderly way.
The new business isn’t the same as the old business, just with computers.
People look at PCWorld magazine and they say, "that will never work online." And they’re right, it won’t, because the business is organized around print and monthly or weekly editions and display ads and a sales force and …
"Our business will never work online."
And they’re right.
But Mashable works just great online. And so does Lifehacker.
"But that’s a special case!"
Exactly. But the New Yorker was a special case too. There are plenty of topics that couldn’t support a magazine the way the magical mix of this magazine could.
Real estate online is a special case. Classifieds. Coaching. Commerce. Directories. In fact, everything online is a special case, different rules, different economics, different expectations.
January 21, 2009
