My first real job was making educational computer games–thirty years ago. In those days, we had to deal with floppy drives bursting into flame and hardware platforms that had a useful life of two years, not two decades. A lot has settled down, but there's a ton left to do.
1. I know you're not backing up often enough… no one does. But computers should be smart enough that you don't have to. I stopped backing up by using Dropbox instead. I keep every single data file in my dropbox, and it's automatically duplicated in the cloud, and then my backup computer (in the scheme of losing a week or more of work, a backup computer is a smart thing) has a mirror image of all my stuff.
2. Removing features to make software simpler doesn't always make it better. You could, for example, make a hammer simpler by removing the nail puller on the other side. But that makes a useful tool less useful.
The network effect, combined with the low marginal cost of software, means that there's a race to have 'everyone' use a given piece of software. And while that may make business sense, it doesn't always make a great tool. I'm glad that the guys who make Nisus chose powerful over popular.
The argument goes that making software powerful rarely pays off, because most users refuse to take the time to learn how to use it well. The violin and the piano, though, seem to permit us to create amazing music, if we care enough. The trick is to be both powerful and simple, which takes effort.
3. It's entirely possible to find great software that isn't from a huge company. Products like Sketch deserve a wide audience, and just as a successful market for indie music makes all music better, indie software is worth using (and paying for).
4. Paying for tools is a smart choice. If programs like Keynote and Mail.app were actually profit centers for Apple, I would imagine that we'd have far better support, fewer long-term bugs and and most of all, a vibrant, ongoing effort to make them better. (Not to mention neglected and abandoned services like Feedburner and Google Reader).
The irony is that the first generation of PC software marketing was an endless cash grab, overpriced software that was updated too often, merely to generate upgrade fees to feed a behemoth. In the age of network effects, we swung too far in the direction of free software and the lack of care that sometimes comes with the beggars-can't-be-choosers mindset.
I wonder what happens if organizations that buy in bulk insist on buying software worth paying for?
5. Most of all, software as a whole just isn't good enough. There have been a few magical leaps in the evolution of software, products and operating systems that dramatically improved productivity and yes, joy among users. But given how cheap (compared to cars, building materials or appliances) it is to revamp and reinvent software, and how urgent it is to create tools that increase the quality of what we make, we're way too complacement.
Fix all bugs. Yes, definitely. But more important, restate the minimum standards for good enough to be a lot higher than they are.
We need better design, more rigor and most of all, higher aspirations for what our tools can do.
January 14, 2015
If you think your organization needs a bigger marketing budget, maybe you just need to be less average instead.
January 13, 2015
Cancelled
Fired
Called out
Humiliated
Embarrassed
Crashed
Unfunded
Indicted though innocent
Typos found
Unappreciated
Late
Underbid
Found out
Outclassed
Defeated
Satired
Criticized
Out of cash
In debt
Underdressed
Out of tune
Underwhelmed
Out of your league
Unprepared
Feel free to avoid all of these things by doing nothing, by second guessing yourself, by being your own worst critic, always ready to describe the apocalypse waiting on just the other side of shipping.
Either that or you can risk the narrative and risk the fear and make a difference.
January 12, 2015
That thing you're launching: what if it fails to function?
The challenge of doing something for a crowd in real time is that if it doesn't work, you're busted. You have no way to alert people, to spread out demand, to reprocess inquiries.
Batch processes gives you a fallback. If the first printing is a little off, you can fix it in the second (if the first printing is small enough). When you know the email address of the people you're dealing with, for example, you can easily reroute people and change expectations. If you know how to contact the ticket holders, you can let them know in advance that the theater roof is under repair. You can fix things today and get them right for tomorrow without disappointing a mob of people in real time.
There's a huge difference between interacting with customers one at a time, one after another, and learning as you go, vs. interacting with everyone, all at once, in parallel.
The arrogance of most web launches (from hip new sites to healthcare signups) is that they assume that nothing will go wrong if they do it live. So they try to do it live for everyone, at once.
When someone you have no data on bounces, you have no way to ask them to come back.
The only part of a launch that should be live is the part that benefits from being live. Everything else ought to be in a batch, reserved, asynchronous and capable of recovery.
It's a journey, not an event, and working in asynchronous batches is a smart way to stay resilient.
January 11, 2015
If you survey 10,000 of your customers by email and 200 reply, what will you learn from the responses?
You will probably not get a statistically accurate presentation of how your customers feel. What you will get is an accurate understanding of how customers who answer email surveys feel. Two different things.
People who vote are not always the same as people who answer surveys. People who post Yelp reviews are not the same as people who buy from you. Customers who complain are not the same as all customers.
Sure, sometimes the groups are similar enough that it's okay to use one as a proxy for the other. But often, that's just not the case, and we mistake proximity and noisiness for accuracy.
January 10, 2015
Everyone has a comfort zone.
Worth considering: How hard (and how often) are you willing to work to get out of it?
You can turn that into a habit if you choose.
January 9, 2015
Perhaps this is what your organization desires: To be more trusted, to have people willing to pay more, choose you more often, expect more…
Of course, over time, good work will lead to higher expectations. And the paradox is that this will sooner or later lead to disappointment. Raised expectations tend to be exponential… they grow faster and faster.
Raise expectations forever and even Superman is going to let us down.
One possible path is to do what Bob Dylan has done several times—destroy them. Veer left when everyone expects you to veer right. Launch something that makes no sense. Reset expectations instead of raising them.
Hard to do if you're a public company, but probably worth considering if you're a human intent on making your art.
January 8, 2015
Spend 10,000 times as much time and money on your brand as you spend on your logo.
Your logo is a referent, a symbol, a reminder of your brand.
But your brand is a story, a set of emotions and expectations and a stand-in for how we think and feel about what you do.
Nike spent $250 to buy a swoosh. Probably a little more than they needed to. But the Nike brand, the sum total of what we think and believe and feel about what this company makes–it's now worth billions.
The swoosh is just pixels.
January 7, 2015
Most people can’t go first, most people don’t want to go last. Most people do what most people do. That’s obvious. A tautology.
The bell shape of product adoption is almost directly the opposite of what we’d guess based on a rational worldview of adoption being driven only by quality or features or head-to-head testing. It contradicts the dreams of creators, who imagine that the grand opening is truly grand, and that, armed with a better mousetrap, the world is beating a path…
No, most people wait. For most people.
Worth a pause to understand that this is literally true, obviously true, and not a criticism of those who choose to go first nor of those who wait.
The marketer’s challenge, then, is to work hard to get to the point where most people (in the community) feel that most people are accepting the new product or service. Outbound marketing is largely the act of alerting the right people in the community at the right time… to keep most people in sync (which is our goal as most people).
In late December, we shipped the 50,000th copy of my new book, What To Do When It’s Your Turn. We reached that level in less than five weeks, which is really gratifying. I’m thrilled, and many thanks to those who leapt first.
Of course, most people haven’t seen it yet. Even though that’s a huge start for a book, most people, appropriately, wait. (Here’s an interesting growth chart of cumulative sales.)
A friend, someone who has been reading this blog every day for years, came over for coffee last week. “Have you seen my new book?” I asked. She sheepishly admitted she hadn’t, for all the good reasons.
Which makes perfect sense.
I was thrilled to see the look in her eyes when she picked up the book (and wouldn’t put it down). Her feedback mirrored many of the comments I’ve heard since the book started shipping.
More people (not quite most, but more) are starting to seek out a copy now. Because it’s time.
It’s your turn.
PS here is the new Seth Godin Instagram page, curated by Winnie Kao, which might spark you into sharing some pithiness. Thanks!
January 6, 2015
Often, the most important work we do doesn't bring a guaranteed, specific result. Usually, the result of any given action on our part is unknown.
Uncertainty implies a range of possible outcomes.
But a range of results, all uncertain, does not mean you are exposing yourself to risk. It merely means you're exposing yourself to an outcome you didn't have a chance to fall in love with in advance.
A simple example: the typical high school student applying to a range of colleges has very little risk of getting in nowhere. Apply to enough schools that match what you have to offer, and the odds are high indeed you'll get in somewhere. Low risk but a very high uncertainty about which college or colleges will say yes.
That's not risky. That's uncertain. It takes fortitude to live with a future that's not clearly imagined, but it's no reason not to apply.
Another example: If you speak to 100 people, it's uncertain which 40 people will be impacted by what you say. But the risk that you will resonate with no one is small indeed.
The question to ask every organization, manager, artist or yourself is, "are you hesitating because you're not sure the future will match your specific vision, or is there truly a project-endangering risk here?"
A portfolio of uncertain outcomes is very different from a large risk.
HT to Bert Spangenberg.
January 5, 2015
