I love books. A perfected technology that's five hundred years old, a chance to hold and share and actually feel the weight of an idea.
Here's a new project we've been working on:
Four years ago we produced the Behemoth, a giant of a book, containing years of my writing. Here's a photo of that book, along with an actual baby for scale. (Baby not included).
If you click to enlarge the picture, it will still be smaller than actual size, even if you have a big-screen monitor.
Four years later, we thought that it was time to make a new collectible book.
Collectibles are a special form of book, not merely the vessel for the idea, but something worth acquiring and holding onto:
- There will be exactly one printing. After that, no more. If you want a copy of the first book we did, you'll need to find someone who leapt and got one when it was on offer last time.
First chance is your best chance.
- It's something worth keeping out, glancing at now and then, earning a spot on your coffee table or bookshelf. It's more than 400,000 words, the best of the blog posts, articles and ebooks I've published since 2012, with a host of surprises as well. I hope it delights you, gives you a smile and makes you think.
The book will ship in time for the holidays at the end of the year, and it might be perfect for someone you care about (or for you).
We need to order the paper from the printer four months in advance. If you're interested, consider reserving a copy today. You don't have to decide if you want to buy one yet… we'll tell you more about the book as we build it, and then you can decide if you want a copy or not.
The reservation form is here. Reservations end on Sunday, July 17. Thanks for being up for going first.
July 11, 2016
An anonymous friend sends you two tickets to Hamilton, showing on Broadway tomorrow night.
On your way to the show, someone offers you $2,000 for the tickets. If you don't take the money and go to the show instead, how much did it cost you?
Or, consider the opposite:
An anonymous friend sends you $2,000.
You go for a walk in New York. On your way, you pass the theater where Hamilton is playing. You offer someone $2,000 for two tickets. If you end up buying the tickets, how much did they cost you?
It's pretty clear that the answer in both situations is exactly the same.
We make decisions (about what to do and what not to do) every single day. And we lie to ourselves all the time about costs.
If your team has been working for a year on a new project, and two weeks before your (expensive) launch, someone comes out with a competitive product that's better and cheaper, it means that it will cost you millions of dollars to fight your way to decent market share. Should you launch?
What if your team had only been working on it for a week?
Past expenses have nothing to do with future economic decisions.
Past profits have nothing to do with future decisions either.
That's not easy to embrace, but it's true.
Take a time-traveling Ben Franklin for a ride in your Prius and you'll give him a heart attack.
Meanwhile, you're driving down the highway while eating a muffin and texting at the same time.
We can clearly get used to more than we expect. We can learn to live a space station orbiting the Earth, and we can learn to sit in zazen meditation for 18 hours without moving.
It's not what you are capable of. It's what are you hoping to accomplish…
July 10, 2016
Every busy person has a pile.
That's what makes them busy.
And few busy people show up at work eagerly seeking more stuff they can add to the pile.
Which means that when you interrupt a busy person with your new project, new offer, emergency, need to know, memo, update, offer or invitation…
it's only going to be acted upon if it's worth being at the top of the pile.
Not worthy for you to put it there. Worthy for the person you're interrupting to put it there.
We need an empathy of attention. Attention is something that can't be refunded or recalled. Once it's gone, it's gone.
So, what have you done to earn it?
July 9, 2016
Do you click through to see the underlying data?
Are you aware of both the status quo and the argument against it?
Have you done the reading?
Are you comfortable asking, "why?"
Do you know how it works?
When someone knows more about something than you do, are you willing to catch up?
If the data makes it clear that you've taken the wrong position, are you eager to change your mind?
Are you interested in having a spirited conversation about the way things are, the way they were, they way they might become?
Can you set aside your worldview, at least for a few minutes, to consider an alternative way to look at the situation?
Along the way, Intellectual with a capital "I" got a bad reputation, the kind of person you want nothing to do with. But the small "i" kind, the person who cares enough to do the work… we need that, badly.
It's never been easier, but sometimes, it seems as if it's never been less popular.
July 8, 2016
Where did all the good jobs go?
They didn’t head to other countries or even down the street.
The good jobs I’m talking about are the ones that our parents were used to. Steady, consistent factory work. The sort of middle class job you could build a life around. Jobs where you do what you’re told, an honest day’s work, and get rewarded for it.
Those jobs. Where did they go?
The computer ate them.
For a hundred years, industrialists have had a clearly stated goal: standardized workers building standardized parts.
The assembly line was king, and the cruel logic of commodity economics pushed industrialists to improve productivity. They did this by improving the assembly line and, when they could, by paying workers less.
We invented public school to give the industrialists enough compliant workers. More supply meant that they could pay people less. More supply meant that the terms of the deal were in their hands.
But as the economy grew, the demand for workers for these jobs grew as well. It fueled a housing boom, a retail boom, a mass marketing boom.
The computer (and the network it enabled) turbocharged this race toward cheaper and faster.
The computer patiently measures and reports.
And the network creates value in connection.
The connection economy values the bridges between the nodes as much as the nodes themselves. Uber is worth more than the independent cars it connects.
So, the computer:
First, if you (the owner of the means of production, the boss, the industrialist) can find a supplier who can make a part for less, you will, and you did.
Second, once you can parcel work among your employees, you can measure them ever more closely and figure out how to maximize what you get (and minimize what you pay).
Third, computers make patient, consistent, cheap workers. When you can train a CNC machine or a spreadsheet to do a job better than a person can, odds are you will.
It’s difficult to overstate how powerful this three-part shift is.
125 years ago, the Singer sewing machine was one of the most complicated consumer products ever constructed. Every part in every machine was hand fitted to work. Replacement parts had to be hand tweaked to fit. Without craftsmen, there was no chance such a machine would exist.
Today, it’s possible to build just about anything merely by specifying existing parts, sending them to an assembly shop and accepting delivery. If any provider along the supply chain wants to charge extra for their commodity contribution, the creator can switch suppliers.
Today, the typical worker serves the computer. Only a few have computers that work for them.
Sure, there are still pockets of work that are essentially unmeasured or unique enough that they’re difficult to replace. This is where the remaining ‘good jobs’ exist.
For the rest, though, the first brick in the wall is clear: Either you serve the computer or it serves you. Either you are working on spec to create a commodity, or you are using new tools to create disruptions and to establish yourself as the linchpin, the one we can’t easily live without.
It happened to machine tool operators and to radiologists as well. It happened to travel agents, to lawyers, to the local shopkeeper as well.
And the network? What about the connection economy?
Some have voted to cut themselves off from the network. In some ways, this isolationism is understandable. In the race to the bottom, a key job of our government is to build rails, to set limits, to ensure that standards are met. On top of that, we must work to ensure citizens are trained for what they can do next. When that doesn’t happen, it’s easy to blame the network, because it acts like a leaky pipe, not satisfying the people who have signed up to use it.
But the connection economy creates value. Not for everyone, not all the time, but it gets adopted because it works. Pareto optimality can’t be repealed–people and organizations working together are more productive than those working alone.
Our short-term challenge isn’t to get the good jobs back. That’s truly unlikely. No, the challenge is to embrace a different form of education and training for a different world. And we must build and maintain a safety net as we go through this transition. People didn't ask for this revolution to happen.
[A surprising book on this topic, worth a read.]
It's not a matter of paying for it. In the winner-take-most world of the connection economy, there's plenty of wealth being amassed, and there's no reason to believe that society benefits from dramatic inequality. Creating pathways out of this inequality is what governments do when they're doing their job.
During the last forty years, as the computer and the network destroyed the system that our schools were built for, we (from the top down, and also, most definitely, from the bottom up) did almost nothing to change the schools we built.
Parents and the institutions they fund closed their eyes and only paid attention to SAT scores and famous colleges.
When a pre-employed person says, “I don’t know how to code and I’m not interested in selling,” we need to pause for a moment and think about what we built school for. When he continues, “I don’t really have anything interesting to say, and I'm not committed to making a particular change in the world, but I’m pretty good at following instructions,” we’re on the edge of a seismic shift in our culture. And not a positive one.
No, the good jobs aren’t coming back. But yes, there’s a whole host of a new kind of good job, one that feels fundamentally different from the old days. It doesn't look like a job used to look, but it's the chance of lifetime if we can shift gears fast enough.
You don't have to like this shift, but ignoring it, yelling about it, cutting ourselves off from it is a recipe for a downward spiral. It's an opportunity if we let it be one.
July 7, 2016
No one says, “I’m going to be unfair to this person today, brutal in fact, even though they don’t deserve it or it’s not helpful.”
Few people say, “I know that this person signed the contract and did what they promised, but I’m going to rip them off, just because I can.”
And it’s quite rare to have someone say, “I’m a selfish narcissist, and everyone should revolve around me merely because I said so.”
In fact, all of us have a narrative. It’s the story we tell ourselves about how we got here, what we’re building, what our urgencies are.
And within that narrative, we act in a way that seems reasonable.
To be clear, the narrative isn’t true. It’s merely our version, our self-talk about what’s going on. It’s the excuses, perceptions and history we’ve woven together to get through the world. It’s our grievances and our perception of privilege, our grudges and our loves.
No one is unreasonable. Or to be more accurate, no one thinks that they are being unreasonable.
That’s why we almost never respond well when someone points out how unreasonable we’re being. We don’t see it, because our narrative of the world around us won’t allow us to. Our worldview makes it really difficult to be empathetic, because seeing the world through the eyes of someone else takes so much effort.
It’s certainly possible to change someone’s narrative, but it takes time and patience and leverage. Teaching a new narrative is hard work, essential work, but something that is difficult to do at scale.
In the short run, our ability to treat different people differently means that we can seek out people who have a narrative that causes them to engage with us in reasonable ways. When we open the door for these folks, we’re far more likely to create the impact that we seek. No one thinks they’re unreasonable, but you certainly don’t have to work with the people who are.
And, if you’re someone who finds that your narrative isn’t helping you make the impact you seek, best to look hard at your narrative, the way you justify your unreasonableness, not the world outside.
July 6, 2016
Some people go through their day unaware that every action they pursue has more than its obvious intent.
A glance is worth a thousand words. Asking for the check can be like a standing ovation–or a put down. A handshake is always more than just that.
You think you're merely putting on a blouse or typing an email or making small talk, but of course, you're also sending signals.
What we choose to do (and what we choose not to do) turns into a signal to the people around us.
These signals aren't universal, they are interpreted in different ways by people with different worldviews.
Some people are aware that they are sending signals, but can't quite figure out how to send the ones they mean to send.
And a few people send the signals on purpose.
Empathy helps us understand what will be received, and intent dramatically improves our effectiveness.
[PS Only one session of altMBA left in 2016. Deadline for first priority applications is Thursday.]
July 5, 2016
Is there any other form of freedom that comes at such a low cost?
The freedom to change a habit, to change your mind, to change your expectations.
It takes guts and humility to change your mind. Fortunately, you have the freedom and the courage to do so.
July 4, 2016
Day after day, year after year, it’s the interactions we have at home that have the biggest impact on who we become.
Public school is an essential part of our culture. But the inputs and foundations that parents create are essential and they are truly difficult to outsource.
What would happen if you figured out how to spend two hours a day, every day, without electronics, with your kids? Looking them in the eye, being present, doing projects, setting standards, raising the bar, learning, seeing, hearing, connecting, challenging, questioning, being questioned…
July 3, 2016
