Be careful what you wish for
You might not get it.
But as you pursue this wish, you’ll change what you do, what you see, who you connect with and the sacrifices you make along the way.
Our wishes change us.
A little more or a little less
The producer of a successful product has a choice to make.
If you put a little less in the box, people will run out sooner and have to buy more.
If you give people a little more for their money, they’ll purchase less often, but become more loyal.
It turns out that in most markets where there are easy substitutions, the long-term value of loyalty is far greater than the short-term profit of less.
A second opinion
A friend is selling his house. Apparently, real estate brokers now have a way of reporting the comments (reviews) from potential buyers at open houses, and he was crazy enough to read them.
Of course, this is incredibly unhelpful. He can’t rebuild his house to sell it. Hearing that people don’t like his custom cabinets or the layout of the living room isn’t actionable–especially since the other half of the comments contradict the first half.
What’s actually happening is that someone who isn’t qualified or emotionally connected enough to make a purchase is looking for something to say. And humans are really bad at explaining our irrational feelings in the context of rational reasons. So we make stuff up.
And we’re equally bad at hearing comments about things we can’t change.
By all means, ask a second doctor before you get surgery. But in just about every public setting, the comments aren’t going to be particularly helpful.
Sales and the story of money
“Twenty-four ninety-five.”
I was on the phone hearing a pitch for a service I needed. I had reached out to a recommended vendor, and was now sitting through a pitch from a salesperson who had a script but no listening skills.
I had figured that the service was probably $300 if I shopped around, but I was willing to pay a bit more than that if it would save time.
Finally, the script-reader got to the price.
“It’s 24.95.”
I paused for a second. “You mean it’s twenty four dollars and ninety-five cents?”
“No,” he said.
“Oh… you meant to say two-thousand-four-hundred-and-ninety-five dollars…”
Why would you write the script to anchor the price at 1% of what it really costs?
Instead of a fruitless hustle, two other stories could have worked better.
A competent salesperson could have said, “Some of our competitors charge $300 and some charge $5,000. We’re right in the middle and I can tell you why.”
Or perhaps they could have said, “Some people charge as little as $300 for this. Let me tell you why we charge a lot more than that, and why it might be a smart choice for you.”
In both cases, the truth becomes a firm foundation for a story about value and position.
Money is a story we tell ourselves about value, status and position.
Begrudgingly
Social niceties are easy to do half-heartedly.
But they’re not for us, they’re for the other person.
When you show up begrudgingly, it’s not half-hearted, it’s cold hearted.
A handshake, a greeting, the way we sit in a meeting or wear a mask–it’s a chance to connect and to make a difference for the person we’re with.
All in, or not at all.
Who chooses?
When Google or Facebook or Spotify decide what you’ll see next, they’re making a choice.
That’s very different from an open platform like “podcasting” or “blogging” (in quotes with no capital letters, because no one is in charge.)
Being in charge implies that choices are being made. And people who are in charge–even if it’s just one person in charge of their own voice–are choosing.
Choosing is a form of selection, of amplification and of curation. Not official government censorship, but something more nuanced than that, the responsibility that comes from choice.
In many parts of our culture, particularly pockets of tech, it’s fashionable to talk about ‘free speech’ and ‘open platforms’ as if they’re unalloyed virtues. But the moment Apple puts a podcast on its home page, Google decides to put this blog in your promo folder, or Spotify decides to promote one song or podcast over another, the platform is no longer truly open. Often, individuals and organizations use terms like this when they’re defending something that isn’t helpful to the people who encountered it.
When money enters the picture, it’s even more complicated. There’s a difference between a truly open platform and an algorithm staffed by people who put one sort of website on their spam list and another highly ranked, simply because they make more of a profit on the second one. Or when YouTube or Spotify pay people a thousand (or two hundred million) dollars to host their content…
Ideas shared create value. Good ideas are the engine of our future. We’ve seen that when creators of ideas take responsibility for their work, it’s more likely that we all benefit.
Wide-open platforms almost always lead to chaos, negative side effects and anonymous spam. I’m in favor of choice, especially when it’s made by organizations and individuals willing to be held responsible for the choices they make.
The Oxford comma, trap
It’s easy to accept the limits that are implied when someone asks us for advice and feedback.
Fix the typos, sure. That’s important. But perhaps you have something bigger to add.
A friend shares plans to launch a new retail website. It’s tempting to fix the small errors on the page, but perhaps it’s more useful to discuss the product line, the pricing or whether or not it should be online at all…
The author shares a draft of a new work. You could help with the grammar, but maybe it would help more if you talked about the parts that weren’t included.
The agency shows three versions of a new design they’re considering. Multiple choice might be on offer, but ‘none of the above’ might be a more generous answer.
I’m pretty confident that when the Titanic went down, the deck chairs were clean and well-ordered. It’s a shame no one talked about the icebergs.
Our new project
It’s something I’ve been working on as a full-time volunteer for the last five months.
And it’s something that three hundred people are building together.
But I say “our” because it’s bigger than me or the three hundred of us or even the people who are reading this blog.
Like it or not, this is the project of the rest of our days.
My publisher announced it this week. You can check it out and pre-order it here.
… the real purpose of this post is to invite you to consider being active in the worldwide launch of The Carbon Almanac this June.
If you have the bandwidth to be part of something important, I hope you’ll consider checking it out and join us in this work. You’ll contribute your skills, learn a lot about strategy and tactics and be connected to an extraordinary group that already spans 41 countries. It’s an all-volunteer project for people ready to commit to help make things better. Because it’s not too late.
[We’re not taking new volunteers just now…we’ll update when it reopens.]
Don’t guard your luck
Maybe we don’t want to talk about it. Perhaps we believe that unexamined luck isn’t quite as fragile.
Perhaps we don’t want to let anyone else in. It could be that we think that success is scarce, and scarcity will somehow preserve it.
Or maybe we want to insist that it’s all due to skill and nothing but skill. Even though we know that this isn’t true.
Open field running
Here’s what’s easy to find:
Multiple choice plus effort plus persistence.
We’ve been trained since birth to look for small, do-able tasks with boundaries. It seems as though our effort is better spent there, the risk and responsibility are a lot smaller.
“Don’t ask me what’s next, tell me what’s next!”
As a result, we often default to others when it comes to figuring out the boundaries and ignore the opportunities that are right in front of us.
The alternative is to draw the map instead of reading it.
Because the willingness to do this is scarce, it’s often valued quite highly. And we can learn to do it better if we practice.