Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.”
Perhaps it would have been more accurate for it to say, “You’ll miss us.”
Because, after all, what’s mostly being missed is the community of friends and neighbors. Even when someone moves away, the community remains.
When a marketer serves a community, they create the conditions where they’d be missed–because the ideas or products or services they bring are important, not simply tolerated.
That’s a worthwhile goal.
April 3, 2023
Our habits, preferences and idiosyncrasies make perfect sense. We each know that we have great reasons to embrace our ways and stick with them.
Other people’s habits, though, show that they are simply picky, weird or too sensitive.
The difference between a preference and a foible seems to be mostly where we’re standing.
April 2, 2023
Now it’s a business model.
People are regularly fooled by crypto scams, NFT hype, opioid felons, algorithmic spam at scale, health claims, illogical political arguments, fundraising pitches, overnight shortcuts on the road to riches or happiness and MLM hustle. Your account has been locked, click here…
When it becomes the tactic of a scalable business, it’s not surprising that the fooling gets more refined and persistent.
Buyer beware. Of course. Of course we should check our gullibility at the door.
But this overlooks the simple cultural truth: just because it’s a business model doesn’t mean you’re entitled to it. Simply because it might be exploiting a legal loophole doesn’t give someone free reign to spend their days taking advantage of people for their own benefit.
Buyer beware puts the onus on the individual who’s getting fooled. But we also have the ability to separate ourselves from those that would seek to profit by fooling us. You can’t work against us and also earn our respect.
Culture is a horizontal set of principles that we enforce in service of the community. If your job involves ripping people off, walk away. No one wants to live in hustle-world, it’s not even a good place to visit.
Sometimes we get what we hope for. Often, we get what we tolerate.
April 1, 2023
Tom announced his retirement today, at 80 years old, after 45 years of Excellence and perhaps 10,000,000 miles flown.
I remember a photo of him sleeping on a bench in an airport in Siberia.
I remember him holding my young son just before we went on stage in Florida together twenty-four years ago.
I remember being at a small gathering he had in Vermont, where we argued about how many words go on a slide.
I remember meeting him after he gave a class at Stanford, in 1983, moments after his first book was gaining traction.
And I remember briefly controlling the rights to the computer game version of In Search of Excellence when I was at Spinnaker. Not to mention our delightful but rare duets.
So much of my best stuff is inspired, stolen or both from Tom, from Zig, from Roz, from Ben, from Steve and from Pema. Apparently, it helps to have a short first name.
Tom made it possible to get on stage and do this new thing, which led to TED talks and conferences and so many other forms of informal education by unauthorized teachers.
Even if you were never lucky enough to work with him, or fortunate enough to read his books, without a doubt, Tom Peters has had an impact on your life.
He created significance and opened the doors for others to do so as well. And in his words, okay word…
Excellence. [Period.]
March 31, 2023
There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require a blood oath or even much inconvenience.
“I’m thrilled that you’re contributing.”
“Can’t wait to see how this turns out.”
“I know someone who really needs to hear about this.”
“Go make a ruckus, it matters.”
If we want things to get better, it helps to encourage people who are eager to make things better.
One way to do it is to get people to want what you want.
The other way is to help them get what they want in a way that gets you what you want.
They’re not the same.
Changing what someone wants is very different from helping them see the story and the path that gets them what they’ve wanted all along.
March 30, 2023
A brand new episode of Akimbo this week, all about artificial intelligence. Part one of of two on mediocrity and the choices we’re going to need to make.
And, a while in the making, an experimental AI chat bot that has been trained on all 5,000,000 words of this blog. You can find it here. Yes, you can trick it, but you can also ask it questions about anything I’ve blogged and it may do a good job of answering.
Dave Winer and I pursued the idea in parallel, and I expect he’ll have one soon. And then they’ll be everywhere.
March 29, 2023
School sports can have some valuable outputs:
- Learning teamwork
- A lifetime habit of fitness
- Giving non-academically-focused kids a chance to shine
- Offering leadership opportunities
- Valuing persistence, innovation and responsibility
And yet, many schools act as if all they have is a trophy shortage. They bench kids who might not (yet) have the physical attributes necessary to win, or they build huge stadiums, go on long road trips, berate students that make an error or simply act as if the only point is to win.
Fancy uniforms, the magnification of small differences and a cutthroat focus on the outcome is not something that leads to the benefits that most of us would root for.
Why not have a small league and swap kids around until the teams are evenly matched? Give every single player the same amount of game time? Reward kids for personal growth, not for being better than someone else who simply started with a bit less than they did? What would happen if the coaches were rewarded for what was actually valued by parents, not for recreating what people see on TV?
Perhaps we could begin by asking what school sports are even for. Are they there to entertain the fans?
I’d argue the same goes for the local jazz band and the middle school theatre production as well.
March 28, 2023
This is extremely unique vs
This is unique
I’m very upset vs
I’m upset
and
I love you a ton vs
I love you
Sometimes, more words aren’t better.
March 27, 2023
More than 2,000 years ago, an actor in Greece botched a line in a play. In an inflection error, he said “weasel” when he meant to say “calm sea.”
As a result, he was mocked by Sannyrion and then Aristophanes and others.
He never worked again.
The lesson might be that one innocent slip and you’re doomed.
The real lesson might be that in the history of his profession, one in which millions of people have stood up and said billions of words, this is the only time this ever happened.
March 26, 2023
