In all markets, the market leader gets an unfair advantage. That’s because casual and unsophisticated customers choose the leader because it feels easier and safer.
The strategy, then, is not to wish and dream of becoming a big fish.
The strategy is to pick a small enough pond.
By engaging with the smallest viable audience, you gain the reputation and trust you need to move to ever bigger audiences.
If we give an isolated community access to the internet, very quickly, the quality of life will improve. Time will be saved, research into proven solutions will produce value, and people will become connected to a larger population. Those connections will lead to productivity and learning.
And, then, soon thereafter, they will become less happy.
Not because they’re worse off, but because the dominant media narratives that arrive exist to make them feel insufficient, inadequate or simply jealous at how green the grass is over there.
Our narrative defeats our surroundings, every time.
Security theater is a rule requiring you to take off your shoes when you get to the airport. It doesn’t actually catch anyone, it simply makes people feel more secure, and it allows those in charge to feel like they’re doing something. Mostly, it’s a demonstration of power and authority, not a practical measure.
And security superstition involves putting security measures in place on a hunch, or because others are doing it.
This alert from a website run by Thomson Reuters manages to do both:
This is malpractice. No, it’s not a doctor giving you the wrong medicine, but it’s definitely someone who should know better making an error that will cost countless users a lot of time and money.
Long passwords work better than short ones. But impossible-to-remember passwords get written on post-its by people who haven’t yet realized that they need a password manager. Having people change their passwords often simply creates more post-its. Insisting on arcane rules is nothing but theater plus superstition.
The theater and the superstition compounds, creating mountains of cruft, layers and layers of misunderstood but accepted practices that waste our time and make our systems less secure, precisely the opposite of what’s intended.
Software runs our world. Building insecure, difficult to use and frustrating software and then forcing people to use it is easily avoided. But it requires leadership and insight, not mindless superstition.
Four years at MIT cost about $250,000 all in. Or, you could engage in more than 2,000 of their courses on their site, for free.
What’s the difference?
When you do education, you pay tuition, plus you pay with a focus on compliance. Traditional education requires that students trade in freedom of choice, coerced by tests and exams. And what do you get? You get an ‘A’ and you get a certificate.
The power of that certificate is extraordinary. Students (and their families) will go a lifetime in debt to get that paper. They’ll make choices about time and focus and geography for that paper, ignoring what’s ostensibly possible in exchange for the certainty of acquiring it.
Learning, on the other hand, is self-directed. Learning isn’t about changing our grade, it’s about changing the way we see the world. Learning is voluntary. Learning is always available, and it compounds, because once we’ve acquired it, we can use it again and again.
Many adults in the US read no more than a book a year. That’s because books aren’t assigned after you’ve got your paperwork done.
We’re surrounded by chances to learn, and yet, unless it’s sugarcoated or sold in the guise of earning a scarce credential, most of us would rather click on another link and swipe on another video instead.
The exception: People who have chosen to be high performers. Doctors, athletes, programmers and leaders who choose to make a ruckus understand that continuous learning is at the heart of what they’ll need to do.
“Will this be on the test?” is a question we learn from a young age. If you need to ask that before you encounter useful ideas, you’ve been trapped. It’s never been easier to level up, but the paper isn’t as important as we’ve been led to believe.
Your anecdote isn’t true.
I know it happened. I know that your experience, your feelings, your outcomes are real. And they’re yours.
Statistics suffer when compared to anecdotes. Because your mileage may vary. Your interaction with the randomness of the world will never match up to what the statisticians tell us to expect. Because averages and correlations are never what we actually experience. We experience a tiny slice of it.
But, at the same time that the larger truth can’t be experienced, your anecdote can never represent the larger truth, because it’s yours. What happened to you will never happen to anyone else, not in quite the same way.
By relying on well-told stories, we ignore the real truth, the universal truth of how the world actually is.
Yes, our mileage varies. But please let me know what the reality of the world is.
That’s unlikely.
If I’m lucky, I can glance at them.
But just for a second or two.
Our fears burn so bright that if we truly face them, we think we might be blinded.
Of course, we may think we’re looking at our fears, dead on, but it’s more likely we’re just seeing a distraction, a shadow of what’s actually holding us back.
Because once we’re truly clear about the fear, it fades. It might even disappear.
If you want to change the mind of a scientist, do more science. Do better science. Get your hands on the data set and prove your assertions.
If you want to change the mind of a bureaucrat, bring more power.
If you want to change the minds of the nerds, build something that’s new.
If you want to change the mind of a teenager, amplify the other teenagers.
If you want to change the mind of the audience, put more emotion into your story.
If you want to change the mind of a believer, bring in the perceived authorities.
If you want to change the mind of a banker, eliminate risk.
If you want to change the mind of an engineer, build a prototype.
If you want to change the mind of a hustler, show the money.
If you want to change the mind of a sports fan, win the game.
Other people don’t believe what you believe, and they don’t see what you see.
Halloween is a month away. And over the next few weeks, a lot of cheap chocolate is going to get bought in preparation for the ringing doorbell.
Cheap chocolate is made from beans picked by poor kids in dangerous conditions.
And cheap chocolate is made from beans that don’t even taste that good, but come from more hardy trees, so it’s more reliable to grow.
Some of the poorest people in the world raise cacao beans, and the market is driven by the low bidders. The low bidders are the folks who have no room for flexibility in their supply chain because the end product they sell is so price sensitive. For forty years, it’s been a race to the bottom, one that has led to plenty of ignored pain.
On the other hand, expensive chocolate turns the ratchet in the other direction. The folks who make the bars, particularly those who do direct trade, keep paying higher and higher wages. They keep children out of the system. And they encourage their growers to use the tastier artisanal Criollo and Trinitario varieties, keeping them from extinction.
The race to the top often creates more winners than losers. That’s because instead of seeking to maximize financial returns at the expense of everyone in the system, they’re focused on something else.
It’s worth remembering that if someone knows how to do something, that means, with sufficient effort, you could probably learn it too.
You might not be willing to put in the time and effort, but it’s learnable.
“I went to art school. That means that everything I can do with a pen you can learn to do as well.” Alex Peck.
A checklist to get you started—you can either do the same thing or a different thing…
More of the same
Persist
Get the word out
Doing something different
Change an element of what you do
Raise your prices
Lower your prices
Make it better
Tell a different story
Serve a different customer
Enter a new segment
Change the downstream effects of your work
Earn trust
Make bigger promises
Organize
Do work that matters to someone
