Month: January 2018

The cook carefully reads the step by step set of instructions and follows the recipe. He does what he is told to do.

The chef, on the other hand, decides what goes on the menu. She creates things that might not work. She throws the ball in the air to see what will happen.

The first mixer had cooks worried that their job was eventually going to be replaced.

As we have seen in history, technology has been replacing manual labor. Competence is becoming less and less valuable.

We need more dreamers, someone who can think, take risks and delight the people we serve.

It’s no surprise, that Chefs are on the rise. Cooks, on the other hand, not so much. Because anyone can follow a set of instructions. The real value is the one who can create.

(It’s easy to find a good cook, difficult to find a really good chef.)

The other day, I pulled up to a local retailer to pick up some merchandise that I had ordered online. The sign said open but the door was locked. On the window was a note:

“Dear valued customer, we are on a short break. If you need immediate assistance, please walk around the corner to the main office. Our front desk person will be able to assist you. Thank you.”

I walked around and the front desk person was unable to help me, citing that she had to stay at the front desk to watch the phones and that the rest of the staff was having their Christmas party.

No problem, I will come back another time.

It did get me thinking, why not say that the company is having a Christmas party? Why call someone a valued customer when they are more worried about who might call? Why say someone can assist you when no one actually could? What is there to hide? I think they would have been better off writing:

“Hello, thank you for stopping by. We are currently having our annual Christmas party. In order for everyone on our team to participate we had to close the shop for two hours and will return at 1:00 pm. If you were hoping to pick up a shipment, we are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you. We know your time is valuable so as a token of goodwill, attached is a coupon code for 15% off your next order. If you can’t come back at a later time, walk around the back through the side door. We have hors d’oeuvres and drinks for you while we finish up. Thank you again for supporting us throughout the year.”

The lesson: The person who is standing at the door is more important than the person who might call. Take the time to write a better story. Getting people to buy in, to enroll, is not easy but worth it.

AI, drones, virtual reality, augmented reality, self driving vehicles, cryptocurrency, smart ____________ (insert any household item) are on the horizon.

In order to tip the scales for the masses to embrace these technologies, entrepreneurs, marketers will need to understand the pain points of their customers.

What problem does this solve?

Why should I care?

What about my privacy?

How much is this going to cost me?

What does this product say about the type of person I am?

What will my friends think?

Does this resonate with my worldview?

The product may be perfect–state of the art, ahead of its time, inexpensive and solve real problems–but tech is not enough. The story, the narrative that the consumer is buying is much more valuable.

The only thing more difficult than developing a perfect product is reversing a narrative.

What could you do with all that time?

When we are proud of something, people have an innate desire to share this experience with others. Quite often though, we tend to hesitate because we are afraid of being judged.

Sharing your work–whether it is good or bad is not for you to decide–is the best way we can take advantage of these tools today.

The obstacles of sharing at a global scale is now gone. You can start a blog. You can post a video on YouTube for the whole world to see.

Sharing is what brings us closer together. Sharing is what builds more trust and attention. Now that the costs of production is virtually free, we can keep sharing our work again and again, getting better with each interaction.

Yes, your work will be judged. You will be criticized, torn apart. It’s okay. It’s not for them. Once we can see that the work we do is not for everyone but for someone, a whole new world opens up to us.

[Click send. Hit publish. Ship it. The change we seek to make doesn’t happen until after we share it with others. There is no art, no generosity, no project without some sort of interaction with the market.]

Humans constantly fail to see the significance of our own creations. It makes us really bad at predicting what is going to happen next. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

“X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.

“Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure.” – Henry Morton, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology, commenting on Edison’s light bulb, 1880.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles Duell, U. S. Patent Office Commissioner Charles Duell, 1899.

“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty–a fad.” – The President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903.

“Television won’t last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” – Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

“If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one.” – W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954.

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” – Ken Olsen, Co-founder of the Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.

“There is no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.” – Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, 2017.

The only way we can get better at predicting what is going to happen next is to write it down.

“I predict that this video will go viral.”
“I predict that at this price this product will boom.”
“I predict that this person will get the next promotion.”

There is no disputing the facts once we write something down. You have to stand behind your best guess. But once we see why our predictions are right or wrong, we can learn to make better ones in the future.

You still won’t always be right but you can learn to see better than the rest of us.

[We can’t see what is around the corner without first exploring the edges.]

Getting to inbox zero, checking your social media status incessantly, sitting through another meeting, sending one more text seems important because of how urgent it feels.

Urgent is not the same as important.

The problem with short-term decision-making is that we leave a bigger hole to fill tomorrow.

If we don’t invest in tomorrow today, then when?

Yesterday would have been the best time to start, today is the next best thing.

Don’t seem very important until we do something out-of-order.

Too often, we fall into the trap of working on the fun, popular parts of the project, leaving the essential, arduous work for the end–when there is no more will to spare.

Start with what is important. Do the hard part first.

There are two types of cultures: The one you buy into and the one you create.

Culture influences us in more ways than we can comprehend–how we dress, what we drive, what kind of house we live in, the food we eat, even down to the milk we drink.

Culture, like most things, is a story. A story that we are told to fit in with the lonely crowd.

There is an alternative. Instead of buying into what is being sold, you can create the culture around you. You can choose what is allowed in your life, who you spend your time with, where you go, how you you behave.

Seasons change. It’s okay to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new.

You are not going into the next scene of your story knowing beforehand what to do or what to say.

There is no script.

The answer then is to do improv.

The thing is, if we are spending our time demanding our boss for a script–a simple set of instructions to follow, or asking if this will be on the test, we are squashing a world of wonder and possibility.

No one is good at improv at first. Improv takes time to learn. We all stumble learning how to throw the ball in the air (and catching it).

Remember: We are all making things up as we go but all behavior makes sense from the actor’s perspective or else the actor wouldn’t do it.