Seth's Blog : "So busy doing my job, I can't get any work done"



"So busy doing my job, I can't get any work done"

Your job is an historical artifact. It's a list of tasks, procedures, alliances, responsibilities, to-dos, meetings (mostly meetings) that were layered in, one at a time, day after day, for years.

And your job is a great place to hide.

Because, after all, if you're doing your job, how can you fail? Get in trouble? Make a giant error?

The work, on the other hand, is the thing you do that creates value. This value you create, the thing you do like no one else can do, is the real reason we need you to be here, with us.

When you discover that the job is in the way of the work, consider changing your job enough that you can go back to creating value.

Anything less is hiding.

       

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Seth's Blog : You can't ask customers want they want



You can't ask customers want they want

... not if your goal is to find a breakthrough. Because your customers have trouble imagining a breakthrough.

You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask your customers to do your design work for you.

So, if you can't ask, you can assert. You can look for clues, you can treat different people differently, and you can make a leap. You can say, "assuming you're the kind of person I made this for, here's what I made."

The risk here is that many times, you'll be wrong.

But if you're not okay with that, you're never going to create a breakthrough.

       

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More Recent Articles

• The saying/doing gap
• "The way we do things"
• Stretching without support
• The ruby slippers problem
• It's not a race

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Seth's Blog : The saying/doing gap



The saying/doing gap

At first, it seems as though the things you declare, espouse and promise matter a lot. And they do. For a while.

But in the end, we will judge you on what you do. When the gap between what you say and what you do gets big enough, people stop listening.

The compromises we make, the clients we take on, the things we do when we think no one is watching... this is how people measure us.

It seems as though the amount of time it takes for the gap to catch up with marketers/leaders/humans is getting shorter and shorter.

       

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More Recent Articles

• "The way we do things"
• Stretching without support
• The ruby slippers problem
• It's not a race
• "Things have gotten a little quiet..."

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