marți, 12 iulie 2016

Seth's Blog : Effort



Effort

What does it mean to 'try your best'?

Or to put more effort into something than other organizations do?

We often talk about trying, about effort and 110%, but it's mostly glib. The fact is, very few of us try our best, at the maximum, ever.

Usually, what we do is, "try our best under the circumstances."

So, you're getting good service, but if the CEO's daughter was here, you can bet she'd be getting better service.

So, you're running hard as you train, but you can bet that if you were approaching the finish line at the Olympics, you'd be running harder.

The trick: don't redefine trying. Redefine the circumstances.

It's almost impossible to reliably increase your effort, to put more try into the system.

On the other hand, "the circumstances" are merely our narrative, the way we're choosing to see the world. We can redefine the narrative about our circumstances with a wave of the hand.

This moment, this interaction, this customer... these are the perfect circumstances, the most urgent, the highest leverage. The one we have right now.

Work with that. 

       

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luni, 11 iulie 2016

Seth's Blog : First chance, best chance



First chance, best chance

I love books. A perfected technology that's five hundred years old, a chance to hold and share and actually feel the weight of an idea.

Here's a new project we've been working on:

Baby2behemothFour years ago we produced the Behemoth, a giant of a book, containing years of my writing. Here's a photo of that book, along with an actual baby for scale. (Baby not included).

If you click to enlarge the picture, it will still be smaller than actual size, even if you have a big-screen monitor.

Four years later, we thought that it was time to make a new collectible book. 

Collectibles are a special form of book, not merely the vessel for the idea, but something worth acquiring and holding onto:

  1. There will exactly one printing. After that, no more. If you want a copy of the first book we did, you'll need to find someone who leapt and got one when it was on offer last time.

    First chance is your best chance.

  2. It's something worth keeping out, glancing at now and then, earning a spot on your coffee table or bookshelf. It's more than 400,000 words, the best of the blog posts, articles and ebooks I've published since 2012, with a host of surprises as well. I hope it delights you, gives you a smile and makes you think.

The book will ship in time for the holidays at the end of the year, and it might be perfect for someone you care about (or for you).

We need to order the paper from the printer four months in advance. If you're interested, consider reserving a copy today. You don't have to decide if you want to buy one yet... we'll tell you more about the book as we build it, and then you can decide if you want a copy or not.

The reservation form is here. Reservations end on Sunday, July 17. Thanks for being up for going first.

       

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Seth's Blog : Good decisions (and sunk costs)



Good decisions (and sunk costs)

An anonymous friend sends you two tickets to Hamilton, showing on Broadway tomorrow night.

On your way to the show, someone offers you $2,000 for the tickets. If you don't take the money and go to the show instead, how much did it cost you?

Or, consider the opposite:

An anonymous friend sends you $2,000.

You go for a walk in New York. On your way, you pass the theater where Hamilton is playing. You offer someone $2,000 for two tickets. If you end up buying the tickets, how much did they cost you?

It's pretty clear that the answer is both situations is exactly the same. 

We make decisions (about what to do and what not to do) every single day. And we lie to ourselves all the time about costs. 

If your team has been working for a year on a new project, and two weeks before your (expensive) launch, someone comes out with a competitive product that's better and cheaper, it means that it will cost you millions of dollars to fight your way to decent market share. Should you launch?

What if your team had only been working on it for a week?

Past expenses have nothing to do with future economic decisions.

Past profits have nothing to do with future decisions either.

That's not easy to embrace, but it's true.

       

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