miercuri, 14 septembrie 2016

Seth's Blog : The clown suit

The clown suit

It's ever more tempting to put on the (metaphorical) clown suit.

It allows you to provoke with impunity.

Clowns enjoy a different relationship with the laws of physics.

You can spray someone in the face with a seltzer bottle, hit them with a pie or tweak them, and then laugh about it.

No one is allowed to comment on the size of your shoes or how many people you're packing in that car or the weak link between you and reality.

Crowds gather and no one takes the implications of what you say seriously, but they cheer. Tricksters change our culture. Noisy voices get more followers in social media...

The challenge, as PT Barnum, Don Rickles and the National Enquirer have found, is that while the suit is easy to put on, it's almost impossible to take it off. After a while, people start to notice that you're not actually keeping your promises.

[and regular readers might enjoy this response post, from 11 years ago]

       

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marți, 13 septembrie 2016

Seth's Blog : A value creation checklist

A value creation checklist

This project you're working on, the new business or offering, what sort of value does it create?

Who is it for? What mindset and worldview and situation?
Is it paid for by organizations or individuals?
Does it solve a new problem or is it another/better solution to an old problem?
Will a few users pay a lot, or will a lot of users pay a little?

Do the people you seek to serve know that they have the problem you can solve for them?

Are you leveraging an asset that others don't have?
Are you hiring talent and reselling it at a profit?
Are you combining the previously uncombined in a way that's hard to duplicate?
Are you building technology that will create its own inertia, disrupting existing value chains and improving as it goes?
Are you doing something that other can't do, or won't do, and will that continue?

If you're solving an existing problem, are you hoping that people will switch to your solution, or is the goal to get users who are new to the market or unaware of existing solutions?
Do you need a salesforce? What percentage of the value that's created is created by talented salespeople?

How will people find out about the solution you are offering?

Are you a freelancer or an entrepreneur?

If you're selling to organizations, what will your customer tell the boss?
How long is the sales and adoption cycle? Can you wait that long?
If you're building a brand, how long will you have to invest (lose money in building trust and awareness) before you profit (generate profit margins that make up for your investment)?

Is there a network effect?
Are you building a natural monopoly?

Is there any substantial reason why your customers won't simply switch to a cheaper alternative?
How much better do you need to be than the status quo to get someone to leap and switch to your solution?

What are the externalities and side effects like? How will the establishment of your solution change the market, the environment and the culture?

How long can you sustain this? What happens when the market changes, or you do?

What's the value you create over a lifetime relationship with a customer? Does that lifetime value establish a need for an endless supply of new customers, or are you able to heavily invest in just a few?

We need what you're working on... and focusing your solution makes it far more likely that it will find the traction it needs.

       

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luni, 12 septembrie 2016

Seth's Blog : What's at the bottom of the river?

What's at the bottom of the river?

I have no idea if the bottom of the Hudson River is smooth or not. I know that on a calm day, the surface is like glass.

One reason to lower the water level of a system you count on is to see what's messing things up. You can discover what happens when you operate without slack, without a surplus... you want to know what's likely to get in the way...

This is the essence of Toyota's quality breakthrough. When Toyota got rid of all the extra car parts held in reserve on the assembly line, every single one of them had to be perfect. If a nut or bolt didn't fit, the entire line stopped. No cars got made until the part was perfect.

This seems insane. Why would you go through the pain of removing the (relatively) low cost buffer of some extra parts? The answer, it turns out, is that without a buffer, you've lowered the water level and you can see the rocks below. Without a buffer, every supplier had to dramatically up his game. Suddenly, the quality of parts went way up, which, of course, makes the assembly line go faster and every car ends up working better as well.

Fedex had to build a system far more efficient than the one they use at the Post Office. When you only have 12 hours to deliver a package, the rocks will kill you. Now, when they need to deliver something in three days, they're still way better at it than the post office is. Fewer rocks.

The purpose of sprinting without slack isn't that you will always be sprinting, always without extra resources or a net. No, the purpose is to show you where the rocks are, to discover the cruft you can clean out. Then, sure, go back and add some surplus and resilience.

       

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