We meet someone, hear something, go somewhere, buy something, use something, find something or join something, and after a short while, after falling madly in love with this new thing or person or place, that we can’t imagine living without, we start to forget what life was like before.
Love affects the head, not just the heart.
It’s the ultimate delete button.
Because it is the response to what represents our highest values, and because it is the song that reminds us what we most cherish in life, when it hits us, when love casts its magic spell, it does this spooky thing where it erases the memory of the past.
What did I do before I had ________?
And so the goal, either organizationally or personally, either digitally or physically, is to fill in that blank. To deliver so much value through our work that, once people have been bitten by our bug, once the venom of our value starts coursing through their veins, there’s no turning back.
Even if they did turn back, they wouldn’t remember the past anyway.
The last place customers go when they have questions is to the actual company.
Instead of wading through the pages of some boring, bloated, antiquated, vain, salesy, marginally helpful corporate website, they’re clicking elsewhere.
Since they’re accustomed to instant informational gratification, they’re off to the message boards, online forums, review sites, search engines, video tutorials, social media platforms and user blogs, to answer all their burning questions, right now, for free. They’re using their own devices to help each another with or without the help of the business.
In fact, customers would talk to each other all day long if they could.
They just don’t want to hear from you.
Because more often than not, those kinds of interactions involve too many inane hoops, too many repetitive interactions and too many unhelpful responses, the sum of which destroys customer value.
Can you blame them?
Achievement used to mean something.
You wrote something worth reading. You built something worth noticing. You shipped something worth buying. You solved a problem that saved money. You discovered a compound that extended people’s lives. You invented a gadget that overturned an entre industry.
All because you had the guts to risk, the willingness to fail and the desire to change the world for the better.
That’s achievement.
But now, all you have to do is attract attention.
Simply accumulate the most hits, views, friends, followers, shares, likes or downloads, and you’ve reached the pinnacle of human achievement. You’ve ascended to the heights of greatness.
He who dies with the most eyeballs, wins.
That’s not achievement, it’s digital narcissism.
We press the refresh button dozens of times a day.
From smartphones to tablets to laptops to personal computers, the purpose of the refresh button is to dump the old page, clean out junk files, trigger a metadata update and access the most current information, reflecting any recent changes.
It’s how we stay up to date with the digital world.
And yet, when it comes to our beliefs, we fiercely refuse to press the button.
Even when we place our faith in something that fails us, even when we outgrow some of our beliefs, even when we discover overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still choose not to rebuild our understanding.
Because that would mean changing, and changing means admitting we were wrong.
As I get older, I seem to be pressing the mental refresh button more and more. What once felt like a necessity has become a nicety. What once defined me has started to derail me. And what once got me high now gets me meh.
But despite my internal kicking and screaming, every time I refresh, it provides vigor and energy. It breathes new life into my world. And it opens doors I didn’t even know there were keys for.
I am one constant rebeginning.
Innovation begins with humility.
From a strategic perspective, it’s always helpful to start from the assumption that the marketplace is crowded. That whatever product you’re trying to sell, whatever message you’re hoping to spread, the world doesn’t need another one.
When you focus on that, you make sense, not noise. When you act from that place of humility, it’s much easier to smash down the mysterious doors of the impossible and give people what they actually need, not just what you want them to want.
In reality, what the world needs is somebody, some organization, to invent new ways to use what’s already successful. That’s what innovative companies do. Instead of reinventing the wheel, they find a wheel that already works and make run better.
The point is, good things shouldn’t have to end. What’s good is of utmost importance to our culture, and should be discovered, respected, shared and enhanced.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but don’t stop making it better.
Make it do things nobody’s seen before.
Once you have email, you want everyone to have email.
That’s why it works. It’s a product designed to get better with use. As the idea grows, it becomes more valuable. The more of your friends who sign up, the better it works for everybody.
And as the web evolves, we’re starting to see this trend in a number of industries.
Media streaming services get better the more they know about your interests. Gaming platforms unlock skills, levels and surprises the more you play. Search engines algorithms get more informed and accurate with every interaction. Social networking services are launching online art projects that grow more unique with every user interaction. Thermostats learn your schedule and program themselves the more you come and go. Speech recognition programs enhance language understanding with every word spoken. Adaptive learning technology better gauges student progress with every chapter.
It’s like denim jeans and leather boots, but more social.
For your next marketing push, before hawking your product to the users, try harnessing the collective intelligence of the users to make your system better.
Why give up freelancing and work for someone else?
I know. I never thought I’d do it either.
But in addition to being bored with the work, tired of running my own business, burned out by an incestuous industry, sick of sitting at home all day, sick of waiting for that one email that changes everything, done bloodying my knuckles knocking on a door that was never going to open, finished with my first career and finally okay with who I am as a person, here’s the other big reason I recently made a job transition.
Less talkey, more doey.
If I don’t go get raw and engage in the real world, if I’m not constantly tested in the crucible of everyday life, then my ideas will only exist in my own head.
If I don’t step outside of the echo chamber, get out into the cold and hostile world, then I’m stuck in a fantasy land with no basis in objective reality.
If I try to make it solely on personality, spending all my time pontificating on the stage and on the page without actually executing, I’ll just annoy people.
If I continue resting on my laurels, solely milking work I’ve shipped in the past, I’m just another blowhard who has lost credence.
Feels pretty amazing.
It’s easy to do right thing when people are watching.
But keeping a promise when you could have gotten away with breaking it, taking the blame when you could have gotten away with shifting it, and telling the truth when you could have gotten away with hiding it?
That’s class.
Gearbox, a software developer, is one of the rare companies that painstakingly maps out detailed audio soundtracks to enhance their user’s virtual experience. Tons of of love and attention go into creating their games, and if you read any of their online forums or message boards, you’ll quickly learn how ecstatic their users are. According to one thread, the sonic architecture is so real, it sends chills down your spine.
The best part is, Gearbox doesn’t put in this extra effort to get ink or to justify charging more for the game. They do it because they’re craftspeople, pure artists, who care deeply about the value of their work, who put obsessive amounts effort into the art they do, because they love their users and they’re proud to see them enjoying the game they worked so hard on.
If you become known as someone who puts in a hell of a lot of hard work when nobody’s listening, watching or expecting, all in the name of service, all in the name of the people who matter most, towards a promise that’s big and useful enough, it will impossible to keep your name a secret.
As an entrepreneur, it’s always cheaper to hire yourself.
The only problem is, when you hire yourself to do the work, there’s nobody left to get new clients, nobody left to do marketing and networking, nobody left to figure out strategy, nobody left to raise money and nobody left to grow the business.
Unlike a traditional company, your enterprise isn’t boosted by a powerful machine working every angle.
It’s just little old you. Doing everything.
Which works well if you’re an incurable control freak and a consummate individualist, but after a while, especially if you want your enterprise to evolve, trying to wear every hat every day is unsustainable over the long term.
They give people a powerful and vicarious life. They let them do what they’ve always wanted to do, but were too afraid to try. And they create an interactive experience that doesn’t try to persuade them of anything, but rather, creates a playroom that rewards and validates users.
On the business side of things, if a game can build a critical mass of users around it, then it can be leveraged to do something else.
By helping the customer take their eye off the ball and play with something that’s unrelated, yet choreographed intelligently, you create a reason to believe. By encouraging users to actually do stuff, you imprint them with an idea more successfully.
Why show an advertisement about your cause when you could could create a simulation that allows people to tackle it directly?
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