1.6 286 G.school #103 Come and See (Jn 1:39) (?)(!)
Matthew 18:3 Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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SETH GODIN The system has fingerprints
We all make mistakes. We all do things that we then realize weren’t in our interest, or useful to the community.
If we do it a second time, it’s worth taking a hard look at the system that set us up for failure. How did the system get here? Who benefits?
When we can see the system, we have a chance to fix it.
January 4, 2025
1.5 287 the pursuit of happiness (?) (!)
Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
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SETH GODIN “Does it work?”
That’s the first question.
The second question is, “how do we make it work better?”
These two questions, patiently repeated, lead to incremental improvement and an understanding of reality.
The opposite approach is, “because I said so.”
Reality might not care what you want.
January 3, 2025
1.4 286 Selective perception (?) (!)
Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
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SETH GODIN Winging it
Tech and culture have enabled a new sort of informality. Not simply the end of suits and ties and heels at work, but the office itself is fading away.
But there’s a difference between being informal and being in such a hurry to get to the next thing that we don’t take this thing seriously.
I recently had a sales call with a software consulting firm. The person who organized the call joined from his car. While driving.
The artifice of sitting at a desk, having good lighting, wearing a smock, writing a memo instead of making stuff up as you go along, looking people in the eye, quoting your sources, measuring twice not once, showing up on time, doing the reading, showing your work… these are signals. Not just signals to the person you’re working with or persuading, but signals to yourself.
It’s easy to misunderstand the idea of agile and the minimum viable product. We shouldn’t forget that the unspoken rule is: Don’t ship junk. We send a message to the market when we’re in such a hurry that we don’t put in the care and focus needed to do great work.
Getting more boxes checked simply leads to having more boxes checked. If we’re here to make a difference, we often get there with better, not with more.
January 2, 2025
1.3 276 Set goals, tiny steps (!) (?)
Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
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SETH GODIN Find the others
New years bring resolutions, but those resolutions rarely stick. Creating change is difficult, and it’s hard to do it alone.
New years remind us that we might need a better strategy. A philosophy of becoming, a clear vision on where we’re going (and why).
Here’s an invitation to make a commitment, and to turn January into the foundation for the progress we seek to make.
Beginning January 4, we’re organizing a community of practice, a group of people engaging online toward better.
Buy two copies of This is Strategy in any format this week and you’re invited to join a four-week sprint on purple.space. It will include access to the Strategy online course as well as several other video-based courses (usually worth $600 or so) and there are no upsells or hustles. I’ll be running several live QA zoom calls and there is peer to peer coaching as well.
Simply people coming together to do the work.
The sign up form is here. It closes in a few days and space is limited, I’ll close the form once we’re full. Come if you’re ready.
January 1, 2025
1.2 276 A Better way (?)
John 10:30 “I and the Father are one”
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SETH GODIN The reality of meliorism
Nearly 150 years ago, George Eliot gave us a name for our project. She pointed out that we could ameliorate the problems of the human condition, day by day, year by year, toward better.
Max Roser highlighted three sentences that seem like they can’t all be true: “The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better.” But of course, they are. And they continue to be.
I wish meliorism had a catchier name because the concept deserves to be more widely understood and embraced.
This is the point. This is at the heart of our work and the challenge of our days.
Toward better.
December 31, 2024
1.1 259 When adversity strikes (!) (?)
Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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SETH GODIN Calendars are a choice
Humans are unique.
We give names to the days of the week (we even have weeks). We eat something different for breakfast than dinner. We chronicle the passage of time. In fact, our chronicling of time is what makes it noticeable.
Coordination can only happen when we’re in sync with our peers, and coordination is the result of the peers we choose and the time we choose to measure.
Show me your calendar and I’ll tell you where you’ve been, where you’re going and who’s on the journey with you.
If your calendar isn’t working for you, get a new one.
December 30, 2024
4.7 253 G.school #102 Life before death (?)(!)
1 John 2:15-17 NIV — Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
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SETH GODIN Secret recipes
“You can try this at home…”
But you probably won’t.
The secret recipe isn’t the reason Coke is successful. And the recipe for KFC isn’t much of a recipe at all.
The secret way you do the thing isn’t what keeps your clients coming back. It’s the part you do in public that matters.
December 29, 2024
248 G.school #101 Categorical Imperative (?)(!)
Galatians 5:22-23 NIV — But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
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SETH GODIN Fiblets
Organizations lie all the time. Big lies, sometimes, but usually small ones.
Is the call volume actually unusually heavy? Did a chef really prepare this meal just for me?
These fiblets are so common that they become part of the culture, a trope that lets the user know that this is a real organization–the same way that certain kinds of logos are trendy, these lies show that the organization is part of a particular genre. (Have you ever noticed how many INSURANCE COMPANIES WRITE SOME OF THEIR RULES IN ALL CAPS? It’s because that’s what big insurance companies do).
The insurgent marketer, then, has two practical choices:
You can easily show that you’re not of this group by relentlessly telling the truth to your customers. “We know that this phone tree is inconvenient, but it saves our operators time and so it saves us money.” Or, “The boss doesn’t want you to walk around the service bay, it has nothing to do with insurance regulations.”
You can sniff out the fiblets your competitors use and use them as well, creating the meta fib that you’re as big and heartless a bureaucracy as they are.
As consumers, it definitely doesn’t pay to call out the fiblets when talking to hard-working frontline employees. They’ve got it tough enough already.
December 28, 2024
4.5 247 Keep it simple: Gratitude (!) (?)
Galatians 2:20—“It is Christ who lives in me” “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
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SETH GODIN Project/Product managers
You might be both.
In big organizations, project management is a distinct skill. It involves timekeeping, record keeping and organization. The project manager knows the budget and the deadline, and ensures that constituents stay in sync. This is the construction coordinator and the movie producer.
The product manager, on the other hand, makes decisions about features, scale and the final product. The product manager coordinates many inputs and ultimately makes critical marketing decisions, because they’re deciding what the product is. This is the architect, the movie director and the real estate developer.
In startups, agencies and scrappy organizations, it’s quite likely that one person is doing both jobs.
If that’s you, it’s worth a second to consider if it pays to get better at the one you don’t like as much. Managing projects better changed my career.
December 27, 2024
4.4 253 Run right at it (!) (?)
James 2:15-17 ESV — If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
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SETH GODIN Taxonomy as a service
When the truck makes a delivery at the nearby True Value hardware store, Danny needs to figure out which shelf to put it on.
Should the extension cords go next to the hoses? After all, they both do the same thing, one with electricity and one with water…
The purpose of putting things in order is so that others can find them.
If you’ve been frustrated with a price list, a menu, a user interface or a bookshelf, it’s because someone didn’t spend the time to understand the expected taxonomy.
When we sort our stuff, we’re telling people a story. A story about our stuff and a story about how we see the world.
We don’t have to like the fact that the world demands a taxonomy, but we can accept that it does. Strangers want to know what shelf to put us on.
December 26, 2024
4.3 251 change w/ change (!) (?)
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
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SETH GODIN Our new school
When I include links to various books and items on this blog, your purchases generate a small royalty that I earmark for worthy causes. This year, we were able to help BuildOn and the community in Khakh build a new school. It’s the first real school building the village has ever had, and it’s likely that members of the community, inspired by this first school, will be organizing to build a second one soon.
A building is more than shelter. It’s a flag, a placeholder, a symbol of commitment. A school like this transforms the culture, and will make a lifelong difference for thousands of people.
If you want to change the world, change the systems. And buildings are a fine place to start.
Tens of thousands of miles away, we’re also able to help rebuild housing with the Fuller Center.
The ocean is made of drops.
December 25, 2024
4.2 253 truth about IQ (!) (?)
John 17:21-22 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,[a] so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,
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SETH GODIN The challenge of excess capacity
Marketing as we know it happened because of machines. Machines made factories dramatically more efficient, which meant that producers could no longer easily sell everything they made. When you go from making four ceramic plates a day to 4,000, your capacity starts to look like a problem.
That’s a new challenge. A farmer could figure out how to use every bit of fertile soil available.
CBS TV didn’t have excess capacity. There are only 24 hours in a day, and they could only broadcast one at a time. YouTube, on the other hand, makes almost all of its decisions based on their unlimited capacity to host video.
The challenge of infinity is contagious. While some freelancers are fully booked, most have hours each day unspoken for. An unspoken hour of capacity can feel like a burden.
The quest for more is seductive.
But what happens when we accept that capacity might not be excess? It might simply be capacity.
How do we start to see our way toward better, not simply more?
December 24, 2024
4.1 251 Crisis Leadership (?) (!)
John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
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SETH GODIN Leading side by side
Orchestras are difficult.
One reason is that we’re really good at noticing when they’re out of tune. Just a tiny bit off changes our perception of the sound.
The other reason is that if the performers wait for a leader in their section to go first, every entrance and every attack will be muddled. You need to go when it’s time to go, not wait to follow closely behind.
Coordinating our tone and our tempo creates magic, and yet we often fail to lead, preferring to follow instead.
December 23, 2024
3.7 261 G.school #100 vital habits = f(F3 + W) (?)(!)
John 14:20 you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
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SETH GODIN The thought that counts
Well, maybe not.
In 2024, worldwide gift card sales will pass a trillion dollars for the first time.
It’s a good grift.
Surveys show that the buyer spends about 21% less per gift than they do when they actually buy something, while the recipients of the gift find themselves spending 61% more than the value of the card when they actually redeem it for money. Most of all, the retailer comes out ahead–far fewer returns, lots of never redeemed cards, better cash flow and new customer accounts when people do show up to eventually buy.
In the current system, the recipient loses. They get a smaller gift, they often spend more money than the gift was for, they’re stuck with the store the giver chose (which is the only thing they actually chose) and there’s very little in the way of thoughtfulness or connection involved.
In essence, holidays become a circle of people, handing the same wad of cash around, except instead of ending up with the cash, they then spend even more money when they go shopping tomorrow.
Every cultural occasion and holiday has been commercialized by retailers in search of more. And the insatiable desire to consume is contagious, and gift giving is inherently viral, since you need to have someone to give the gift to. As a result, we’ve built a system that’s expensive and not particularly good at what it sets out to do.
Given the size and profitability of the cards, I’m surprised that they’re not a much better experience.
What might a better process look like?
Go the the online store, find an item you think a friend would like. Instead of ordering it, choose GIFT CARD.
The store asks you if you’d like to purchase a charitable donation add on as well.
Now, the site produces a unique digital gift card, with a picture of the item and a link to redeem it. The QR code it generates also includes a thank you from the charity.
Your friend simply has to scan the lovely page you printed out (or emailed them) to go to the redeem page. Once there, they can choose to get the item you carefully picked out, choose something else or easily get cash back.
And so, they get delighted three times: When they get the thoughtful card. When they go to the site and discover they can get the cash back. And when the item arrives in the post and they unwrap it.
Now the thought really does count. This is a low hassle, high delight way to show someone you were thinking of them. If stores used their persuasive powers, it could also raise billions for worthy causes along the way.
Either that, or you could give cash and save everyone a lot of trouble.
December 22, 2024
3.6 251 G.school #99 Repitition, repitition, repitition! (?)
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep[a] my commandments.
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SETH GODIN Mediocre tools
Lousy tools are dangerous. They endanger our safety (physical or emotional) and undermine our work. Lousy tools are pretty easy to avoid, because they reveal themselves whenever we use them.
Great tools are magical. They multiply our effort, amplify the quality of our work and delight us, all at once.
It’s mediocre tools that we have to watch out for. They quietly and persistently corrupt our intent and force us to work harder on the parts that don’t matter as much.
December 21, 2024
3.5 253 are you a lone nut? (?) (!)
John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep[a] my commandments.
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SETH GODIN The stories we tell ourselves
If it happened to us, our memory of it is a story, our record of it with us at the center.
Even if it’s on video, even if other people were there, our narrative and the context and the play by play belong to us.
The useful question might be: “Is my story helpful?”
And the follow on could be: “Is there any other version of this story that might be more helpful?”
December 20, 2024