“But what if I’m wrong?
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
9h ago
If we’re going to come together and invest the time in conversation, in research or in analysis, we should begin by understanding what would be required for you or I to change our minds. If you’re not willing to consider that you’re wrong, then, in the words of a Dan Dennett, you’re a spectator, not a participant. Let’s agree on the standards of proof, and then begin. PS unrelated tip: I just switched my browser to arc and it’s working out great. Recommended ..read more
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Shields down
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
2d ago
Michael Lopp helped coin an important term. When you’re a skilled craftsperson with high market value, there may be recruiters knocking on your door. An employee who has ‘shields up’ doesn’t even bother to answer the door. When shields are down, you’re open to at least hearing what’s on offer. In a follow-up post where he offered silkscreened shirts with your shield status as a fundraiser, he said that it might not be a good idea to actually wear the shirt to work. That’s almost as fascinating as the shields up phenomenon. There are good reasons to go shields up. It saves you a lot of filteri ..read more
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The drift to normal
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
2d ago
As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That’s because each new customer, each new supplier and each new employee wants or needs something a little more normal, at least sometimes. The drift to normal can only be countered by persistent effort, usually at the cost of some element of short-term scale. “It might not be for you,” always accompanies, “this is special ..read more
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Explaining yourself
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
3d ago
The only reason we need to go into detail about our resume, the details of our new idea or the features of a product is to cause action to happen. And action is the result of tension, status or affiliation, and these are based on trust. There are many ways to build that trust, and an instruction manual, a powerpoint deck and a set of bullets aren’t the only ones ..read more
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Velocity and possibility
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
4d ago
The art of project management includes the dance between velocity and possibility. If you describe the outcome with specificity and remove as many variables as possible, you’ll get the work done with more speed, higher reliability and less cost. That velocity, though, might encourage us to recognize that all sorts of options are available. There are countless chances to make the project better and to find new opportunities. Exploring the possibilities in moments of high velocity almost certainly ensures that costs will increase, reliability will be impacted and you’ll miss deadlines. That’s be ..read more
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Purchase decisions
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
1w ago
All purchases involve a decision. Yes or no, this or that, now or later… But it’s helpful to realize that all decisions involve a purchase. When we decide to spend time or take a risk or make a commitment, our brains act in a way very similar to how we choose to make a purchase. When you talk about a non-profit, introduce a new sort of behavior or invite someone to follow along, you’re actually selling. Finding the empathy to treat it like a purchase is worth the effort. Even if it doesn’t cost money. Especially then ..read more
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The worst person on our team
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
1w ago
A common shortcut to cultural divisiveness is to find the single worst person in a different group and highlight and attack their behavior. By making it clear and obvious that this is what THEY (the plural) want and who THEY are, it’s easy to walk away from a larger we. Their worst troll becomes their mascot. And in a media-fueled culture that thrives on division, this is a convenient shortcut. What happens, though, if we find the worst person on our team and tell them to chill out a bit. That people like us don’t do things like that. That their trollish, extreme behavior is magnifying differe ..read more
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Out of control
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
1w ago
It’s negative when we say that someone is out of control. They’ve lost their self-restraint, and they’re doing things that they’ll regret later. And it’s honest when we acknowledge that just about everything is out of our control. We can work to influence it, we can practice accepting it, but any time we’re engaging with others or with the future, we’re not completely in charge. Control is elusive. If we accept the parts that are out of our hands, we can focus on the elements where we have leverage and influence instead ..read more
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Willfully uninformed
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
1w ago
Access to information used to be scarce. We ranked college libraries on how many books they had, and time at the microfilm reader was booked in advance. Today, if there’s something I don’t know, it’s almost certainly because I haven’t cared enough to find out. I don’t understand molecular biology, the history of Sardinia or much of agronomy–but that’s my choice. Now that information is widely and freely available, our sense of agency around knowledge needs to change. It pays to acknowledge that this is a choice, and to be responsible for it. What else have we chosen not to know ..read more
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“For what purposes will it be useful?”
Seth Godin
by Seth Godin
1w ago
In 1840, at the dawn of the information age, the king of Sardinia asked Charles Babbage what nearly instant messaging like the telegraph could possibly be good for. Twenty years later, it was obvious. When I first saw Prodigy in 1986, I saw that the consumer internet would have many possibilities, but I didn’t have the guts to ask what I was missing. “In 40 years, for what purposes will it be useful” would have been a productive way to think about the change that was happening. AI is as big a change as the internet, perhaps more so. And in just a few years, people will wonder why we weren’t wo ..read more
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