Tribes - more of Seth Godin

I recently started reading through Seth Godin's book, Tribes. He writes a lot of great material, (Linchpin being one of my favorite) and this one is no different.

Here is what he says about the basics of tribes:

"As we saw earlier, it takes only two things to turn a group of people into a tribe:
A shared interest
A way to communicate

The communication can be one of four kinds:
Leader to tribe
Tribe to leader
Tribe member to tribe member
Tribe member to outsider

So a leader can help increase the effectiveness of the tribe and it's members by:
Transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change;
Providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications; and
Leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members."

Succinct. As usual.

So who is your tribe? Who are you leading and influencing?

Are you 'Anti-business'?

I am 'anti-business', you might be too

A hundred and fifty years ago, when people finally began organizing to eliminate child labor in American factories, they were called anti-business. There was no way, the owners complained, that they could make a living if they couldn’t employ ultra-cheap labor. In retrospect, I think businesses are glad that kids go to school--educated workers make better consumers (and citizens).

Fifty years ago, when people realized how much damage was being done by factories poisoning our rivers, those supporting the regulations to clean up the water supply were called anti-business. Companies argued that they’d never be able to efficiently produce while reducing their effluent. Today, I think most capitalists would agree that the benefits of having clean air and water more than make up for what it costs to create a place people want to live—the places that haven't cleaned up are rushing to catch up, because what destroys health also destroys productivity and markets. (And it's a good idea).

When the bars and restaurants went non-smoking in New York a decade ago, angry trade organizations predicted the death knell of their industry. It turns out the opposite happened.

The term anti-business actually seems to mean, “against short-term waste, harmful side effects and selfish shortcuts.” Direct marketers were aghast when people started speaking out against spam, but of course, in the long run, ethical direct marketers came out ahead. 

If anti-business means supporting a structure that builds a foundation where more people can flourish over time, then sign me up.

A more interesting conversation, given how thoroughly intertwined business and social issues are, is whether someone is short-term or long-term. Not all long-term ideas are good ones, not all of them work, but it makes no sense to confuse them with the label of anti-business.

Successful businesses tend to be in favor of the status quo (they are, after all, successful and change is a threat) perhaps with a few fewer regulations just for kicks. But almost no serious businessperson is suggesting that we roll back the 'anti-business' improvements to the status quo of 1890.

It often seems like standing up for dignity, humanity and respect for those without as much power is called anti-business. And yet it turns out that the long-term benefit for businesses is that they are able to operate in a more stable, civilized, sophisticated marketplace.

It’s pretty easy to go back to a completely self-regulated, selfishly focused, Ayn-Randian cut-throat short-term world. But I don’t think you’d want to live there.

-Seth Godin

Companies Don't Care About You

"Brands don't care about you...

Institutions don't care about you either.

The only people who are able to care about you are people.

The question, then, is this institution owned and organized and run by people who will allow the people who work there to care?

Generally, the answer is 'no', because caring is unpredictable, hard to command and regulate and sometimes expensive in the short run.

What a shame."

-via Seth Godin @ http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/03/companies-dont-care-about-you.html

See how fast a small expense can add up . . .

To calculate a weekly expense compounded over ten years, multiply the price by 752.
For a monthly expense, multiply by 173

Courtesy of Mr. Money Mustache @ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/15/getting-started-3-eliminate-short-termitis-the-bankruptcy-disease/

Quote

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” 
― Theodore Roosevelt,

Hard Work

"To bring oneself to a frame of mind and to the proper energy to accomplish things that require plain hard work continuously is the one big battle that everyone has. When this battle is won for all time, then everything is easy.”

Thomas A. Buckner

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

Pass it on

The forcible entry training I was able to learn on Monday have already multiplied. I was able to teach my crew yesterday the same tricks I just learned myself.

And special thanks to YouTube. What can't you learn with a little motivation and a couple mouse clicks?

Fight it, or an opportunity to grow?

I can attest to the truth below - it is more productive to view difficult circumstances as a chance to learn. Becoming negative doesn't achieve anything other festering a contagious, poor attitude that affects everyone around you.  

I've experienced the effects of kicking and screaming at injustice. But I've also known the inner satisfaction of telling myself, "I don't deserve this, but I'm stronger because of it."

 

Kicking and screaming (vs. singing and dancing)

"Unfair things happen. You might be diagnosed with a disease, demoted for a mistake you didn't make, convicted of a crime you didn't commit. The ref might make a bad call, an agreement might be abrogated, a partner might let you down.

Our instinct is to fight these unfairnesses, to succumb if there's no choice, but to go down kicking and screaming. We want to make it clear that we won't accept injustice easily, we want to teach the system a lesson, we want them to know that we're not a pushover.

But will it change the situation? Will the diagnosis be changed, the outcome of the call be any different?

What if, instead, we went at it singing and dancing? What if we walked into our four-year prison sentence determined to learn more, do more and contribute more than anyone had ever dreamed? What if we saw the derailment of one path as the opportunity to grow or to invent or to find another path?

This is incredibly difficult work, but it seems far better than the alternative."

- Seth Godin

How are you making yourself better?

Each day you have an opportunity to make yourself more capable, more knowledgeable and more confident. Did you better yourself today, or did you just veg out in front of the TV?

I got the opportunity to draw some new forcible entry training out of a quiet but talented crew member today. It wasn't expensive, all I had to do was ask.

Go learn something. Try something new.

It's easy to quote or paraphrase someone like Seth Godin, but it's even easier to copy and paste what he writes. Here's a great post called:

Measure what you care about (re: the big sign over your desk)

It's not always easy to measure what matters. Sometimes, the thing that matters doesn't make it easy for you to measure it.

The easiest path is to find a stand-in for what you care about and measure that instead. For example, websites don't actually care about how many minutes someone spends on the site, they care about transactions or ad sales or making content that moves people to take action. But those things might be harder to measure at first, so they focus on minutes.

The problem with stand-ins is that they're almost always not quite right. The stand-in looks good at first, but then employees figure out how to game the system to make the stand-in number go up instead of the thing you're actually trying to change.

A good way to find out: If you had to choose between increasing the stand-in stat and increasing the thing you actually care about, which would you invest in?

Roses, chocolates and greeting cards are a stand-in for actual human emotions, a stand-in for caring and respect and love. But of course, it's way easier to make the expense on chocolate go up than it is to actually care more.

Political fundraisers use money as a stand-in for votes, and in the short run, it might be. But not forever.

Authors use bestseller lists as a stand-in for making an impact, and in the short run, it might be. But of course, one thing is a lot easier to game than the other.

The moment you start heavily investing in making a stand-in number increase, it's worth taking a minute to look at the big sign hanging over your desk (you do have a big sign, right?) that says what you're actually seeking to do, the change you're working to make. Make that go up, even if you don't have an easy stand-in handy.

- Seth Godin

"Successful people are successful because they form the habits of doing those things that failures don't like to do."


Albert Gray

How to kill motivation:

1. Don't address employees that are negative and unproductive
2. Assume everyone wants to be average

You just reinforced the culture you created.

We don't care enough to give you constructive feedback

But if we did, it would take a lot to speak up in a useful way. It's difficult to be a generous skeptic. Not only do we have to be clear and cogent and actionable, but we cross a social boundary when we speak up. We might be rejected, or scolded, or made to feel dumb. And of course there's the risk that we'll get our hopes up that something will improve, only to see it revert to the status quo.

So, most of the time, we don't bother.

But when someone does care enough (about you, about the opportunity, about the work or the tool), the ball is in your court.

You can react to the feedback by taking it as an attack, deflecting blame, pointing fingers to policy or the CEO. Then you've just told me that you don't care enough to receive the feedback in a useful way.

Or you can pass me off to a powerless middleman, a frustrated person who mouths the words but makes it clear that the feedback will never get used. Another way to show that you don't care as much as I do. And if you don't care, why should I?

One other option: you can care even more than I do. You can not only be open to the constructive feedback, but you can savor it, chew it over, amplify it. You can delight in the fact that someone cares enough to speak up, and dance with their insight and contribution.

Because then, if you're lucky, it might happen again.

- Seth Godin

"Productivity is a measure of output over time. All other things being equal, the more you produce per minute, the more productive you are. And economists understand that wealth (for a company or a community) is based on increasing productivity.

The simplest way to boost productivity is to get better at the task that has been assigned to you. To work harder, and with more skill.

The next step up is to find people who are cheaper than you to do those assigned tasks. The theory of the firm is that people working together can get more done, faster. The next step up is to invest in existing technology that can boost your team's output.

Buying a copier will significantly increase your output if you’re used to handwriting each copy of the memo you've been assigned.

The step after that? Invent a new technology. Huge leaps in value creation come to those that find the next innovation.

The final step, the one that that eludes so many of us: Figure out better things to work on. Make your own list, don't merely react to someone else's.

It turns out that the most productive thing we can do is to stop working on someone else’s task list and figure out a more useful contribution instead. This is what separates great organizations from good ones, and extraordinary careers from frustrated ones.
The challenge is that the final step requires a short-term hit to your productivity. But, if you fail to invest the time and effort to find a better path, it's unlikely you'll find one."

- Seth Godin, The Productivity Pyramid