"A person who won't read has not advantage over one who can't read." - Mark Twain
Stay curious, my friends.
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#lifehack
"If you want to build a big business, solve a big problem." - Scott Cook, Intuit
Potential customers will lie. They don’t mean to, but they can’t help themselves. Find a way to test customer behavior, not customer opinion. Then you will uncover the truth.
To become great you need to compete against the best.
When I was in college, I combined majors in history and business, which necessitated a lot of writing. The professors began classes by asking that students write a minimum number of formatted pages for each assignment. After the first few, the professor then implemented a page limit. I tried not to take it personally, but I did notice a pattern. More was not always better.
Thus my love-hate relationship with editing began in earnest. And now, I think of editing as a more encompassing task and valuable talent, because I don’t see it limited to writing. Sure, we edit copy for an ad, content for a blog post, speeches or videos for length, or even these articles to match the attention span of the reader. But I am now very aware that editing is something you must do in your life overall.
Identifying which stories need to be told. Selecting the right things to focus on. Making each word and each moment of the day the highest impact possible. Taking out everything extraneous so that the important things can be achieved.
Just like editing, it is easier said than done. You’d think it would be easier to strike words from sentences or sentences from paragraphs than it was to write them in the first place, but anyone who has done it knows it is not true. Just like curation makes the museum collection, so does editing make the writer.
And in life, editing is hard. But worthwhile.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
We think of Facebook as something personal, because it has a password and most of the content is personal in nature, but it is public. It is open space. We think the lock on the gate let’s us in, but in fact, the lock on the gate let’s us out.
We think of a public square as public space. But with headphones and heads-down mobile technology, it might be more of a private experience. Add to this augmented reality with personal interests represented and the public square might be very private.
As the lines between public and private space and information blur, what are the implications to privacy, to communication, and to the responsibility we have to our fellow users of these spaces and systems?
It used to be when someone asked for your address, they meant your street address. I know, it sounds funny now, because it is much more likely that we exchange email addresses today, or perhaps our social handles. And sometimes we are in the same place, without sharing addresses at all. I have “friends” (or are they “followers”?) on Pinterest because they were suggested based on our affinity for ridiculous shoes or fabric art (or at least that is what I assume about the algorithms that brought us together). We are now residents of the digital landscape and we might not know our own address.
This got me thinking of the implications of this to other elements of our work. If co-workers in far-flung parts of the globe use the same ERP system, website, salesforce automation tools, and data warehouse, is it like we are co-located in a single office? How does our citizenship in the digital landscape affect who we consider our “first team” (to use the language of Patrick Lencioni)? The people we might be interacting with the most (in terms of pushing and pulling information or internal customers of our work product) might be people we don’t know personally, but interact in a brokered matter through these systems.
So, both in our personal and work life it might become increasingly difficult to know our neighbors. It could be that software designers, using human design principles, might be responsible for how human and how humane, we are to each other in the future.
"It's the last two percent of a job that ensures your successful completion of the project." - Art Gensler
What if there was a real life “bull**** meter”? I’m imagining a browser plug-in that would rate the credibility of website claims by searching for the authority of the site and author, the propositions and data in the excerpt (comparing it to other credible sources online). There could also be a crowd-sourced element where individuals (with their own authority ratings) would comment on and rate the claim. It could give back a credibility rating score that people could look at. If all the reviews of a product were by employees, the credibility of the testimonial would be low. If a number of leading data scientists agree to the recidivism rate in Orange County, then it would have a high score. It would help people navigate the world of internet information overload and make sense of their world. It might also elevate the dialogue around critical issues beyond the sound byte by aggregating sound bytes (in big data fashion) to provide better and more predictive patterns.
Someone should do this. And tell me about it. You’re welcome.
"Be yourself, but always be your better self." -Karl G. Maeser
This month, I presented at the luncheon series for the Portland Chapter of the American Marketing Association (or AMA-PDX). The presentation that I delivered has been reconfigured into an eBook which is now available for free download.
This ebook outlines three approaches for finding inspiration for your business or products in the most unlikely places and shares some case studies. From Charming Charlie retail stores, to the National Basketball Association (NBA), to "So You Think You Can Dance?" on FOX, the stories illustrate how to find new approaches, broaden your perspective, and to make the most out of all of your experiences.
Feel free to share this post and the eBook with others that might be interested. You can tag me on Twitter @jenniferdavis.
"Everyone has a game plan until you are punched in the face." -Mike Tyson
What if someone combined a pizza place (like MOD) with the business model of Tom’s shoes? For every pizza sold, one would be given to a hungry person (through a school, at a homeless shelter, through service agencies, etc). I bet people would pay a little more for their pizza knowing they are helping a good cause. Plus, it could make people choose your pizza place over others when corporate events and birthday parties came around. It would taste good and make them look good while they are doing good.
Someone should do this. And tell me about it. You’re welcome.
"We neither shun growth or idolize it. We view it as a by-product of achieving our other goals." -McKinsey & Company
"Staying relevant means being willing to run a different business every few years" - Katherine Power
"The single best way to keep your talent is to keep your word." -Art Gensler
"Technology, when well-implemented, endows us with super powers." - Samuel Hulick
Elon Musk is afraid of artificial intelligence. He supposes that when the robots take over they might make us housecats. Or maybe we already are?
Recode Decode's podcast interview with the co-founders of Numenta suggests that fears about artificial intelligence are wrong.
“Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?”
- Lyrics from “Show me” from My Fair Lady
A study at Harvard, asked subjects to cut into a line of strangers waiting to make photocopies. When they asked simply if they could use the photocopier (saying “Excuse me. May I use the machine?” for instance), subjects were successful 60% of the time. However, when a reason beginning with the word “because” was added (“May I use the photocopier because I’m in a rush”), the request gained instant credibility, and compliance skyrocketed to 94%.
What’s more amazing, it didn’t seem to matter what the given reason was (“May I use the photocopier, because I need to make copies”), compliance remained at about the same level, 93%.
This is a lesson in persuasion that all of us can apply. Giving people the benefit of an explanation makes us more influential. I highly advise against giving a dumb or non-sensical reason (“I need to make copies, because I need to make copies”). I imagine that would help your cause today, but hurt your credibility long term. But giving people the courtesy of a reasonable and relevant “because” will make all the difference.