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Next time I’m on a plane with a child yelling behind me, I’m just going to start yelling too.
Whenever this kind of thing happens I’m always thinking “Hey kid, you’ll have plenty of time to complain as an adult. Right now, this is quiet time. So shush.”
Thing is, we all have social roles. I can’t start yelling in a plane because I’ll get kicked off it, but the child can yell all he wants, because expectations and our roles are different. Any treatment you receive is based on what people see and hear from authorities. The visible matters to them. The rest does not.
Two things become interesting here.
ONE>>> You need a strong social role to be taken seriously. A big part of social engineering involves taking on false authority in order to bypass security measures. If you want to get in the back door and out the side the way the best do in the internet age, you need to do it the same way.
Those that learn to do it go up the ladder fast, because they are doing a form of simplifying complex business models that is based on doing what’s needed to find results, instead of going through the usual bureaucratic maze.
TWO>>> The message must come from a social role they respect. I read a lot about anarchism but the street punks asking for change won’t listen to me because I don’t look like them. If they see my tattoos it might be different. Same with any person– the role must be congruent with what they feel themselves to be or the message isn’t heard.
I don’t think any of this will help me yell in an airplane, but certain parts of it might ensure I don’t get put on any blacklists.
What tricks do you have to subvert this kind of behaviour? Teach me something.
Filed by Julien at 10:19 am under strategy
3 Comments
Free was a great book. But I don’t think it went far enough.
The premise of Chris Anderson’s book was awesome: When something gets too cheap to meter, it will inevitably become free, so you should act as if it is free. Since every abundance causes another scarcity, you will be able to make money in a new way, revolutionize your industry, etc. etc. Read the book if you want to find out more. (It comes out on paperback next week. Notice the new subtitle.)
Here’s the thing though. Free isn’t the only inevitability.
Look in every business and you’ll find them: The end of oil, the aging of the population, universal access to the web, objects tweeting, etc. All of these things are inevitable, and when they happen, there will be a radical change in the way businesses work with them.
In your business, you must find out what the inevitable is and act on it today. Place your outpost there when there’s no competition, because you’ll want it when it becomes obvious to everyone in your industry.
This is the equivalent of your cool friend knowing about every hot band before you. He’s lower on the filter ladder than you, so he profits more when one of his choices hits gold. The difference is, your friend just looks avant-garde when his pick is right. With your business, it’s profit that’s on the line. :)
So in a way, acting on the inevitable is like picking horses in a race or buying land. You’re betting that things will go in a certain direction in the future. But inevitabily in an industry is usually much more obvious, and easier to hit for upstarts than big companies.
The question is how you become a foursquare instead of a Brightkite. Being there early clearly isn’t everything.
What else matters? I’m trying to figure it out.
Filed by Julien at 9:40 am under strategy
3 Comments
Happy Monday. :)
I would like to use today’s blog post to introduce you to a thinking tool created by Edward de Bono– the word PO. Here is the basic idea (here’s a great book review if you need more):
NO is a tool of logic. You use it to refute and prove things false and to clarify murky subjects.
YES is a tool of belief. You use it when you’re looking to confirm something.
The problem with YES and NO as the only two options is that they present a closed worldview in which every discussion leads to either confirmation or denial of a supposition/hypothesis. A conversation around “is this a good idea” tends to lead to either a YES or NO conclusion.
So far I’m sure you’re with me. Now here’s a third one that we’ll introduce for usage on this blog (and in your life):
PO is neither YES nor NO. Think of PO as being a combination between “consider this,” “what if?” and “let’s follow this train of thought, even though it might make no sense.” We can also combine two different things that might normally not go together at all, then use PO to force us to combine the two in a creative way. This leads to new kinds of thinking and, over time, to a general attitude of openness to new stuff. And openness is the key to success.
Basically, the point of this word tool is to expand discussion, to remind us to stay open, and to lead us to new possibilities to understand or create the future. A new word forces us into that mode when we hear it. It’s shorthand for an open, creative “what if.”
All I wanted to do was introduce this today, but I’d also like to give you guys an example that shows both how to use PO and that you can use as an exercise (leave your response to the PO in the comments below).
PO: In the future, everything can send out status messages (like people do with Twitter now). All social objects/metadata are status messages, including location, mood, “busy-ness” level, “on/off-ness” of objects, and more. For example, the oven sends you a status message when it is left on.
Where does this lead?
Filed by Julien at 2:11 pm under strategy
2 Comments
If you are afraid of the new, then you are afraid of success.
Seems obvious to us that we can’t follow the career path our parents did, right? We feel so smart when we say that it’s soooo evident, people change careers all the time, you can’t have one employer your whole life, etc. etc. Everythone thinks they’re a total genius when they say this.
The principle behind the statement is true. We just won’t profit using old models. However, we don’t seem to understand how much we rely on old models ourselves.
We still believe in:
- Rising to the top via the usual corporate ladder.
- Becoming self-employed using the same BS methods everyone else uses.
- Following the same relationship ladder as everyone else.
- Taking the popular trips everybody else takes.
Some of these things still work ok, and others don’t. But allow me to make this as plain as I can for you:
They are paths because they have been taken before by other people, and because they were taken, they are no longer profitable. Someone else found that route. They picked up the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow before you did, and it’s gone now. Get it?
The Tragedy of the Commons means that everything that’s done before is not as good as it once was.
Someone else had that experience you wanted, and you didn’t. It was great then, and now it sucks. Guess what? That’s how things go. That is why I talk about scars.
Some people want you to believe that it’s easy, but it isn’t.
You’ll have to suffer.
You’ll have to break your own programming again and again.
You’ll have to fight everything in your past with every ounce of your being in order to become someone new.
Risk = Reward. There is no other way.
Filed by Julien at 2:00 pm under strategy
8 Comments
I’m starting to like these little thought experiments.
The other day I talked about luck and acting as if it wasn’t there at all, behaving as if there was no such thing. Let’s see what happens when we do the opposite of this– in other words, if we considered ourselves lucky, how would we behave? (Like Hurley from Lost, maybe.)
Belief in luck (and having it) leads to what I like to call “checkout aisle syndrome.” This is what happens when we start to believe that incredible, out of the ordinary events will just happen to us as we go ahead and behave the way we always have. It’s named after the idea that people think they will be “discovered” by someone in power at the checkout aisle, usually accompanied by the phrase “ZOMG!!! You are the one I’ve been looking for!!!”
In other words, they believe in a prince charming that will sweep them off their feet (career-wise or personally) so that they don’t have to do anything. It’s a belief in destiny that isn’t accompanied by any need to change any of their behaviour.
Of course, people that believe that this will happen to them (they’re more common than you think) also believe that they are special– otherwise this unlikely event that will happen to them would also happen to any number of other people. Since it doesn’t, they must be different.
I loved Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s answer to this– place ourselves in as many “lucky” instances as possible by accepting any party invitation we could (instead of staying home, say) just because the likelihood of meeting a future business or romantic partner is much more likely than if you’re sitting there microwaving Michelina’s. That said, a basic set of skills to find opportunity should still be cultivated.
Are you still waiting? I know I do it sometimes. Usually this happens in some parts of your life, but not in others. What do you think?
Filed by Julien at 1:27 pm under strategy
5 Comments
The way I see it, there are only two directions– up and down.
I used to say that it didn’t matter how fast you were going, as long as the direction you were going was up. Keep moving up, as slowly as you want, and you’ll get to a good place in your life. Don’t rush past people, don’t get greedy… just be that tortoise, taking one step at a time.
Up means fitter, more successful, more focused, or anything you want it to. (Down is just opposite of those.) But as I think about this I realize that it might not be enough. People can stay in their job for years, waiting for that next promotion, thinking they’re on their way up so it’s ok. But that isn’t up– it’s flatlining.
I used to rock climb a lot with my roommate. We did bouldering– the kind with no rope that requires a lot of strength. One of the things you learn while doing it is that there is a huge energy cost to just sitting there, wondering what the next move is. It’s better to plan ahead– or to try and fail– than to hang there, your energy being sapped away.
I think there’s a lot to be said here about deluding yourself, thinking you’re going up when you’re really not. You think your position is stable, but it isn’t. Momentum is important.
The thing is, we wait for the right time– the perfect time– to take the next step, just like we did bouldering. But there is no perfect time, except for right now. Just like people say there’s never a perfect time to have kids, and if you wait for it, it’ll never happen.
The circumstances will never be perfect. It’ll always be a little harder than you want it to be. But it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means you’ll have to make yourself… a bit uncomfortable.
Filed by Julien at 3:09 pm under strategy
6 Comments
Have you ever been asked to sign an NDA?
Non-Disclosure Agreements exist because of lack of trust between parties that need to discuss a subject– in fact, that’s the nature of any contract– to provide legal recourse in the case of non-compliance.
Here’s the thing though. You introduce a contract because there’s friction in a relationship. It’s an additional social and financial cost for a situation where trust doesn’t exist. It’s also a result of living in a world where we deal with strangers in everyday life, because when we have trust, we need less contracts.
So let’s talk about these social and financial costs. Stephen M. R. Covey’s Speed of Trust wasn’t a very good book (sorry), but it was right in that sense– things can happen faster and cheaper in tighter organizations.
Turns out that Ronald Coase, a Nobel prize winning economist, talked about this in the 1937 Economica article The Nature of the Firm. The reasons people enter into firms (or purpose-oriented groups of any kind, really) is because it reduces friction– social and financial costs– and improves efficiency. Otherwise, we’d all be free agents.
Now, what happens when your social graph gets massively huge? When the number of strangers around you gets reduced due to their connecting with you en masse through social networks? Friction may not be reduced to zero, but costs are reduced a little with each individual, making it extremely easy for you to get things at a cheaper social and financial cost than almost anyone.
This is the very definition of an Agent Zero– the equivalent of the It-Girl who knows everyone at the party. She gets everything for free because she knows everyone. She may be rich, but she doesn’t need money (except maybe to keep up her It-Girl status). She just needs connections– which, it has been proven, reduce costs.
Further than this– what happens when all people get just a tiny bit more connected? Friction is reduced across the board. All middleman institutions naturally become a little bit less funded, whether they be law firms or PR companies.
We don’t need them, because we’re not strangers anymore.
I hadn’t considered this when we were writing Trust Agents, but damn, does it ever make sense. Do you have connectors in your organization? They are literally like money in your pocket. Damn.
Filed by Julien at 2:38 pm under strategy
4 Comments
If I was creating a website right now that was designed to become popular, it would be The Oatmeal. It’s utterly brilliant.
It combines interesting factoids with tons of illustrations. Each page is evergreen content, and will probably still be looked at years in the future.
Remember those Top 10 List sites a few years ago? Well, this is its 2009 incarnation. The perfect linkbait blog, but taken to the next level. In fact it’s probably made by a guy super familiar with SEO (the smart kind). You can tell because every piece of content is designed and targeted to the audiences that love to spread content across the web, through things like Reddit and Twitter.
This is the way to think about your next project– check out the stuff you already love looking at on the web and then take it up a notch. Don’t just copy– level it up somehow.
Update: Hahahaha, oh boy was I right. Good on you Matt, I’m impressed. :)
Filed by Julien at 2:17 pm under strategy
3 Comments
Taylor Davidson called it “my phrase” at Tribecon, but it isn’t really mine– it’s been used many, many times before.
I started getting interested in it when I began doing Alexander Technique, which attempts to return your body to a natural, relaxed state through re-training (or “un”-training) you out of your bad posture habits.
But there’s more to it than that. The reason Alexander Technique is valuable is because it does a lot more than change posture– it also changes the way people see you, the way you project your voice, and a bunch of other stuff that is really valuable on a human level– particularly to me as a public speaker. (This is why many actors and musicians practice it.)
So I started to think: “If you’re sending non-verbal signals in person, you’re also doing it online. So how can you improve the signals you’re sending that aren’t verbal?”
If body language is a large part of what you’re showing people when you’re not speaking to them, digital body language is what you’re displaying to people on the web without speaking. And trust me, you’re sending a lot.
Let’s take the metaphor a bit further. If body language includes “stance,” what is stance on the web? It’s the way you or your company stand, what you look like, when you’re “in neutral.” What does your stance say about you, if people are just observing?
If being “tense” in real life means you look uncomfortable and frightened (which results in people feeling ill-at-ease around you), then what does tense mean in digital body language? Maybe a defensiveness in your writing and the way you position yourself vis-a-vis your market? That you’re not at ease with yourself?
People that are hunched over don’t look healthy– people with good posture do. What signals are you sending out that people assess as showing illness within your company or yourself?
Think about all of the signals you’re sending out. They’re happening all the time– they’re not just verbal, they’re everything you’re doing (or not doing). People intimate information from what they feel, and you’re making them feel it through your digital body language.
Like our body, which we often take for granted and forget about, we lose track of what our body language is telling people. But it’s vital not to ignore it like we do our body. It really is speaking volumes. Think about it.
Filed by Julien at 2:32 pm under strategy
8 Comments
Have you guys noticed yet that I love birds?
I’ve just gotten back from a few trips, including NOLA for Tribecon and up North in Quebec for BitNorth. Both were really cool events.
It’s become pretty evident over the time I’ve spent at conferences that your level of achievement is intimately connected to your social circle. I’m reading Connected right now, which strongly proves this with a number of examples, including how your friends get fat if you do, how much happier they are if you’re happy, etc.
In fact, it’s pretty crazy how much your friends (and their friends) influence you, which is why “Connected” is the perfect title for the book. But what can we do about it?
In my speech at Tribecon, what I suggest is that it’s your duty to lead your network to better achievement, whether losing weight, quitting smoking, or building a business.
What does this imply? Well, if you’re influenced by your network, but you’re first to change, it means you’ll encounter resistance, both internal and external. You won’t only make it tough on yourself (by breaking old habits), but other people’s habits will reinforce your old ones.
Second, maybe it means you need to spend more time with people that are already what you want to be like. This doesn’t mean don’t spend time with your friends, but if you want to be a writer, spend time with those that do it often. You’ll be hearing about it from them and it’ll encourage you in a number of ways. Then, you can bring that encouragement to your peer group.
Think of the way geese fly in that classic V-shape. The lead bird always encounters more wind resistance, making it easier to be in the back than the front. But if no one want to take the front, no one will get anywhere.
So all this stuff isn’t easy. Patterns reinforce themselves. Do you have any tricks to help you persevere in your goals?
Filed by Julien at 1:07 pm under strategy
10 Comments
