May 26, 2010 0
A quiet week, I was on vacation. :)
Mar 30, 2010 1
An interesting quote from “Tribal Leadership” on how industrialization changed the school system:
The solution was to train a new generation of workers by teaching them inside a system that looked a lot like a factory. In school, bell rings, go to class; bell rings, recess; bell rings, go back to class; bell rings, eat lunch; bell rings, go home. At school, children with the “right” answer get a gold star, then an A. A star pupil is one who does the homework and has the right answers. This new system undid the classic liberal education which said that value was in the well-designed question.
As data becomes more and more accessible and available, how valuable are these sorts of skills? Ubiquitous access to information means memorization of things like specific dates or formulae is an over-rated skill. The real skill is in understanding the underlying series of systems and actions that formed that memorable date. It is in knowing that a formula exists in the abstract, and can be applied specifically in different and possibly unrelated areas.
Sir Ken Robinson had a fantastic talk at TED on why applying a system across the board marginalizes certain creative personality types, and why he believes that nurturing creativity should be held in equal regard to skills like writing and numerical literacy. Paul Graham briefly mentions why apprenticeships make sense for some people. How will technology advances influence teaching?
Finally, here’s a great video on the importance of a good teacher from one of Seth Godin’s recent posts.
Mar 2, 2010 2
Part One - A recipe for a successful company
You might hire separate groups of A and B people each doing different things, or you might hire a few A people and let them lead a team of B drones to create something awesome.
Part Two – How to run a company into the ground
A recipe on how to frustrate everyone who works with you, burn cash like it’s going out of fashion, and generally run a company into the ground: Treat the A people like B people, and treat the B people like A people. Don’t cross the streams.
Feb 20, 2010 2
Purple Cow is a book about how taking the ’safe’ course of action is riskier than making the ballsy decisions that defy convention and make a really remarkable product. Seth describes the ‘TV-industrial complex’ which used television and print mass-media to advertise and create mindless demand in niche markets that did not yet have a clear leader. The profits from these ventures resulted in a continuous cycle – more money spent on advertisements means more profit means more money spent on advertising.
The end result of this cycle is that consumers become more and more inoculated against your advertising and eventually every product in a given sector is an indistinguishable clone of it’s competitors. In markets saturated with similar products that make similar claims the best course of action is the controversial one – stand out. Remarkable products pick a specific customer and solve their problem really well. They solve this problem in a way that turns ordinary customers into fans, and makes fans want to tell everyone else they know.
Most importantly is the premise that remarkable doesn’t happen via design-by-committee, watered-down compromise, or blindly imitating your competitors. It’s by being what your competitors aren’t prepared to; the nicest, the fastest, the newest, even the most hated as long as you follow the golden rule: The surest way to make a terrible product is to try to please everyone at the same time.
Feb 1, 2010 1
Tribes is a manifesto for self-driven change for everyone tired of the status quo – A call to identify the problems in your company, town, or life and start solving them with a like-minded group of enthusiasts.
Seth has written a clear guide through what he describes as a “factory” mindset – Where a job is clearly defined and you do the same things every day in a predictable manner, with someone telling you what to do next. The reality he proposes is that the factory mindset when applied to real life is dangerous – dangerous for the individual who doesn’t have the freedom to produce remarkable works with their talents, and dangerous for the company that lets great ideas stagnate due to poor policy.
The central principle of the book is that change is created by people – by leaders who are proud to go against the grain to do what they know is right. Movements are created by groups of these people, all working together at a singular aim without the fear and inertia that stifles innovation and talent.
I’ve dipped in and out of Seth’s blog and always enjoyed it but never really ‘drank the kool-aid’. No more – I found this book absolutely inspirational, and if you bump into me in the near future you may find me trying to force this book into your hand. Buy it, rent it, or steal it – this is something you need to read.
Postscript: In Tribes, Seth mentions a book called “Tribal Leadership”. Here’s a summary of Tribal Leadership.
