Draft 3
No matter when a dystopian future movie is set — 20 years from now, 100 years, 500 years, more — it seems these relics of the 20th century survive:
Rarely do characters in future movies consume food, but when they do, it’s noodles. Am I right?
My thoughts on succession in just a moment. But first I have to go read my “King Lear” Spark Notes.
“Confidence. It’s the food of the wise man, but the liquor of the fool”
– Vikram, from The Office
Collecting data and not doing anything with it is the same as not collecting data. Discuss.
Once led by fearsome warriors who conquered vast lands and ruled for hundreds of years, now a furniture category on Wayfair: The Ottoman Empire. It always seems like an empire will last forever, but it never does.
It is said that the human mind would be pure chaos without language. Language provides structure and solidity to our every thought. It’s strange to imagine that without language, we would have no thoughts. Just raw needs, physical sensations and emotions. We wouldn’t even need a spoken or written language to corral our thoughts, just some sort of symbolic representation of concepts, objects, actions, emotions, memories. Sure, we could find our way to the center of the maze so we could get the cheese — because of pattern recognition. But could we imagine what the cheese would taste like, plan what we would do after our cheese-fest, or tell our friends about our cheese find? Prolly not.
And every time we think we’re coming up with a new word or expression, we’re prolly not. We’re just renaming a concept that’s been around for a long time, or mashing together several previously existing concepts. So take that “lit”, and “salty” and “O.G.” You’re only the latest version of “groovy”, “miffed” and “eminence grise.”
And that’s my final word on the subject.
We all employ vendors, consultants, freelancers. Let’s face it, unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, you have to. And you should employ vendors. They provide expertise you do not have.
But how do you know if your vendors care as much about the result of their work as you do? TBH, they almost never will. In most cases you have agreed to pay them a fixed fee for a deliverable, or an hourly fee for producing a deliverable, and they are going to earn that fee on delivery. Regardless of whether it improves your profitability or not.
If you are a decision maker in a huge organization, or a risk-taking entrepreneur, you may decide to engage a vendor by offering them a piece of the action. If, for example, revenue increases by X percent, the vendor gets a piece of that. And conversely, if revenue falls below X percent, the vendor’s compensation may also be reduced. If they have skin in the game, they will care almost as much as you do.
But such engagements are rare. In an agreed-upon fee arrangement, the main incentive a vendor has to perform well is so that they will be re-engaged. Assuming that you did all your due diligence before you hired them — checked past work, got references, evaluated reviews, spoke with them to see if they were a good fit — how can you tell if they are a solid provider who wants you to succeed?
They meet deadlines. Have you provided all the resources they need in a timely fashion? If yes, then so should they. If they are not able to meet a deadline, they should inform you and let you know why. It happens. It’s normal. You might want them to provide good work a little late, as opposed to slap-dash work on time. But you definitely don’t want to be chasing them down to find out where the work is and why they’re not returning your calls.
They provide progress reports and updates even when you haven’t asked for them.
They admit it if they make a mistake, and may even bring it to your attention. They also tell you how they corrected it, and how they’re re-engineering keep it from happening again. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s human. But covering up, denying, or blaming others for a mistake is not a good sign.
They don’t try to get one over on you. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if a vendor is doing this. Especially if you are at an information disadvantage. For example, when the car mechanic tells me what is wrong with my transmission or the dentist tells me why I need a replacement filling, all I can say is “I guess.” Or get a second opinion. BUT, if a vendor seems to be doing the same thing over and over with nothing to show for it, or providing something that seems generic, easily available, or outsourced, dig a little deeper. Where did this come from? How does it work? Can the individual who created it explain it to me in detail? If you have the resources, get a second opinion.
It may be that your vendors are just not great at communicating, so don’t jump to the conclusion that they are ripping you off. In many instances, we are simply not aware how complex certain processes are, and hearing about how things are done restores our faith.
If a vendor does something obvious, such as copying an article in the first page of google results and providing it to you as their custom solution to your company’s problem (as happened to me), then it is likely that all trust is lost. And when trust is lost, the engagement is essentially over, contract or no.
They care about the results after the product/plan/strategy etc. is delivered. They ask you happened. How is the plan working? Is there something that should be tweaked? How do the other stakeholders feel about it? Do you get the feeling that not only are they hoping for more work, they genuinely care about what they have produced for you? Now, that’s a good sign.
Red. No, blue! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Twenty fun points to you, if you get that reference.
No, but seriously, designers definitely have opinions on color. Some do everything in black, with hits of fire-engine red. Some stick with primary colors or with pastels. Some of don’t have favorite colors, but definitely do have least-favorite colors. (Mine is pink.)
Some of switch favorites with the trends, and some just never budge. I’m looking at you, purple people.
I’ve definitely gone through phases, but I will say that there are certain color combinations that I’ve always adored, and probably always will.
Brown and peach. Purple and chartreuse. Navy and white. But my all time favorite combo is charcoal gray and post-it-note yellow. I love that duo so much that I’ve got their hex codes memorized.
That’s right. Lennon and McCartney. Peanut butter and chocolate. Tom and Jerry. And #333333 and #FFFFCC.
Better together.
Most people hate risk. A select few really do love it, but willy-nilly risk-taking is not a formula for success. Some say they love it, but not-so-secretly hedge their bets. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s wise.
When you’re asking someone to do something new with their business, you’re asking them to take a risk. First, understand that it may not seem as risky to you as it does to them.
You’re thinking, “I’ve seen this work many times before” or “It’s a relatively small investment”, or “Why would I recommend something that I didn’t think would work?” And they’re thinking, “It’s my money, it’s my business, and at the end of the day, I’m left holding the bag.”
Your job here is to minimize the risk. And one of the best ways to do that is to offer to test. Test the concept in a small region, or for a short period of time, or with a select sampling of customers. In online world, we love A/B testing. You don’t always get what seem like dramatic results, but even a half-percent difference, especially if it holds, can make a huge impact at scale.
Offer to test the current scenario vs. a new one, or Option A vs. Option B — in the case of decision paralysis.
Testing in focus groups or with online evaluation services is useful, especially for real-life ‘debugging’ and idea generation, but it isn’t the best option for business decision-making. The best way to do that is to put new concepts out there IRL — and see what happens.
You may run across an individual who doesn’t believe testing is necessary, because they know best. This can be hard to overcome, but if you can explain the process, include their concept in the test, and make it into a competition, you’re more likely to get the okay for testing. (People who think they know best also often like a friendly competition.)
But remember, be prepared for unexpected results. Even if your concept doesn’t win, at some point it’s hard to argue with the data.
Just keep on testing!
As humans, we naturally tend to inertia. Change is hard. It’s the unknown. What will happen? It could be bad! Most of us are happy with our familiar, cozy ways of doing things. But what if our familiar, cozy ways aren’t working? Or could be working a lot better? How do we convince ourselves, or someone else, to try something different?
Today we discuss the first, and possibly least sound, way of making the case for a new approach: the competition is doing it.
Although on closer inspection, ‘everyone else is doing it’ is not a great rationale for making a process change, it is undeniably effective in business.
(Maybe not so effective at home, though. “I suppose if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, you’d do it, too?”)
But because we cannot see behind the curtain of our competition’s external messaging, we assume they are geniuses and have unlocked a key to success that remains hidden from us. When multiple competitors are doing “whatever the thing is”, so much the better. They’re all geniuses! It’s working for all of them!
Maybe so. Maybe not. But we cannot know until we try it ourselves.
Study the competition, infer their reasoning, set up a testing plan, and analyze the data once the plan is in place. With a clear structure and benchmarks for results, you may just make your case.