"Stop And Think!" via Mike Ramm in Google Reader

The tyranny of low price

Seth Godin — Fri, 25 May 2012 02:18:00 PDT

If you build your business around being the lowest-cost provider, that's all you've got. Everything you do has to be a race in that direction, because if you veer toward anything else (service, workforce, impact, design, etc.) then a competitor with a more single-minded focus will sell your commodity cheaper than you.

Cheapest price is the refuge for the marketer with no ideas left or no guts to implement the ideas she has.

Everyone needs to sell at a fair price. But unless you've found a commodity that must remain a commodity, a fair price is not always the lowest price. Not when you understand that price is just one of the many tools available.

A short version of this riff: The low-price leader really doesn't need someone with your skills.

Meet with Me

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:15:23 PDT

Yes, I would love to get a chance to meet with everyone of you someday. But that is not the point of this article.

Everyone of us needs time with ourselves regularly – sort of “Meet with Me” time. The need is higher at this day and age. Living in an “always connected” world has its advantages but the biggest disadvantage is that it makes it hard to stop, think and reflect unless you force yourself to schedule time to do just that.

The Best YOU!

There are a LOT of important people in your life – and the best gift you can give to them (apart from not being a burden to them) is to give them the best YOU possible.

How do you know you are doing that right now?

If you don’t stop, think and reflect how would you know where you are in becoming the best YOU?

Mirror, Mirror…

When you are managing someone, they expect you to give them regular feedback just so that they do all the course corrections along the way to be and deliver the best. In a way, the most important person you are managing is yourself and you would be expecting that kind of feedback from yourself. After all, who will know you better than yourself.

But, the question is – are you asking for that feedback on a regular basis?

The Invisible Trap

What would be more difficult to schedule some time with yourself? It’s the easiest thing to do. You know your schedule and you have some flexibility to rearrange things. So why not do it? This is where the invisible trap comes into the picture. The trap is – “if it’s easy to do, it’s also easy to not do.” You can always get away postponing these meetings saying to yourself – “I will get to it as soon as I can.. but let me first focus on things where I have external dependencies. I can always meet with myself ANYTIME I want to.”

Honestly, thinking you can meet ANYTIME rarely works. You and I both know this. If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not there. Imagine adding just one hour on your calendar every week and labeling it as Weekly MWM (Meet with Me) and leave it there. You will start scheduling other things around this time rather than trying to stuff MWM somewhere when there is a slack (which rarely happens)

When Will You Start?

There is no need to wait. You can add MWM to your calendar for next week right after you finish reading this page. if you have never done this before, that ONE hour will be super uncomfortable for you but it’s worth going through every minute of that “pain” and soon you will start seeing the “gain” from this.

Photo Courtesy: Birdman of El Paso on Flickr

To Think Lists

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Thu, 24 May 2012 22:35:16 PDT

You and I both have “to do lists.” Some of you may be using a sophisticated system and some of you may just be listing your to do items in a piece of paper. And, probably small percentage of you may simply maintain the to do list in your mind.

Knowing that you are smart, I can predict that your to do list is overflowing. You have more tasks than you have time. Building a sophisticated system of to do lists is not completely helping because you just add more things into the system.

If I guess it right, you are probably aware of the challenges of managing time (or to be precise, managing yourself within the available time.) You probably are already taking necessary actions to make the most of your time.

[ Please see: ChangeThis Manifesto - Making the Most of Your Time ]

What influences your To Do list?

So, the cycle goes something like this:
1. Make a To Do List
2. Start checking off things in the list
3. Re-arrange spillover to do items for a future date
4. Go back to step 1 the next day

There are several things that will influence the following:
1. What is getting into the To Do list
2. Why is it getting into the To Do list
3. What you like and don’t like about what is getting into the To Do list
4. How fast is the To Do list getting cleared
5. What is your feeling when things get cleared or remained undone in the To Do list

But there is one thing that plays a big role and that is : Your Quality of Thinking

Only YOU can work on improving your quality of thinking

You meet and exceed people’s expectations based on your actions. your quality of thinking definitely influences the actions you take but that is not easily visible to others. For instance, if you produce a report in the promised seven days, the client is happy. He or she won’t care whether you spent 140 hours in those seven days or you were able to get this done by spending five hours a day. It’s not important to the client but it’s VERY important for you. In the latter case, your quality of thinking not only influenced the actions you took to produce the report but it also influenced your quality of life positively. In the former case, there was no life left for you think about the “quality of life.”

So, only YOU will really have an incentive to improve your quality of your thinking. How can you get started there?

To Think List

The importance of To Do List is understandable because of the importance of getting something done. As we discussed, quality of thinking deeply influences your quality of actions. So, it makes logical sense to a To Think list. The only way you get better at something is via practice. So, you get better at thinking by…well, thinking!

Since your To Do List is already overflowing, you might not have given a thought to create a To Think List. Without one, you will be swamped with catching up on your To Do list and taking time to think will keep going back on your priority list.

To make things complicated, most of your education was all about doing well. Your curriculum didn’t include even a few topics on how to think well. It was left for you to figure that out. To Think List will get you started on that path.

The way I have used To Think List is like the way I use a To Do List. I will put items on it that I have to think about in the future. When I set aside time for myself, I have a handy list of things to think about.

All of us can improve our quality of thinking – if we are committed to investing our time on it.

Summary

If To Do Lists can improve your productivity directly, To Think Lists can improve your quality of thinking (and hence improve your productivity, indirectly)

Photo Courtesy: squeaky482 on Flickr

A book/gadget list for late spring

Seth Godin — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:09:00 PDT

I hope you'll find a gem or two.

Here it is.

"If I were you..."

Seth Godin — Thu, 24 May 2012 02:42:00 PDT

But of course, you're not.

And this is the most important component of strategic marketing: we're not our customer.

Empathy isn't dictated to us by a focus group or a statistical analysis. Empathy is the powerful (and rare) ability to imagine what motivates someone else to act.

When a politician or a pundit vilifies someone for her actions, he's missed the point, because all he can do is imagine what he would do in that situation, completely avoiding an opportunity to see the world through someone else's eyes, to try on a new worldview, to attempt to imagine the circumstances that would lead to any action other than the one he would take.

When a teacher can't see why a student is stuck, or when an interface designer dismisses the 12% of the users who can't find the 'off' switch... we're seeing a failure of empathy, not a flaw in the user base.

When we call a prospect stupid for not choosing us, when we resort to blunt promotional tactics to get attention we could have earned with a more graceful approach--these are the symptoms that we've forgotten how to be empathetic.

You don't have to wear panty hose to be a great brand manager at L'eggs, nor do you need to be unemployed to work on a task force on getting people back to work. What is required, though, is a persistent effort to understand how other people see the world, and to care about it.

1 MIN READING: the cry of the desert

Paulo Coelho — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:23:14 PDT

As soon as he arrived in Marrakesh, Morocco, a missionary decided he would stroll through the desert at the city’s boundary every morning. On his first stroll he noticed a man lying on the sand, caressing the ground with his hands and leaning his ears towards the earth. “He is mad,” the missionary said to [...]

Dancing on the edge of finished

Seth Godin — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:53:00 PDT

Before, when your shift was done, you were finished. When the inbox was empty, when the forms were processed, you could stop.

Now, of course, there's always one more tweet to make, post to write, words with friends move to complete. There's one more bit of email, one more lens you can construct, one more comment you can respond to. If you want to, you can be never finished.

And that's the dance. Facing a sea of infinity, it's easy to despair, sure that you will never reach dry land, never have the sense of accomplishment of saying, "I'm done." At the same time, to be finished, done, complete--this is a bit like being dead. The silence and the feeling that maybe that's all.

For the marketer, the freelancer and the entrepreneur, the challenge is to level set, to be comfortable with the undone, with the cycle of never-ending. We were trained to finish our homework, our peas and our chores. Today, we're never finished, and that's okay.

It's a dance, not an endless grind.

Ranking for signal to noise ratio

Seth Godin — Tue, 22 May 2012 02:45:00 PDT

A whisper in a quiet room is all you need. There's so little noise, so few distractions, that the energy of the whisper is enough to make a dent.

On the other hand, it's basically impossible to have a conversation (at any volume) in a nightclub.

Signal to noise ratio is a measurement of the relationship between the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don't. And here's the thing: Twitter and email and Facebook all have a bad ratio, and it's getting worse.

The clickthrough rates on tweets is getting closer and closer to zero. Not because there aren't links worth clicking on, but because there's so much junk you don't have the attention or time to sort it all out.

Spam (and worse, spamlike messages from organizations and people that ought to treasure your attention and permission) are turning a medium (email) that used to be incredibly rich into one that's becoming very noisy as well.

And you really can't do much to fix these media and still use them the way you're used to using them.

The alternative, which is well worth it, is to find new channels you can trust. An RSS feed with only bloggers who respect your time. Relentless editing of who you follow and who you listen to and what gets on the top of the pile.

Until you remove the noise, you're going to miss a lot of signal.

Campbell on himself

Paulo Coelho — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:43:51 PDT

Joseph Campbell is another proof that if we are following our dreams, things will come to us in the exact timing. Even so, we do not always have the courage to choose our destiny. Below, some of his thoughts: When you attend college, you don’t do what you desire, but you only seek to learn [...]

The endless emergency of politics

Seth Godin — Sun, 20 May 2012 17:49:05 PDT

Good governance is like great marketing--it takes the long view, and relentlessly focuses on delivering on agreed upon goals over time.

Politics, on the other hand, is more like a ping pong match, and, thanks to electronic media, it's getting faster when we'd be better off if it slowed down.

Those that work in politics are now addicted to today's emergency, whatever it is. It could be a world event, a faux scandal or merely something the other side said. They use it to fundraise, they use it to distribute talking points and they use it to get attention and score points on the opposition. And they use polls to keep score, daily.

It's practically impossible to get the attention or effort of people on a campaign unless you've got something urgent and imminent to discuss. This is no way to do serious marketing.

One side effect of the endless emergency is an insatiable need for cash. Clearly, money spent on campaigns is effective (particularly in depressing the vote for an opponent), but just as clearly, it doesn't scale. Twice as much money is not twice as effective. When the campaign falls in love with the combination of instant reaction plus unlimited fundraising, all strategy and leadership go out the window.

The problem with getting elected using emergency tactics is that it makes it harder than ever to govern for the long term.

[Here's my post about the endless emergency of poverty].

A great idea needs a new name. Want to help?

Dan Pink — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:04:35 PDT

One of the best ideas I’ve heard in the last 10 years is the FedEx Day. Created by the Australian software company Atlassian, FedEx Days give people 24 hours to work on whatever they want — so long as it’s not part of their regular jobs and provided that they show what they’ve created to their colleagues when the 24 hours elapse.

Why the name? Because you have to deliver something overnight.

FedEx Days have been hugely successful in generating new products, fashioning fixes to existing products, and improving internal processes. That’s one reason why they have spread like kudzu in recent years. But now, Atlassian says in a blog post, the name must change.

It turns out that FedEx, which had absolutely no connection to its eponymous days, has asked Atlassian to choose a new name. They weren’t jerks about it. No growling lawyers or menacing cease-and-desist letters. FedEx* just said essentially, “Hey, it’s our brand, not yours. So if you don’t mind, come up with something else.”

Atlassian is now trying to find that something else. And the company, a true pioneer of leading-edge work practices, has reached out to its loyal base of customers and blog readers for suggestions.

If you have a cool new name for this cool semi-new innovation, visit the Atlassian site and offer your idea. You’ve got until May 23 at midnight PDT. But I beg you: Please don’t suggest “UPS Days.”

*(Full disclosure: I’m a fan of FedEx — both because of my experiences as a customer and because FedEx founder Fred Smith called me a few months ago to tell me he liked Drive.)

You will be judged (or you will be ignored)

Seth Godin — Mon, 21 May 2012 02:38:00 PDT

Those are pretty much the only two choices.

Being judged is uncomfortable. Snap judgments, prejudices, misinformation... all of these, combined with not enough time (how could there be) to truly know you, means that you will inevitably be misjudged, underestimated (or overestimated) and unfairly rejected.

The alternative, of course, is much safer. To be ignored.

Up to you.

Business Cards Designed to Make You Think

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Sat, 19 May 2012 22:20:29 PDT

The consulting side of my life (Foresight Plus) is a combination of enough left brain mixed with a lot of right brain thinking. It’s about bringing creativity, storytelling and leverage to the marketing side of any business. So, my cards for Foresight Plus had to have a mix of all of them. A pack of 100 cards comes with 100 mini sagas (stories in exactly 50 words). Each story is fictional at the same time comes with a life or business lesson. I call these ThinkCards – business cards that make you think.

Recently, Prashanti Ganesh from The New Indian Express interviewed me for her article on innovative business cards. She quoted a few things from the interview but the entire interview is below.

PG: Why did you think having a business card that stood out was important?

RS: To be honest, this experiment was mostly accidental. I was working with my designer friend Aaina Sharma to create two sets of playing cards called ThinkDecks (to be launched soon.) Every ThinkDeck had 52 mini sagas. When the designs for ThinkDecks were completed, I really liked them and started wondering where else I could use these mini sagas. As luck would have it, right at the same time, I was running out of business cards. I put two and two together ThinkCards were created. To my surprise, people loved these cards and rest you already know.

That’s the real story.

PG: How and why did you come up with the idea of the mini sagas?

RS: A few years ago, I observed that people buy books but they really don’t read them. I mean they read one or two chapters and move on to the next book. Soon, they have a pile of unread books on their night stand but they will continue to buy books.

I started looking for ways to spread ideas in a world where A.D.D. is the fashion. Call it serendipity as I was reading a book called “A Whole New Mind” by Dan Pink at the same time. In this book, Dan talks about mini sagas – stories in exactly 50 words. I fell in love with the format right away. I decided to quickly take advantage of the format and write fictional stories but with business lessons embedded in each one of them. I have written 123 mini sagas in the last six years. You can see most of them here:

http://www.squidoo.com/minisaga

PG: What do these stories tell and how have people responded to them? What do you want and expect people to take away from these cards?

RS: Every story has a business lesson embedded within it. Long time readers of my blog have seen one or more of these mini sagas as I have been writing them for years. Mini saga section has been the most visited section on my blog for a long time so I am guessing readers like them.

Now, what do I want people to do by reading mini sagas? I am hoping that they will read, reflect and think about the message embedded in the story. Hopefully, one or two mini sagas will strike a chord with them in a profound way.

PG: Are they good conversation starters?

RS: Yes, they are. I get asked a LOT of questions about the cards and then a conversation ensues about other things.

PG: What is the one big advantage of having a “different” business card?

RS: These cards are social objects. Like you rightly identified, they are conversation starters. A VERY different card will also create a clear “pattern interrupt” because that kind of card is not what the other person is expecting especially after I spoke about a serious topic. I have found that time and again, people drop their guards and start engaging in a conversation – first, about the cards and then about everything else. In other words, the ThinkCard breaks the ice more easily.

In the long-term, I hope that the recipients of the card will take a few seconds to read the story behind the card, stop and reflect on the message for a moment. That would make it all worth it.

PG: Who do you think should put an effort into creating such cards?

RS: Anyone whose job involves some kind of creativity should definitely spend some time and effort to bring that aspect to the forefront whenever and wherever possible. With that in the background, business cards become one more place where they can bring that forth.

To be clear, I am just not talking about artists and painters – that is where creativity is at play directly. There are dozens of other professions where creativity is not at the forefront but is a definite part of their jobs.

PG: Do you think the sagas reflect your personality?

RS: I hope they do. Be it on my blog or elsewhere, I strive to de-mystify seemingly complex things and publishing it.

Where I consult with companies, I bring creative approaches to work and assets like ThinkBooks (http://www.gothinkbook.com), ThinkDecks and ThinkCards demonstrate the kind of creativity I bring right out of the gate.

For the curious, I have explained how I write a mini saga here:
http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2010/07/29/mini-saga-workshop-and-mini-saga-58-karma/

PG: Any memorable instances/ stories to do with the cards?

I have had these cards for only a three months. But I have had many memorable stories in this short period. A few months ago, I was speaking at a conference on the topic of personal branding, there were around 80 people or so in the audience. At the end, several of them came to see me and I started giving away my cards. I must have given away close to 100 cards as many people took 2 or 3 cards each. There was one girl who was searching for a good card for a long time and keeping all the greenish cards towards one side. Since she was blocking others, I asked her whether she would like to keep all the green cards. She looked at me with disbelief for a moment but then picked up about 14 cards, smiled and said, “Thanks” and walked away. I couldn’t resist smiling myself.

PG: Also, I heard you handle the business cards like a deck of playing cards. Does it make you feel theatric and like a magician?

RS:I never thought of it that way. I try to give people an option to choose a card that strikes their fancy. Handling the business cards like a deck of playing cards is the easiest way to do it.

Photo Courtesy for the main photo: Nambirajan Vanamamalai

Boundary Conditions

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:02:58 PDT

While Sumukh was looking for some school supplies, I was browsing through the aisles of OfficeMax and ended up at the CLEARANCE section. As you can imagine, I was expecting rock bottom prices on the Clearance items. One of the clearance items caught my attention for a totally different reason. Here is the ticket for your reference:

As you can see, the original price is $229.99 and the clearance price is $229.00. You will save a whopping 99 cents if you buy the item in clearance.

Hmm..

Obviously, that item does not belong there and it makes no sense to announce a GRAND SALE that will save the customers on a purchase of $229 to save 99 cents.

The world of boundary conditions

One reason this kind of goof up happens is that systems were not designed to handle boundary conditions. As we all know, there is a logic built into the systems that will determine which items go into the clearance table and the labels get printed. Somebody had to build one more piece of logic that will ensure that there is a minimum of X% discount when an item goes into clearance. Since most items (probably 99% of the items) will have a large discount anyway, there is no big problem. However, 1% of the items that have a meaningless discount make it to the clearance table.

The Consequences

These boundary conditions invoke feelings that range of amusement to pure distrust on the pricing of every item in the clearance table. Rather than creating “impulse buys” at the clearance table, now you have created skeptical prospects who will want to check the prices again and again and possibly compare that with what price the same item is sold for online. Earlier, it would be difficult to do all those checks but now a simple scan with a shopping assistant such as RedLaser will reveal prices for the same item in a dozen different outlets.

Lessons for all of us

Boundary conditions exist in almost every project that you undertake – be it launching a product, writing a book or simply trying out a new recipe. It would take a few extra minutes during your planning process to pause and think about these boundary conditions and see if you have factored in your plan to handle at least the major boundary conditions. It would be better to pay a small price upfront than to pay a big price at a later date.

History in the Making

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:39:22 PDT

Just imagine you get to work on a project of your lifetime. You know that this is history in the making and if you do well, it would give immense satisfaction. You know that it would be lot of hard work. Burning the midnight oil would be default on a few days. There would be sacrifices for sure and a price has to be paid. But you don’t mind paying that price as you know that the stakes are high enough in this game.

Support Eco-System:

People who love you are there to support you and deep in their heart they want you to do very well. After all, why would they not want you to make the most of this opportunity. There are many well-wishers who are willing to give you a helping hand in your quest to succeed. You have teachers, coaches, mentors, co-workers, friends and relatives all coming together as a big ecosystem of support. Some are just waiting for you to ask them for help. They are ready.

Reflection Time

Reflect on this opportunity for a few moments…

How would you prepare for such an opportunity?
How grateful to you to this Universe (or God, depending on your beliefs) for this opportunity?
How much of commitment will you bring to bear to make this a successful project?
What lengths would you go to make things happen?

Your Opportunity

You don’t have to look far for an opportunity which is going to be a history in the making. It’s right in front of you. YOU are that opportunity and whether you are conscious or not, your history is in the making EVERY single day that you are on this earth.

As you can see, it is an opportunity of a lifetime and NOBODY else other than you can make the most out of this opportunity.

You will also notice that the stakes are high for YOU on this project.

You have the support eco-system waiting for you to succeed.

The Real Question

The real question is simple -

You have an opportunity of the lifetime right in front of you. It’s going to be your history in the making. Will you seize it with everything you have got TODAY?

Only you can answer that question.

Request for you: You may already be seizing this opportunity with both hands giving your 110%. But, you may know someone that might benefit from this. Consider sharing this with them.

Photo Courtesy: Adnams on Flickr

Lessons from Facebook IPO that Startups Can Use

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:25:56 PDT

Warning: This is blog post #1762 on this blog. This blog post falls into the 0.1% of the posts that fall under the “controversial” label.

The profound lessons that startups can learn from Facebook IPO

NONE!

Yes, I am exaggerating this and I am intentionally doing this to make a point in the end. I will also keep this short else it will contradict my own point in the blog post.

Reverse Engineering the Facebook Story

Tomorrow is the Facebook IPO and I am not expert enough to predict what is going to happen. There are enough people out there who are qualified to construct a theory that will explain what happened was what was supposed to happen. These reports will be insightful as those who write them are experts in reverse engineering a situation. They can go back to history of the company and pick all the things that will support their theory.

It’s hard to copy extraordinary success

I wish Facebook all the success and while it is inspiring (for me) to watch its phenomenal growth, I am not in the fantasy land to decode and discover the secret sauce that made Facebook happen AND apply it one of the startups I am involved with. What works for a company that had a meteoric rise rarely applies to a company that was founded in different times under different circumstances by different set of people.

So, while it’s interesting to learn what made Facebook successful, it’s not a good idea to recreate parts of it in the hope that it will work for your case.

Your attention is someone’s currency

In this day and age, you don’t need to always pay by cash – you could pay with your attention. There are several people out there who are vying for your attention and stories like Facebook IPO is a great way to DEMAND that attention. Just being aware of this will alert you when you are going overboard on this or any such story.

What Can Startups Do During These Times?

Let others reverse engineer and provide you the analysis of whatever happened to reach the current destination. You have your work cut out and if you spend inordinate amount of time reading up everything and anything related to this topic, automagically your work gets piled up. The more you get sucked into this, the more your work gets piled up.

So, resist your own temptation to over-analyze and over-consume the story and focus on creating your own story however big or small.

Have a great day.

Photo Courtesy: Search Engine Journal

A true story

Seth Godin — Sun, 20 May 2012 02:18:00 PDT

Of course, that's impossible.

There's no such thing as a true story. As soon as you start telling a story, making it relevant and interesting to me, hooking it into my worldviews and generating emotions and memories, it ceases to be true, at least if we define true as the whole truth, every possible fact, non-localized and regardless of culture.

Since you're going to tell a story, you might as well get good at it, focus on it and tell it in a way that you're proud of.

The holistic communion

Paulo Coelho — Sat, 19 May 2012 17:55:52 PDT

Today, we see signs of society reverting to this sense of ‘oneness’ – but rather spontaneously. And the example of Greek (Athenian) democracy comes to mind because it showed how society is responsible for each individual and vice versa. But than an important change happened with the Punic wars at the beginning of the Roman [...]

Where's the heat?

Seth Godin — Sat, 19 May 2012 02:03:00 PDT

Is that your goal? To find the next hot thing? Do you want to buy it, sell it, use it, eat it?

In every industry where there's fashion (which is every industry), people spend an enormous amount of time looking for heat. It defines the cutting edge, determines what's in or out, what's hot or not.

Two things worth considering:

a. the hot thing isn't always the thing that's aligned with your goals. Sure, sometimes the most profitable item is also the hot item of the moment, but for many companies, market share or profitability or utility has not a lot to do with being on the cutting edge of fashion. And as a user, the hot item of the moment isn't necessarily the thing that will create value or even identify you as truly hip.

b. The cycle of hot keeps getting shorter.

You can chase this, but it's not free, and it might not get you where you want to go.

Inner struggles

Paulo Coelho — Sat, 19 May 2012 01:36:09 PDT

I am always struggling with myself, but I am very optimistic in this sense. People are realizing more and more that happiness is freedom, and freedom is to be able to “travel light”, not possessing a lot of things, because at the end of the day, the things start to possess you. I remember that [...]