Dublin: 01-8610700 Cork: 021-4279511
The internet as envy amplifier
April 18th, 2011
Used to be that the only Jones you needed to worry about was the one who lived next door.
Now, if you choose, it’s easy to find someone taller, richer, more successful, better liked, with more followers, online friends, connections and endorsements. And certainly it will be someone less deserving than you.
George Carlin liked to talk about the person (there’s always someone) who is worse off than you. The web allows you, with not much effort, to find the person who is better off.
Like many authors, I was briefly addicted to the Amazon bestseller list. Every hour, you can check how [...]
The four horsemen of media–here comes tiny media
April 17th, 2011
The first is when you talk about yourself. Directly to people who care to hear you out.
The second is when you pay someone to carry your message. Media for hire, we call it advertising.
The third is when you cajole the ‘editorial’ side to talk about you, with authority. Publicity is often worth more than advertising, but it’s pesky in that it doesn’t perform on demand.
The fourth, the fourth is all the rage right now. That’s when unanointed kings of tiny media, when bloggers and tweeters and others talk about you.
Why do we persist in believing that these four have much [...]
The agenda
April 16th, 2011
The job of the CEO isn’t to check things off the agenda. Her job is to set the agenda, to figure out what’s next.
Now that more and more of us are supposed to be CEO of our own lives and careers, it might be time to rethink who’s setting your agenda.
Seth’s Blog
Buying an education or buying a brand?
April 15th, 2011
It’s reported that student debt in the USA is approaching a trillion dollars, five times what it was ten years ago.
Are those in debt buying more education or are they seeking better branding in the form of coveted diplomas?
Does a $ 40,000 a year education that comes with an elite degree deliver ten times the education of a cheaper but no less rigorous self-generated approach assembled from less famous institutions and free or inexpensive resources?
If not, then the money is actually being spent on the value of the degree, on the doors it will open and the jobs it [...]
Turning the habit of self-criticism upside down
April 14th, 2011
Perhaps this sounds familiar:
When it’s time to write a resume or talk to a boss or discuss a project glitch with colleagues, the instinct is to spin, to avoid a little responsibility, to sit quietly. Put a best face forward, don’t set yourself up.
When reviewing just about anything you’ve done with yourself (in your head), the instinct is to be brutal, relentlessly critical and filled with doubt and self-blame.
What if they were reversed?
What if the habit of the project review meeting was for each person to put their worst foot forward, to identify every item that they learned from? What [...]
In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)
April 13th, 2011
Andrew Chen coins a great term. A biz monkey is a replaceable, Powerpoint toting, suit wearing, acronym-spewing middle manager business dude drone. They are quick to comment and sneer, slow to actually ship.
When something is scarce, it’s valuable. MBA’s with buzzwords and the ability to raise a million dollars around some web idea are not scarce. They are fungible.
People who understand technology and are willing to bend it to their will, on the other hand, are scarce. They can’t be found with a classified ad on Craigslist or in a blind project ad on eLance.
The job of the smart business [...]
Wasting the digital dividend
April 12th, 2011
The internet means that many time-consuming forms of white-collar drudgery have disappeared, or at least been offloaded to cheaper people who aren’t you, permitting you to spend more time on things that are actually productive and highly leveraged.
No more standing in line at the copier, trudging to the Fedex box, waiting two weeks for a letter to be returned, leaving voice mails, searching for the right person to contact, waiting months to learn a skill or a fact, discovering that a project is hopelessly broken, and on and on.
It’s a little like the bump we got after the Cold War [...]
How to fail
April 11th, 2011
There are some significant misunderstandings about failure. A common one, similar to one we seem to have about death, is that if you don’t plan for it, it won’t happen.
All of us fail. Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else.
Two habits that don’t help:
Getting good at avoiding blame and casting doubt
Not signing up for visible and important projects
While it may seem like these two choices increase your chances for survival or even promotion, in fact they merely insulate you from worthwhile failures.
I think it’s worth noting that my definition of failure does [...]
The free market
April 10th, 2011
Companies that operate in a free market generally work as hard as they can to make that market not free.
By creating lock in, monopolies, patent protection, long term contracts, chasms in pricing and other barriers to entry, companies profit out of proportion to their risk or investment. That’s their job.
Acting on their own behalf, self-interested companies will almost always work to make the playing field unlevel, to create loopholes and to generate barriers that keep the market unfree. It’s what their owners profit from.
Their adversaries? Technological change, enforced transparency and regulation in favor of consumer protection and against monopolies. There’s [...]
Why makers should think a little bit more like managers (and vice versa)
April 9th, 2011
Paul Graham, as usual, is thought provoking.
There’s no question that programmers, designers, writers and others that do their best work in a moment of flow do themselves and their organizations a disservice when they are ruled by the clock and spend a lot of it in meetings.
Paul’s argument is that makers should be insulated from this sort of wasteful nonsense.
The essay is one of his best ever, but I think he needs to add a key point…
Managers need to act more like makers, because making is more important than ever before. Even the most Outlook-driven manager can benefit [...]