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Insist on the coin flip
April 8th, 2011
Very often, we’re challenged to make decisions with too little information. Sometimes, there’s no information–merely noise. The question is: how will you decide?
Consider the challenge we faced when setting the pricing for a brand of software we were launching in 1986. It was the biggest project to date of my short career… more than a year of work by forty people. Should these games cost $ 29, $ 34 or $ 39 each? My bosses and I had one day to finalize our decision for the salesforce.
Unlike Harvard case studies, we had no graphs, no history, no [...]
Who’s responsible for service design?
April 7th, 2011
How many people should be answering the phone at Zappos on a Saturday? What’s Southwest Airlines policy regarding hotel stays and cancelled flights? Should the knobs on the shower at the hotel go side by side or one above the other? Can I turn it on without getting sprayed with cold water? How many steps from the front of the hotel to the registration desk?
Too often, we blame bad service on the people who actually deliver the service. Sometimes (often) it’s not their fault. Sadly, the complaints rarely make it as far as the overpaid (or possibly overworked) executive who [...]
The difference between blueberries and apples
April 6th, 2011
(one bad blueberry spoils the whole bunch)
If you serve yourself blueberries by the handful, you won’t be able to inspect each one. And so just one rotten blueberry can ruin the entire bowl of cereal.
An apple is different. It’s hand picked. Pick the wrong one and it’s not such a big deal, you can just pick another.
If you sell apples, then, the goal is to make the great ones great, really great. If you’re in the blueberry business, on the other hand, the goal is to eliminate defects.
An artist who works on matters of personal taste, then, can afford to [...]
Moving beyond teachers and bosses
April 5th, 2011
We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a ‘good student.’
We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk [...]
The worst voice of the brand *is* the brand
April 4th, 2011
We either ignore your brand or we judge it, usually with too little information. And when we judge it, we judge it based on the actions of the loudest, meanest, most selfish member of your tribe.
When a zealot advocates violence, outsiders see all members of his tribe as advocates of violence.
When a doctor rips off Medicare, all doctors are seen as less trustworthy.
When a fundamentalist advocates destruction of outsiders, all members of that organization are seen as intolerant.
When a soldier commits freelance violence, all citizens of his nation are seen as violent.
When a car rental franchise rips off a customer, [...]
Ten years of changing the world
April 3rd, 2011
Acumen celebrates its tenth anniversary this week.
Lesson 1: In fact, you can make a difference, you can start something from scratch, you can build something without authority or permission. Passionate people on a mission can make change happen.
Lesson 2: In fact, philanthropy works. Building systems and enhancing entrepreneurial outcomes generates results far bigger than the resources invested.
Lesson 3: You better be prepared to stick it out, to exert yourself, to last longer than you ever expected and to care so much it hurts.
Some highlights:
More than 3 million people have access to safe, affordable, and efficient energy
7,000 people have jobs and [...]
Don’t be a fool
April 2nd, 2011
There’s a day (actually, two) reserved for swapping out the batteries in your smoke detector.
Perhaps today could be a day for backing up all the data you care about. All your music, say, or your passwords or your files.
If you need a hard drive, here are three. (Or be double safe and use Dropbox.) But that’s not the hard part. The hard part is doing it before you go to bed tonight. And storing it at a friend’s house when you’re done.
If you care about it, back it up. (After I wrote this, saw this well done pre-steal).
Seth’s Blog
Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content
April 1st, 2011
“How’s the wine?”
You really can’t answer that question out of context. Compared to what? Compared to a hundred dollar bottle? Not so good. Compared to any other $ 12 bottle… great!
“How was the hotel?”
“How’s the service at the post office?”
In just about all the decisions we make, we consider the price. A shipper doesn’t expect the same level of service quality from a first class letter delivery than it does from an overnight international courier service. Of course not.
And yet…
A quick analysis of the top 100 titles on Amazon (movies, books, music, doesn’t matter what) shows zero correlation between [...]
A slow news day
March 31st, 2011
I think you can learn a lot about an organization (and a person’s career) when you watch what they do on a slow news day, a day when there’s no crisis, not a lot of incoming tasks, very little drama.
Sure, when we’re reacting (or responding) and it’s all hands on deck, things seem as if they’re really moving.
But what about in the lulls? At the moments when we can initiate, launch new ventures, try new things and expose ourselves to failure? Do we take the opportunity or do we just sit and wait for the next crisis?
If you have ten [...]
Small screens and big decisions
March 30th, 2011
My take: the smaller the screen, the more hurried and less informed the decision ends up being.
Yes, there’s more currency, more immediacy, more with-you-right-now-all-the-time and more data being collected. But……
If you’re working with a spreadsheet or a thread of correspondence or a set of data, I’m not sure you’re doing your best work if you’re doing it on an iPhone.
Seth’s Blog