Taking care of the details is hard work, that is why so few do it right. Apple usability experts who painstakingly decide what sound the faux-keys should make when you press them, or the engineers at Google trying to shave off another tenth of a second before the results of your query pop up, are examples of people focused on the details.

Two caveats though: the first one, the details should support a strategy. Addressing random details here and there is not going to work. And second, taking care of just a few details is not enough. An outstanding customer experience is the result of taking care of hundreds of small details, all working together and supporting the strategy.

Another problem with the “happy medium” is that it is seldom happy: we’re just creating a situation where, more often than not, nobody is completely satisfied and everybody is just somewhat OK. 

The happy medium is especially dangerous when trying to build a brand or develop a new product. Accept that you’re going to delight some people (your customers) and alienate others (not your customers) and just go ahead.  That’s how great brands, amazing products and powerful movements are made.

In some instances, though, the point guard is called upon to score some points at close range, and for that he has no choice but to face his taller oponents one-on-one as he reaches for the basket. That’s why point guards also work hard at perfecting their jump.

In business, however, it is common to make one of these two mistakes: to rely only on our strengths while refusing to address our weaknesses (the dreaded comfort zone) or to become so obsessed with fixing our weaknesses that we forget about our strengths.

The sweet spot, I believe, lies somewhere in the middle: in thinking and acting like a point guard, playing to our strengths (which is where most of our wins are going to come from, anyway) but also working to shore up our weaknesses, at least to a level where they won’t hold us back in those instances when it can make a difference.

Image credits: shakeskc

To think like a top executive we should be able to answer these questions:

• What does our brand stand for?
• Who is our customer and why do they buy from us? and,
• What are the three to five big initiatives that we’re going to focus on this year? (Also, what other three to five things could we do if things don’t go according to plan-and they never do).

If you don’t know the answers it’s worth it to spend some time and effort trying to find them before you get too busy doing anything else.

You’re doing “all the right things” and yet it’s not working. And the reason it’s not working is because your competition is doing them too. All the right things have become expectations, parity. If you’re putting them in the Strengths quadrant of your SWOT analysis you’re probably doing it wrong.

So, what can we do?

There is no easy answer, so rather than giving you some half-baked tips in this short blog post I’ll point you to two books that have given me some good ideas: The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, and The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin. Both worth a read.

The 9 Pounder

As featured on The Travel Channel, Food Network, and in an official I.F.O.C. competitive eating contest. Actual weight including bun and condiments is 15.4 pounds. Two heads of lettuce, eight tomatoes, three red onions, four whole pickles and a river of our mojo. Comes with a bottle of Maalox. If one person can eat it in one sitting it’s free.

BGR probably doesn’t expect to sell a lot of 9-pounders, but they don’t need to. They got what they were looking for: to get featured on several high-profile TV channels.

One of the most effective ways to get PR and word of mouth is by doing something outrageous. Just make sure that whatever you do is legal.

The problem with that piece of advice is that there are two kinds of trouble.

There’s the trouble you can get into by lying, stealing, gossiping or being lazy. That’s definitely trouble worth staying out of.

But there’s also the trouble you can get into by speaking your mind, making unpopular but necessary decisions, volunteering to do difficult work, exceeding expectations, making yourself available and doing the right thing every time. 

Staying out of this kind of trouble is easy: just hide and play it safe. It’s also a recipe for mediocrity. 

We should all make it a point to get in [the right kind of] trouble more often.

Next time somebody asks you to stay out of trouble ask them what kind (should be an interesting conversation).

I don’t do new year’s resolutions any more.  Instead, I like to establish a one-word theme. A theme gives us purpose, focus and direction, and allows resolutions to emerge spontaneously as we measure different areas of our life against the theme.

My theme for 2013 is: DELETE.

Why?

Because we have too much going on in our lives and we must remove some of it to remain balanced and sane.

Also, because most of traditional productivity advice focuses on how to do things more efficiently, but it doesn’t answer the most important question: is what we’re doing worth it?

Here are some of the areas where I will apply the DELETE theme in 2013:

• I will stop letting busyness take over my life. Being busy is not a measure of success. I will do less, but more important things.  [you owe it to yourself to read these three essays; I'm sure they will resonate.]
• I will limit my use of time-wasters like Facebook or Twitter to a few minutes per week.  I’m not going to be posting much either.
• I will read less, but better: only one good book per month. I will read it carefully, take notes and apply what I learn.
• I will not waste my time doing household chores: I will instead pay others to do them. Chores are for those who don’t value their time.
• I will decline the invitation to every single conference call, presentation or meeting that needs me to be there “just in case“.
• I will get rid of all objects that don’t give me extreme satisfaction or utility.  I may still not be ready to have all my belongings fit in a small suitcase, but I will get close.
• I will unsubscribe from every email newsletter except the four or five that I consistently look forward to receiving.
• I will not read, listen or watch mainstream news. If there is something important I will surely find out through others. I just don’t want to be distracted by negative events every single day.

By now I’m sure that you’ve caught up to the irony: the statements above look awfully close to a list of new year resolutions.

And yet, there’s a difference…

This is not just a wish list of disjointed action items but a living, breathing document emerging from a relentless focus on one overarching theme.

What do you think of this exercise? What is your theme for 2013?

Image credits: Matt McGee

 

]]> http://mariosc.com/blog/my-theme-for-2013-delete/feed/ 0 http://mariosc.com/blog/the-value-of-our-leisure-time/ http://mariosc.com/blog/the-value-of-our-leisure-time/#comments Wed, 26 Dec 2012 01:28:00 +0000 Mario http://blog.mariosc.com/the-value-of-our-leisure-time … Read More ...]]>

Our most precious commodity is time, and in these days of 24-7 connectivity, leisure time is more valuable than ever.

In order to decide if we should tackle those pesky chores that eat so much of our free time or  pay somebody to do them instead, I decided to come up with a simple formula to estimate the dollar value of our leisure time.

Let’s say that we take home $50K a year (which comes up to roughly $137 a day). Assuming that we can cover all of our regular living expenses with the proceeds of five working days, we have a fund of $137 x 2 = $274 per week to “protect” our weekend leisure time.

Next, we must decide the maximum number of hours we would be willing to work on unpleasant chores during the weekend, as if we were not allowed to pay anybody to do them. Let’s say it’s a max of two hours per day, for a weekend total of four hours.

Dividing $274 by 4 equals roughly $68 an hour. That would be the value (economists would call it the opportunity cost) of an hour of leisure time in our example.

If you don’t like pressure cleaning and it usually takes you 3 hours to pressure clean your deck, you could pay up to $68 x 3= $204 for somebody to do it for you. Most likely, it wouldn’t take an expert three hours, and he probably wouldn’t charge you $68/hour (there are many pressure cleaning guys competing for business) so you may end up paying much less.

By following this simple system I’ve decided not to do many unpleasant household chores that I used to do before. Furthermore, I’ve been able to automate the decision making process by quickly benchmarking the cost of outsourcing a task vs. my dollar threshold. Plus, I never feel that I’m throwing money away, but getting a bargain instead.

Image credits: jaymiek

This time, though, it was different. Since I had a meeting to attend, I had to make a hard stop after “just” two hours. I left the mall on time, with all the gifts checked off my list. Done.

While I could have picked slightly better gifts in some cases, and paid slightly less for others, I was happy with the things I got (and especially with the time it took me to get them.)

Clearly, the extra two to four hours it would have taken me had I not had a time constraint wouldn’t have produced a significantly better outcome. Economists call this the law of diminishing returns…

The same happens at work. It makes little sense to try to make our presentation, product launch or event perfect, if we know that squeezing that extra 2% is going to take us more time and effort than it took us to get to 98% (and possibly miss our deadline).

This simple graph probably explains it better:

We’re never going to get to a, so investing more resources beyond b is probably not worth it.

Perfect is the enemy of done, and sometimes good enough is just good enough.