I'm making a change.
My blog, Useful Lunacy, is now available at http://timbrunelle.com/blog
I've been making new updates there.
This site will be taken down in early 2012.
- Tim
The realization is now
"...we're realizing that the industrial revolution is fading. The 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is ending.
It's one thing to read about the changes the internet brought, it's another to experience them. People who thought they had a valuable skill or degree have discovered that being an anonymous middleman doesn't guarantee job security.
The sooner we realize that the world has changed, the sooner we can accept it and make something of what we've got. Whining isn't a scalable solution."
"...Right before your eyes, a fundamentally different economy, with different players and different ways to add value is being built. What used to be an essential asset (for a person or for a company) is worth far less, while new attributes are both scarce and valuable.¡Note! Like all revolutions, this is an opportunity, not a solution, not a guarantee. It's an opportunity to poke and experiment and fail and discover dead ends on the way to making a difference. The old economy offered a guarantee--time plus education plus obedience = stability. The new one, not so much. The new one offers a chance for you to take a chance and make an impact."
I think the ability to experiment—with lower barriers to entry, with greater reality—is the most critical difference between yesterday's marketing marketplace and today's. We can more easily afford to fail, and ought to be encouraging hurtling headfirst all the time. The cost of failure is a lot lower than it used to be.
Godin continues with succulent encouragement:
"In 1924, Walt Disney wrote a letter to Ub Iwerks. Walt was already in Hollywood and he wanted his old friend Ubbe to leave Kansas City and come join him to build an animation studio. The last line of the letter said "PS I wouldn't live in KC now if you gave me the place—yep—you bet—Hooray for Hollywood." And, just above, in larger letters, he scrawled, "Don't hesitate—Do it now."
[Original link: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/the-opportunity.html ]
Perfect vs. interesting
There are two jobs available to most of us:
You can be the person or the organization that's perfect. The one that always ships on time, without typos, that delivers flawlessly and dots every i. You can be the hosting company or the doctor that might be boring, but is always right.
Or you can be the person or the organization that's interesting. The thing about being interesting, making a ruckus, creating remarkable products and being magnetic is that you only have to be that way once in a while. No one is expected to be interesting all the time.
Fedex vs. Playwrights Horizons.
When an interesting person is momentarily not-interesting, I wait patiently. When a perfect organization, the boring one that's constantly using its policies to dumb things down, is imperfect, I get annoyed. Because perfect has to be perfect all the time.
Today you can form a corporation, build a retail empire and start taking in real money in mere minutes, from a coffee shop. (Why aren't you?)
In many ways, it's maybe even easier to be more perfect at being interesting today than it's ever been.
Making a straighter ruler
It's not easy. It's hard to get straighter than straight.
Over time, processes that seek to decrease entropy and create order are valued, but improving them gets more difficult as well. If you're seeking to make the organized more organized, it's a tough row to hoe.
Far easier and more productive to create productive chaos, to interrupt, re-create, produce, invent and redefine.
But Godin's last statement throws a wrench.
Project managers, craftspeople and those in the refinement and repeatability/scale business aren't supposed to be interested in interruption, re-creation, and chaos. Or at least, not interested in the stereotypical definitions.
Within the microcosm of that last 10% lies opportunity, not just the shackles of staying on task. It is artistry with the finer brush, the sharper tip. Another way of interpreting Godin's point is to maintain a spirit of inspiration to the end, especially in the difficult last 10% of the task.
Why are we funding this project?
Why are we having this meeting?
Why does the product have to ship on the 23rd?
Why must we build this site in PHP?
Why am I angry about what they just said?
Why is "Why?" the most important question?
Because it opens doors.
Asking "Why?" extends opportunity.
I saw this happen tonight, during Everyday Improv IV class at the Brave New Institute. (I highly recommend enrolling there, by the way. The faculty is smart, classes are provocative and you walk away with useful insight.)
Over and above the balance of elements you control in any improv scene...
...sits the powerful fuel of "Why?"
Asking "Why?" insists exploration occur—to provide a possible response, a course of action.
And for that reason asking "Why?" offers hope—because the conversation, the scene, your thought process must take at least one more step, leap or turn.
Asking "Why?" shows respect—by way of acknowledging what is, what has just been said.
So asking "Why?" can build trust—by way of demonstrating listening while seeking further illumination.
Every business meeting ought to begin with "Why?" If you could only have one question answered in a creative briefing it should be "Why?" The biggest challenge to composing a business plan that propels the idea forward is "Why?"
When in doubt; When bored; When excited; When repulsed; When furious—open more doors, give yourself the gift of opportunity.
Ask "Why?"
"Something that makes a great film into legend is when time reveals layers of entertaining stories behind the filmmaking..."
I paid my $8 to see Inglorious Basterds in the theater -- money entirely well spent.
What likely sustains this great film, however, is something as commonplace as the act of announcing each take for editorial continuity.
As Peter Sciretta explains at Slashfilm, "the clapboard operator usually employs the International Radio Operator Alphabet (example, scene 21a would be “scene twenty one alpha” and scene 140c would be “Scene One Forty Charlie”)" to organize or "slate" each take. Film editors refer to this information to organize hours of potential footage.
On set, this act is as routine as to be an almost inconvenience. Yet Director Quentin Tarantino's 2nd AC and Clapboard/Slate operator, Geraldine Brezca, brings her own character to the task -- ultimately elevating a routine work process to something worthy of its own DVD chapter and who knows how many online posts like this one.
The lesson?
Don't just assume the act of making the film/product/service is enough. Make the act of making the film/product/service worthy of consideration much later down the road, sustaining the value of the effort.
(By the way, that's infamous Director of Photography Bob Richardson with the white hair, not Geraldine.)
"45 Kaboom!"
Besides the computer labs made available for five year olds, this poster caught my attention.
Apparently my children should be fluent in the concepts of spreadsheets and word processing, and the acts of "saving as" and double-clicking. I'm kind of wishing more adults were fluent in these concepts.
But I have to hand it to Mr. Jobs. How many other brand names have become required curriculum elements for kindergartners?
