On the Shoulders of Giants

Accomplishments

2012-08-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

So many people spend so much time talking about what they're going to accomplish, that somewhere along the line they forget to actually go out and do it.

(P.S. There is actually a relationship here. It's been shown that when people talk about what they're working on, to them it feels as if that is part of working on the project. Unfortunately chatting idly rarely will get you where you're trying to go, so be careful about how often you talk about your future plans. It could actually prevent you from getting there.)

"What Gets Measured Gets Managed"

2011-10-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

"What gets measured gets managed" - Peter Drucker, author of The Effective Executive

Both of Tim Ferriss' books mention this quote by Peter Drucker, who is an expert on business processes and management, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The most amazing thing about it is how much power is crammed into five simple words.

The unavoidable result of taking measurements is action. One of the case studies in The 4-Hour Body was of a guy who simply started weighing himself every day and wound up losing an amazing amount of weight. He didn't even consciously try to change anything, all he did was force himself to step on the scale every morning and record his weight in a spreadsheet. Simply knowing what his weight was subconsciously effected his behavior and caused him to shed his extra pounds. And the best part is the power of this quote is amplified if you are actively trying to change.

One of the hardest parts about behavioral change is simply getting started. Steven Pressfield's theory of "Resistance" from The War of Art comes in many forms, but procrastination is one of the most common. As he says in the book, "We don't tell ourselves, 'I'm never going to write my symphony.' Instead we say, 'I'm going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow.'" Fortunately for us, actively taking measurements is a powerful weapon for beating Resistance when it comes in the form of procrastination.

Whatever behavior you are trying to change, starting with something small and easy is crucial because it allows you to achieve what Ramit Sethi refers to as "quick wins." Seeing results early provides positive feedback and the encouragement to keep going, and taking measurements accomplishes two critical objectives that allow quick wins to happen.

First, taking measurements gives you perspective so you know where your starting point is. If you're trying to drink less when you go out, do you know how much you currently drink each night? If not, how will you know when you've reduced your alcohol intake? If you're trying to save more money, do you know how much you're saving now? If not, how will you know when you've started saving more? If you don't know where you're starting, you won't know if you're making progress, and that will block you from experiencing the early success that is crucial for experiencing quick wins. Knowing where you're starting will also allow you to make your first milestone extremely small and achievable, another thing that enables quick wins.

Second, taking measurements is usually extremely easy, but it still requires you to slightly change your behavior. That means it's a perfect way to make a small, simple change that still puts you on the path towards complete behavioral change.

Next time you're trying to change your behavior, try making your first step to simply start tracking for a week whatever you want to improve. It takes two seconds to step on a scale every morning or to write down how many reps and what weight you put up at the gym, but once you've begun taking measurements it's impossible to stop yourself from thinking "Okay, so what can I do to move this number in the direction I want it to go?"

Implementing the ideas that come from these internal brainstorming sessions doesn't feel like such a monumental step if the ideas are coming involuntarily, but they don't happen that way unless you start taking measurements. Once they do though, you will most likely find yourself making the behavioral changes you wanted without even thinking about it!

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Tim Ferriss - He's obviously a huge proponent of testing and self-experimentation, and he introduced me to the quote at the top of this post. See his book The 4-Hour Body.

Ramit Sethi - The term "quick wins," and their application in the process of behavioral change.

Steven Pressfield - The idea of "Resistance" from his book The War of Art.

Internalized vs. Intellectual Knowledge

2011-10-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

I think that there are two kinds of knowledge — internalized knowledge and intellectual knowledge. Think of intellectual knowledge as the potential for internalized knowledge. Intellectual knowledge is what you learn passively, from things like reading books, watching documentaries, or taking instructional courses. It's entirely conceptual, while internalized knowledge only reveals itself on our behavior.

For example, I know from 48 Laws of Power that I should "think as I like, but behave like others" (Law 38), but at work I still have difficulty biting my tongue when my values run against what is commonly accepted, and occasionally it gets me in trouble. There are times that I remember this law and hold back, but it's not habitual yet. Intellectual knowledge turns into internalized knowledge when it becomes ingrained in our decision making; when a theory transitions into a behavioral habit.

Robert Greene references the German term "Fingerspitzengefühl," which was made popular by Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was nicknamed the Desert Fox during World War II for the fearsomely successful strategies he used to repeatedly beat the Allies in North Africa. The literal translation is "finger tips feeling," but the interpretation is that once you have achieved mastery of a given skill you operate without thinking, and instead rely on a certain level of intuition or "touch" — your "finger tips feeling" or Fingerspitzengefühl. It is at this point that intellectual knowledge becomes internalized knowledge, when all of the study and learning unconsciously become permanent parts of our behavior.

The hardest part about internalizing knowledge is that more study won't help you. You have to actually implement the concepts to develop internalized knowledge, and it takes a tremendous number of repetitions and failures before the behavior becomes a habit. Acquiring more intellectual knowledge will definitely help you get better insight and expand your mindset. But are you doing anything to turn these theories into actions?

The Art of Pre-Made Decisions

2011-07-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

I recently got into a discussion about how I feel my highly regimented dietary and lifestyle choices impact me. Ironically, I said that having a strict routine actually made my life feel easier and less stressful, instead of feeling restricted like you would expect. I would attribute this in large part to the fact that the way I have my life organized means I don't have to think all the time.

While I haven't read it yet, the book The Paradox of Choice has been cited in a number of other books I've read. The Paradox of Choice says that making decisions is a stressful process for people, and the more options a person has the more stressful it becomes. Having a wide range of choices increases the pressure we feel to make a perfect decision, since more options means there is a better chance for us to find the perfect fit. It also increases the opportunity for buyer's remorse, since there will be more items for us to think back on and wonder "Would I have been better off picking that one instead?"

Humans are exposed to more options, and have to make more choices, today than ever before. 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every few minutes. You can carry tens of thousands of songs around with you in the palm of your hand. All of these choices are overwhelming us. This is why I feel having a strict routine for myself is actually liberating — all of my decisions are pre-made.

Take, for example, my thought process when choosing food. The first question is, "Is it Saturday?" If yes, I eat whatever I want and don't feel the least bit guilty about it. If no, I eat a meal that conforms to the Slow Carb Diet. Problem solved.

Compare this to the person who goes out to eat with no principles to guide her. She wonders whether or not she can afford to eat an unhealthy meal, because she has to go to the beach this coming weekend. Even though the fried calamari looks delicious, maybe she should get something healthy instead. Well, what does "healthy" mean? No carbohydrates? Lots of fruits and vegetables? High in protein? Vegan? As you can see, there are far more places to drive yourself crazy during the decision making process this way than there are if you've come up with a set of rules for yourself ahead of time.

This is where the art of pre-made decisions comes into play. If you spend a small amount of time in advance determining your objectives and the lifestyle choices it will take to get you there, you will already know which path you're going to take whenever you encounter a situation that would have normally required you to make a decision on the spot. It's like putting your life on auto-pilot. Rather than deal with the hassles that come from navigating life on your own; setup a system that runs everything for you so you can focus your attention on bigger things.

Focus & Goals

2011-06-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Most of my recent posts have in some way involved the concept of thinking long-term, particularly by resisting the pull of immediate distractions and petty urgent problems. While I've worked hard at developing this kind of mindset, I would still like to be better at it. One area where I was failing and didn't know it was letting all the exciting things I hope to accomplish eat up my attention and force me into a state of indecision.

I use a slightly modified version of Tim Ferriss' Dreamline to first identify the things I'd like to achieve the most, and then work towards accomplishing them. In essence you pick four things you want to have, four things you want to be, and four things you want to do; then out of the twelve items you select the four that excite you the most and start working on them.

Filling out the list of possibilities was never a problem for me, like it can be for some people, who over the years have settled into their routines and lost their desire to push themselves in a new direction. I used to think having a large list of fun and ambitious goals I wanted to accomplish was a good thing, and I still do, but now I realize that it can also be a source of problems if not handled properly.

The issue is that after you've selected the four things you want to work on, the other eight items that didn't make the final cut still creep into the back of your mind. This is especially true when you experience setbacks, because you start to wonder if you should have picked a different objective instead of the one you're currently stuck on. It's even an issue if you have success though. If the four goals you've currently picked are all going well, it can cause you to try to add another item to your list — over-extending yourself in the process.

I bring all of this up because a post by Derek Sivers recently made me aware I was having this problem, so now I can work on fixing it. To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what about the post was so illuminating, but when I was done reading it I felt like my perspective had changed. I realized that when I pick my four goals at the end of the Dreamlining process, I am also actively not choosing the other eight items. That way, whenever they try to crowd my mental space, I can calmly say to myself "Yes, it would be great to accomplish that, and maybe I will some day, but I've chosen not to work on that right now." It helps kick the distracting thoughts out of my head so I can get back focusing on the goals I'm working towards now.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Derek Sivers: "Trying to pursue many different directions at once?"

Tim Ferriss: The Dreamline process for setting and achieving goals.

Perseverance & Preparation

2011-06-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

The following section of a blog post by Bob Lefsetz, titled "Muse At Staples," caught my attention a while ago, and I realized it was because one of the themes in the article came up in a few other things I'd read around the same time.

We all get caught up in our day-to-day life sometimes, and we lose sight of the long-term reasons for what we're doing. Unfortunately for some, this becomes a permanent state. Ask them "What are you working towards?" and they will respond with a blank stare. The point to take away from the Lefsetz article and the two related book quotes is this: Whatever your specific goals are, your purpose now should be to prepare yourself for when you get a rare opportunity to excel. That way you are in a position to capitalize on it when it happens.

Bob says [bolding is mine]:

"You might be rolling your eyes now, saying it’s all about placement, that’s how you break, but Muse had been working for years before Ms. Meyer discovered them, "Twilight" was a lucky break. The key is to be in the game long enough to experience your lucky break. Most people give up too soon. Or expect it to come too early. Success comes to those who wait. And want it."

This idea of perseverance and preparation came up in two books as well. In The Little BIG Things, Tom Peters cites Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan and the idea of the "Unpredictable Extreme Event" (U.E.E.) [bolding is mine]:

"Well, if we can’t plan for it because of its, by definition, “difference-ness,” and we can’t let it distract us 24 hours a day every day, what can we do? There are no surefire remedies, but there is a line of thought ⎯ and a single word ⎯ that may be of practical use. The word is…resilience.

To deal with the absurdly unlikely, we can consciously think about and hire people and promote those with demonstrated evidence of resilience and, hence, perhapse travel at least some distance toward shaping our organization to be more or less able to respond to a Black Swan." – p.45

And Malcolm Gladwell's thesis statement in Outliers [bolding is mine]:

"These are stories, instead, about people who were given a special opportunity to work really hard and seized it, and who happened to come of age at a time when that extraordinary effort was rewarded by the rest of society. Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up." - p. 67

The most difficult part about preparing for a distant unknown is the uncertainty that creeps in. You start questioning if it's worth it, whether you will ever get there, and whether or not you're making the right choice. The more you can think long-term, the better off you will be at achieving some level of perseverance.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Bob Lefsetz: "Muse At Staples,"

Nassim Nicholas Taleb via Tom Peters: The Unpredictable Extreme Event (U.E.E.)

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

The Marginal Cost of One More Fan

2011-06-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

No audience is infinite. If you accept that any product, service, or work of art has a limited group of people that will be interested in it — ranging from hundreds of millions for mass-market products, to only a handful for the über-niche — then each new customer or fan you acquire depletes the number of potential fans by one more.

Yes, over time people's tastes can change. People who were not in your target audience can move into it. Becoming popular will cause new customers to jump on the bandwagon simply because you're now popular. You can change yourself to broaden your appeal. But no matter what, the fact remains that at some point you will get large enough that it will become increasingly difficult to grow larger still.

In economics they call this concept "Marginal Cost." It's defined as "the cost of producing one more unit of a good." Meaning, if you're currently making 10 T-Shirts, how much would the 11th shirt cost you. Most of the time, the marginal cost decreases during lower levels of production. and then begins to increase at higher levels of production. This happens because early on you can exploit certain efficiencies and economies of scale, but as they run out the cost of producing more of your product goes up.

The same thing occurs with your audience.

When you look at the graph above, instead of thinking "Cost" and "Volume," think "Difficulty" and "Number of Fans." When you first start out on the left side of the graph, with very few fans, there are a large number of people that fit into your potential audience but haven't been exposed to your product yet. Then, if you're successful, you begin to grow and wind up converting many of your potential fans into actual customers; moving to the right along the graph. This is where the difficulty goes down, since there are so many people who are interested in what you're offering, but haven't heard about you yet.

At some point though, you will start running out of potential fans, and being able grow substantially becomes more difficult. That's when the line starts curving up the further you move to the right.

What are you planning to do once that happens?

Most people are so focused on growth — more Facebook friends, more e-mail subscribers, more Twitter followers — that they don't even stop to consider this problem, let alone have a plan for when it happens.

Balancing Speed and Effectiveness

2011-06-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

In 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene makes the point that often speed and mistakes are inversely proportional. The faster you go, the more errors you make. The slower you go, the fewer you make.

"We live in a world in which speed is prized above almost all else, and acting faster than the other side has itself become the primary goal. But most often people are merely in a hurry, acting and reacting frantically to events, all of which makes them prone to error and wasting time in the long run."

"People hate the feeling of being rushed and are terrified of making a mistake. They unconsciously try to slow things down — by taking longer to make decisions, being noncommittal, defensive, and cautious."

The key to being both fast and effective is "Grand Strategy." It allows you to see past your immediate situation and to stay focused on the future objective you are trying to achieve. This will prevent you from constantly reacting to circumstances dictated by other people, moving fast simply for the sake of moving fast, but frantically in every direction instead of with a clear aim.

Seeing the world around you with the kind of long-term clarity that Grand Strategy requires will also prevent you from being held back by the fear of making a mistake. Most people are afraid of mistakes because they over-estimate the negative consequences of making one. Recognizing that mistakes are unavoidable, and rarely fatal, allows the Grand Strategist to move swiftly and with a clear focus.

This is not to say she is careless. She does do her best to minimize errors, and having a targeted long-term objective makes this easier for her. But reaching her goal quickly and effectively is always the driving force behind the Grand Strategist's actions, not avoiding mistakes at all costs.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene

When Asking for Opinions is Merely Fear of Accountability (Pt. 2)

2011-05-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

The first half of this post discusses when leaders and managers look to involve others in the decision-making process because they fear standing on their own and being held entirely accountable. There is another instance where the fear of accountability drives people to seek out the opinions of others. It happens right before they're ready to ship the project they're working on.

At the end of the creative process, terror sets in. The reality that you are about to irreversibly send your work into the world hits. Until then, criticism and failure are merely hypothetical. After you ship, all of that becomes a reality. And it's scary.

This is the predominant reason so many projects are abandoned just before they're done. The fear of criticism, failure, and being held accountable for your work is paralyzing. The creator insists on getting feedback from one more person, and then another, going through an endless series of inconsequential revisions and miniscule adjustments; not really changing anything but allowing her to procrastinate while feeling like she's still being productive.

The challenge is to recognize this behavior in yourself, and to develop the courage to pull the trigger at the end of a project instead of letting fear, disguised as perfectionism, cause you to procrastinate. The better you get at breaking through the fear-induced paralysis that comes at the end of a project and shipping, the more meaningful work you will ultimately be able to produce.

When Asking for Opinions is Merely Fear of Accountability (Pt. 1)

2011-05-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

There is an art to knowing the difference between when you actually need advice, and when you're simply looking for ways to hide your own accountability out of fear. The following two passages both discuss the act of involving other people in the decision-making process, however the tones for each are drastically different. Tom Peters looks at asking for feedback as an unquestionably good thing, while Robert Greene looks at it as a source of weakness for a leader.

Tom Peters says:

"Our colleague Dave Wheeler said, in a comment at tompeters.com: “The 4 most important words in management are...What do you think?...we understand that we rise or fall on the engagement and intelligence and constant contributions of 100 percent of us.” – The Little BIG Things - p.155

Robert Greene says:

"[Leading from behind] can also mean involving lieutenants and other generals in important decisions, choosing to lead by committee. In both cases, the commander is trying to hide himself from scrutiny, accountability, and danger. The greatest generals in history, however, are invariably those who lead from the front and by themselves." – The 50th Law - p. 157

There is an obvious conflict here. While there there are numerous examples of when the feedback of a trusted partner is crucial to the success of a project, there are also plenty of times when asking for feedback serves as a way to put off the difficult but inevitable decision you have to make. The truth seems to be somewhere between these two points of view.

The problem is that most people are either unaware of Greene's stance, or choose to ignore it. Fear and the illusion of deniability become the main motivators for them. They would rather be able to say, "Everyone agreed to do something stupid, so it's not my fault that the team did something stupid," instead of championing an idea that is unpopular, more difficult, but ultimately the right thing to do. By acknowledging Greene's side of the argument, you can begin to make an effort to recognize the appropriate times to look for feedback, and when it's time to make decisions like someone who leads from the front.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Robert Greene: The concept of leading from the front.

Tom Peters: The idea that organizations thrive on the "engagement and intelligence and constant contributions of 100 percent of us."

Grand Strategy vs. EXCELLENCE

2011-04-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

I wrote a little bit about Robert Greene's idea of "Grand Strategy" in my last post, and it's been something on my mind a lot as of late. Most notably, I was struggling to reconcile the concept of Grand Strategy with Tom Peters' ideal of EXCELLENCE.

Tom Peters promotes the idea of pursuing "EXCELLENCE" in everything you do in his book The Little BIG Things. The book is based on the following idea:

EXCELLENCE. Always.
If not EXCELLENCE, what?
If not EXCELLENCE now, when?"

The second chapter is titled: "Small Stuff" Matters. A Lot!

Originally I thought that this idea conflicted with Grand Strategy. Grand Strategy requires having a long-term perspective to guide your decisions so that you are not pulled off course by petty conflicts and immediate emergencies. It requires knowing what the critical steps are to reach your objective, and what is a distraction or procrastination, so that you can focus on the core steps for reaching your goal.

The reason I thought these two ideas conflicted originally is because, unless you are entirely in control of your own workload, it's nearly impossible to only spend time on the critically important. Usually a person is at least partially, if not entirely, assigned work by their superiors, and more often than not at least some of it is superfluous. So if you followed Peters' ideal to the letter, you would make sure that even these tasks were performed with EXCELLENCE, which would consume significantly more time and resources than completing them at a level that was acceptable but not EXCELLENT. This stands against the notion of Grand Strategy, since your time would be better spent working on more critical tasks.

That being said, this is not a license to be lazy and do less work just because you are given a "small" assignment. In the areas that matter it is absolutely critical to make sure every last detail is EXCELLENT. Going back to Peters' book, for the crucial elements in your Grand Strategy, the small things do matter "a lot," and should be meticulously completed.

The conclusion that I came to is that executing unimportant tasks quickly but satisfactorily, in order to concentrate more of your time on the difficult work that truly matters, is possibly the highest form of EXCELLENCE; even if some of the individual tasks are not completed at that level. The hardest part is making sure you know the difference.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Robert Greene: The concept of being able to think long term, see the whole picture, and plan several steps ahead is what Robert Greene refers to as "Grand Strategy."

Tom Peters: The ideal of working towards "EXCELLENCE" in everything.

Specify Subtractions Before Making Additions

2011-04-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

The ability to think strategically, to see past the chaos of the present moment, and to think several steps into the future is more important now than ever. Technology has sped up the product lifecycle exponentially. New trends rise and fall daily. There is always some new fad to jump on, some new bandwagon to ride. This means that whenever you encounter the slightest roadblock in what you're currently doing, it's easier than ever to find something new to spend time on, to change your objectives, and to look for the path of least resistance. It makes for a lot of jumping from thing to thing, and even though it feels like you're moving a lot, it's almost entirely side to side instead of forward.

To combat this, the next time you find yourself or your manager trying to add another social network to your web presence, another metric to your analytics report, or another item to your to-do list; figure out in advance what you're NOT going to do in order to execute the new idea.

You have to assume that you are operating at more or less your maximum capacity already, so if you don't define in advance where you will get the time to do this new activity, then everything you're doing will wind up suffering a little to free up space for the new task. Over time, these continuous additions without specified subtractions pile up. You wind up spending a little time on a lot of things, but none of them have a significant impact. You continually jump from task to task, but never have substantial time to invest in anything you do.

By defining your subtraction before you make an addition, it provides a clear plan for exactly what you are going to sacrifice in order to execute the new idea. Otherwise, you let your reactions to random external events determine when and where you cut corners to spend time on the new activity. If you're not willing to give up something specific in order to undertake this new project, there's a good chance that what you're trying to add is just a shiny new distraction that lets you feel productive, but the things you're already doing are actually more important in the long term.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Robert Greene: The concept of being able to think long term, see the whole picture, and plan several steps ahead is what Robert Greene refers to as "Grand Strategy."

Seth Godin and the Death Ground Strategy

2011-04-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I posted the below comment on Seth Godin's Facebook page in response to this blog post. It got a good reception, so I thought it was worth repeating here.

Robert Greene has a concept called "The Death Ground Strategy," which Sun Tzu also spoke about in The Art Of War. In essence it says put your troops in a position where there is no option for retreat, and they will fight with exponentially increased intensity - since the only alternative is death. If you place yourself in this position, "It is a law of power that your energy will always rise to the appropriate level...You are more alert and inventive...This venture HAS to succeed and so it will."

One woman responded negatively to the fact that "there is a lot of war and fighting the enemy going on in [my] approach." However, I've personally found looking at life in exactly that way — as a battle that I wage every day — to be helpful. Whether I'm struggling to overcome something internal like fear, Resistance, or the lizard brain; or something external like people trying to protect the status quo or their own self interest, this line of thinking is helpful to me because making progress requires that you overcome obstacles.

If what you are attempting to achieve were easy, you would already be doing it. Therefore, if you're not struggling — if you're not fighting — every day, are you really trying to get anywhere? Progress requires struggle. And if you are fighting, then "The Death Ground Strategy" can help you win more of your battles.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene: The term "Death Ground Strategy," as well as it's modern applications.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu: The original philosophy of the "Death Ground Strategy"

Polarizing Your Market Position by Using the Competition's Schema

2011-04-02T05:08:00.000-07:00

One of the keys to success in marketing is being able to set yourself apart from your competition in the mind of the consumer. Two great books that provide different strategies for polarizing yourself from your competitors are Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout, and Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. While there are some differences in execution, both strategies rely on a common tactic — using your competition's schema to simultaneously define and differentiate yourself.

"Schema" is a term from psychology, and it means the set of generic properties that define a concept or category. For example, movie genres are a type of schema. If I say I saw a horror movie, your mind automatically generates a pre-concieved idea about the movie's traits, since you know what "horror movies" are like. You picture something with dark lighting, lots of blood, and shocking moments that make you jump. That's your schema for horror movies.

Both Crossing The Chasm and Positioning employ the idea of using the competition's schema in order to polarize yourself.

From Positioning:

The first step...is to bring the product out of the closet. To deliberately polarize the situation by using a negative name like soy butter. – p.75 in the 2000 printing.

A negative name doesn’t necessarily include a negative term or paint the opposition in a negative way. It's a name that indicates you are similar enough to be a substitute for the product you're trying to beat, while also different in some key way. In the above example for soy butter, the name does two things. First it says the product is enough like butter to be a substitute (competitor), but it's also completely different from butter because it's made of soy. The name uses the idea, or schema, of "butter," but then clearly distinguishes itself as an alternative to butter with the word soy.

To continue with the soy butter example, soy butter is trying to get people to spend their "butter money" on soy butter instead of regular butter. Therefore, they need to speak the same marketing language as regular butter to indicate that they're an appropriate alternative. That's why the product name "soy butter" is so fitting. While it may have been tempting to try and come up with a more catchy name, "soy butter" conveys exactly what the product is and exactly what it's designed to replace, all in two words.

Another interesting side effect is what the name soy butter does to the name for regular butter. All of a sudden, you have to start referring to butter as "regular" or "normal" butter, instead of just "butter." Not only does the name soy butter enhance its own position, but it also downgrades the position of the established product. All of a sudden the standard becomes "normal," or "regular," and that can bring connotations of blandness and boredom for some consumers; opening a hole in their worldview for soy butter to fill.

So, using your competition's schema gives your message context. It will put you in the same spectrum as your competition, while using a negative name will put you at opposite ends of that spectrum.

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore says that in order for a disruptive new product to successfully cross over from the early market of Visionaries (or "Early Adopters") to the mainstream market of Pragmatists (or the "Early Majority"), a company needs to do something that seems counter-intuitive — create competition for their product.

Most companies dream of being the first product to the market, with no competition to speak of. The problem is that the mainstream market wants to buy from the leading company in a market that is established and mostly stable. If you don't have any competition, the market for your product won't appear to be established or stable to the Pragmatist buyer, and they will continue to wait for the market to mature.

Moore says the key to successfully crossing into the mainstream is referencing existing companies and technologies — in other words, existing schema — to contextualize your marketing efforts for the more conservative mainstream buyer. Specifically, you need to create both a Product Alternative and a Market Alternative. Just like Ries and Trout suggest with using the negative name, this is another way to "polarize the situation" using the competition's schema.

The Market Alternative is where you paint your product or service as a solution to the prospect's problems in a given area. If you're trying to sell the first computer-based word processors, then the market alternative would be typewriters, and you would try to use their schema to define and differentiate yourself. Using the Market Alternative provides context by highlighting where your product is superior to the older technology (You mean I can delete something when I make a mistake?! AWESOME!), while not overwhelming the prospect with an entirely new idea. Another way to think about it is which budget you're trying to steal from your competition. You're trying to get your prospect to spend whatever money they would have budgeted for a new typewriter on a word processor instead.

The Product Alternative is where you position yourself as the market leader in the newer market. You show that, of all the different brands selling computer-based word processors, yours is the best choice for the consumer. This is where, if you're Microsoft, you highlight all the ways Word is superior to Corel's WordPerfect.

Setting up the Market Alternative allows your prospect to analyze your product in reference to something they already understand, like typewriters, and makes it easier for them to envision how it would fit into their way of operating. Setting up the Product Alternative shows you are the leader in this new, established market by referencing your competition. Using a negative name defines your product by what it's hoping to replace. In all three of these methods, you are polarizing your product from the competition, while using their schema to provide the context.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath: The concept of schemas from psychology

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout: The negative name

Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore: The idea of the Product and Market Alternative

Why Buzzwords are the Sign of an Amateur

2011-03-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear people using buzzwords, it usually makes me cringe. For the longest time I couldn't understand why — after all, they are just terms used to express the common understanding of a complex idea in a single word or phrase. And there definitely times when I hear buzzwords used appropriately and have no problem with it, so for the longest time I couldn't figure out why I was so frequently disgusted.

The other day, it finally hit me.

Most of the time I cringe at buzzwords not because of the words themselves, but because of how they are being used; and more importantly what it says about the person using them. Most often, people use buzzwords because they are trying to sound fancy and impressive in order to cover up their lack of understanding for the topic.

When studying a new subject, new terminology is usually one of the first things that people are taught. These terms allow you to speak the language of the subject matter, and provide the foundation for you to develop a higher level of understanding.

Now there is obviously a need to have a common set of terminology in order to communicate effectively about a topic. The difference is that people with a mastery of the subject matter will use these words in a context that supports the idea they are trying to convey, while people using buzzwords use them in a way that shows off their use of the terms more so than their ideas.

In talking this way, these amateurs are broadcasting their laziness. They memorize a phrase and a quick definition and they're on their way, trying to sound like an expert without investing the time to develop a true understanding for the subject matter.

Because buzzwords simplify the concept into a single word, it also makes the concept easier for the uninitiated to understand. This allows them to ignore the intricacies in the subject matter that the buzzwords cover up. They only understand the simplification of the topic, instead of grasping it in-depth.

Using the latest buzzword can sometimes impress (or intimidate or bully) someone who is unfamiliar with the subject matter into thinking you are legitimate. But to someone who knows what they're talking about, it will only indicate that you have a surface understanding of the topic and are trying to compensate for that by using fancy terms.

Now I'm not saying don't use buzzwords. Like I said, using a common language for a given topic is essential for communicating effectively. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking memorizing a bunch of fancy words makes you a master on a subject. Or even worse, speaking like it does.

Beware: "That's What I Would Do"

2011-03-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

"Put the article about [the famous pop-star] at the top. That's what I would be most interested in," he said.

I politely tried to explain how a different post, about a quirky science discovery, had gotten more attention from the audience that this e-mail was being sent to. He didn't get it.

Be careful whenever you hear yourself using phrases like "That’s what I would do." If you're expressing an opinion, that's one thing, but too often these words mean someone is taking their own beliefs and defining the rest of the world according to them.

The rest of the world is not just like you.

In fact, I'd bet that in most cases what we would do is drastically different from what the majority would do. There is an enormous amount of variation in people's worldviews, and more often than not your beliefs wind up falling into the minority.

The only solution to this is observation. Instead of judging the success of your creations solely based on your personal expectations and sense of aesthetics, observe them after they've been created to judge their effect and try to learn from it. Just because you would click on the article about the pop-star first doesn't mean your audience will.

Continually test your assumptions. Regularly try ideas that run counter to your intuition, but also show promise, rather than blindly extrapolating your views on to the rest of the world. Remember — more often than not your beliefs wind up falling into the minority rather than the majority.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

Ryan Holiday: Self-Absorbtion

Tim Ferriss - Testing and self-experimentation (See his book The 4-Hour Body)

What if the Whole World Decided to Follow You Today?

2011-03-12T19:16:00.000-08:00

"If the whole world decided, today, to follow you; where would you lead them?"

This question is posed as a motif throughout the song "Thinking About That" by Victor Wooten, and it resonated enough that I thought I'd attempt an answer:

The first thing that occurred to me was that, on a macro level, this is impossible to do with specific activities. If you demanded that everyone start exercising daily, which would help improve the health for everyone who needs more exercise, there would be large groups of people who, because of age, disability, or injury, would wind up worse off when forced to exercise. Almost every absolute decision like this hurts one group of people even while it helps another. Instead, the answer needs to be a broad framework that adapts itself to varying circumstances.

If the whole world decided, today, to follow me; I would lead us to these three ideas:

Openness

The first activity I would lead the world towards would be openness. Openness to new ideas, new people, new ways of operating, and anything that challenges the status quo and our way of thinking. When we encounter new information that is counter to our current worldview, we all try to find ways to undermine or reject it to avoid cognitive dissonance. This is just a bias of human thinking, but one that can be compensated for if you're aware of it and actively try to maintain your openness to new ideas.

Curiosity

Being open to difference is great, but I don't think it produces beneficial change on it's own. In order for that to happen, not only do you have to be open to new ideas when they come to you, but you also have to actively go to them. This is where I would lead people towards curiosity. Instead of just being passively open to change initiated by others, curiosity makes a person actively seek out new ideas. This change from being a spectator to a participant is crucial.

Testing

After leading the world to openness and curiosity, the last place I would take us would be to testing. Once we are open to new ideas and trying to seek them out through our curiosity, testing provides a framework for turning those new ideas into actions. Testing is simply the act of taking a new idea and proactively using it, while also tracking the results in some quantifiable way. By treating life as an experiment, it helps feedback the idea of openness and curiosity into our thinking, and also drives people towards action by providing some distance. It's a lot easier to try something new if you're thinking that you are "just testing it out," and that everything is not permanent but largely reversible.

In the song that inspired this post, Victor Wooten's answer begins "Before we can think about leading anybody, I think we should think about where we're leading ourselves." Even though there are plenty of times where I don't succeed, I would say that I do try to hold these three ideals at the center of how I live my life. And for all the times I fail, the impact of each success far outweighs the failures.

So if the whole world decided, today, to follow me; right or wrong, that's where I'd take us.

This post stands on the shoulders of:

"Thinking About That" by Victor Wooten - The question at the center of the post

Poke The Box by Seth Godin - The idea of curiosity as a key driving force in change

Tim Ferriss - Testing and self-experimentation (See his book The 4-Hour Body)

Ryan Holiday: Openness and cognitive biases