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
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.
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
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.
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."
