When a new technology arrives, it appears unpolished, ill-formed and a bit wonky. As it gains traction, existing industries and processes begin to be threatened, often before their replacements in the new technology are fully ready. This is how Napster showed up for the music business, or email for faxes, or television for radio. Same with online shopping, smart phones and online learning.

Professionals use specs to invite others to participate in the work. One kind of spec outlines the solution. In clear language, it defines the work to be done. A good solution spec defines an outcome with no room for error or variety. "It's this. Not that, not that, but this. If it's this, we're done." The other kind of spec outlines the…

About thirty years ago, Jerry Shereshewsky invented "Cyber Monday" as an alternative to Black Friday. The idea was that you'd wait until you got to work on Monday after the Thanksgiving break (where there was high speed internet and you wanted to avoid doing drudge work) to do your shopping from your desk. After all, who wants to get trampled at a big box store?

Empathy is difficult. I'm not you, I can't imagine the path you've traveled, the stories you tell yourself and the pressures you're under. But real gratitude requires empathy. Everyone is under the circumstances. Everyone does the best they think they can with the options they think they have. All of us know what something is worth to us, but we often don't think much about how much it cost.

We hit 500% of our Kickstarter goal, and they're now available to the public. A lot of folks have answers for us about AI, but these decks are designed to help us with the questions. Not just questions about the systems at work, but about how we might use them. The Infinite Adventure deck puts you into a fan-fiction world--from Alice in Wonderland to a noir mystery.

Every day, this blog is automatically echoed on my Linkedin channel. Over the last few years, the traffic to those posts on Linkedin is down more than 90%. Understandable. Platforms evolve, people shift their patterns and interests. I recently did a manual post on Linkedin, though, and was amazed to discover that within minutes, it had 10 times as much traffic as a typical post does.

Gall's Law is appropriately simple: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” This is why sudden change rarely is, and why persistence and user feedback end up changing the systems that run our world. Begin. Learn. Succeed. Then add complexity.

Of course, a book with a title like this gives us pause--when we think of marketers, we don't ordinarily think about Jerry, Phil, Bobby and the rest of the crew. But that's one reason why the insights are so profound. Marketing isn't hype or hustle or scamming. It's not spam or manipulation either. We already have words for those things.

The most useful definition of quality: It meets spec. The hard part isn't putting in enormous effort to somehow beat the spec. The hard part is setting the spec properly. If you're not happy with the change you're making and the customer experience, change the spec. And when you meet spec, ship the work.

The worst sort of powerlessness happens when we're seduced into doing it to ourselves. Waiting to get picked Repeating and rehearsing negative self-talk Only choosing from the available options Refusing to do the reading Not having a budget Not having a timeline Avoiding new ideas Undermining your own work Seeking useless criticism Avoiding useful feedback Having a tantrum Focusing on the short term Avoiding generous connection

It's almost never exclusively based on logic. We navigate the world with stories, beliefs and assumptions. And the people you're trying to persuade have a different set of all three than you do. "If I were you" is a hard sentence to sell, because you're not me. A convincing argument works when the recipient is convinced, not you.

The other day, Tom Cruise gave a long acceptance speech. But unlike every other speech of its kind, there were no notes. No rambling. No false starts. He did what he always does--he outworked everyone else. It must have taken weeks to write, rehearse and edit this performance. And then he intentionally added a layer of awards-show stiffness to make it seem real.

Most cultures are built around the idea of private property. Grain is harvested once a year and stored for months. If someone steals the grain (which is difficult to securely lock up), it threatens the livelihood of the farmer and the stability of the community. By the time Hammurabi codified Babylonian law around 1750 BCE, grain theft was already so universally recognized as a crime that the code specifies not just the crime itself, but elaborate provisions about liability in special cases.

Which is worth more, Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, or the third Boston album? It depends on your taste. I hope we can agree, though, that the fact that Miles spent four days on his album and Tom spent eight years on his is irrelevant. Sometimes, we buy the story of inconvenient creation. The carrots at the farmer's market or a hand-crafted piece of pottery is worth more because we know the focus and care that went into the creation of an item.

Marshall Sahlins and others showed that early hunter gatherer societies generally didn't work very hard. Two or three hours a day were spent gathering food, and the rest of the time was for social engagement and family. With all the technology and innovation that has followed, why do we work four times as hard? One reason is leverage. The tools we have offer apparently bigger prizes in exchange for the next unit of incremental labor.

Every one of the pings, dings and clicks on this page gives me the hives. Run them in a quick sequence and I need to leave the room. They are our Pavlovian bells, designed to trigger us into action. At the bottom right is a button that says 'stop all.' That's a useful idea. We didn't sign up for this all at once. We were seduced into becoming trained seals gradually, fish by fish. Important work might not be quick or automatic or easy.

If someone hands you a deck, you can be sure there are 52 cards covering four suits. The universe is finite. The cards are the cards, and games work precisely for that reason. Every deck is the same, and all the players have the same options. Some of the systems we compete in have a limited number of cards, known to all.

I'm not sure this is the right word for it, but we certainly need one. Not 'entrepreneurship' which is a distinct skill. That term is usually reserved for people who start at zero and get to one, and mostly for people who operate in small businesses creating financial value through assets and equity. But what about the person who navigates an important non-profit through changing times?

Play Bongo on Puzzmo, Five words. Infinite strategies.

When the long-term cost of our situation is uncomfortably linked to the short-term expense and pain of changing the situation, it's easy to feel stuck. One way to deal with the feeling is to insist that there's no way to change the situation. That the price we'll have to pay upfront is so big, we simply have to live with the day to day consequences, forever.

This is the challenging insight that every generation comes to grips with. It might be a rising cohort of teachers or managers. It might be the next cycle of companies. And it might be the shifting power dynamic in families or organizations. No one gives you a certificate, an endorsement or a magical sword pulled from a stone. The moment simply arrives. What will you do when it's your turn?

Ideas open doors, lead to connections and make things better. But not all good ideas are good businesses. Crop rotation is a good idea. So is sous vide cooking and the sport of juggling. But these aren't good businesses. A business thrives when it can charge a premium--selling something for more than it costs. That means that there has to be a competitive advantage, an asset that produces value.

This is a bonus post about a couple of my hobbies. We will return to our regular scheduled post tomorrow. Wonder is the feeling we have when our experience extends beyond our expectations. It's uniquely human, and available whenever we can create the conditions for it to occur. Wonder is a fine place to do your work, but it’s also a reliable way to find joy in your hobbies.

Seth Seiders, (Al Capone's accountant) wrote a book about the "pivot man." This is a key function in industrial organizations, bureaucracies and any organization with more than thirty people. It's someone (often not a 'man') with a boss and with employees. In our modern world, this person goes to meetings. That's their job. The company can afford to pay them well and give them resources to help keep things in sync.

It might be your website, your brochure, the inside of your store... This is a fine thing to do, but it's not particularly effective. The secret isn't to optimize the landing page. it's to optimize the reason people are coming to your site. You can't convert people who don't want what you have… you need to attract people who do.