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Master the art of living
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine […]
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Make me care
Care is an experience amplifier. A romance is an easy case to illustrate the point because romance can pull us in a visceral way that we are acutely aware of. An ordinary experience with a person by whom we feel deeply pulled can easily seem like a good experience, and a good experience becomes magical. […]
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Merely don’t fail
Experienced happiness (which could be customer happiness, employee happiness, or your own happiness) could be said to be the experience of reality meeting (or exceeding) expectations, and when reality fails to meet expectations one experiences unhappiness. It’s common to focus on increasing the upside, namely working to make sure that we meet or exceed expectations. […]
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Prize money
I did a triathlon this weekend, and it was awesome. I’ve found that with all of these adventure sports, there’s a great vibe and camaraderie amongst the “competitors”. I say competitors with inverted-commas because we aren’t really competitors. It doesn’t really matter what our time is. We aren’t professionals. This isn’t our job. There are […]
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Trust, the experience
The word trust is shorthand, and people tend to think it means something like, ‘the probability that you will do what you say you will do is high’. But I think that’s incomplete and we can can go a layer deeper by asking why… Why is it desirable that you do what you say you […]
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No such thing
There is no such thing as good service, and there is no such thing as a bad product. There is just our conscious experience of a service or a product. All the actions you take in delivering your service come together as something we experience. If what we experience is a desirable, then we say […]
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The peanut butter delivery mechanism
Most businesses these days are confused about what they’re selling. Bankers think they sell loans, and grocery stores think they sell groceries, and I’ve no idea what you think you sell, but like the bankers and the grocers, I’ll bet you aren’t selling what you think you are. If I can get a loan from […]
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A category of one
You might be in a category of one, but you probably aren’t. You might be the only business that people in your city can turn to for a home meal delivery subscription, but you probably aren’t. You might be the only lawyer, or copy writer, or plumber, but you probably aren’t. The next trick you […]
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Be your own customer
If you’ve read any of my blog posts, then you’re aware that I believe we’re now in an experience economy. If that’s true, and experiences are what customers use to differentiate fungible products and services (pretty much all products and services these days – if you believe you’re actually in a category of one then […]
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Why are we taking photos of fish?
Why have social networks proliferated, and what does that have to do with bankers, bicycles and your business? Why is there a social network for everything? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube; and those are just the catch-all ones. If you like something more niche, like trying to outsmart a fish – there’s a social […]
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Biltong butter
I tried to have dinner at a luxury restaurant over the weekend, but I couldn’t stomach it. The evening started with promise; we sat down to the usual fanfare and while we waited for drinks and starters a well dressed, well spoken young man brought round not one, but two different types of breads. Accompanying […]
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The uncertainty of uncertainty
I’m uncertain about uncertainty. In a fast changing world, especially a business world, we’re encouraged to embrace uncertainty. We’re encouraged to become comfortable being uncomfortable. That those most capable of change are the ones that survive. But here’s the problem… I think I’ve got reasonable grounds to think that uncertainty is one of the precursors […]
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Customer experience and customer service come apart
Think of a moment when you were out in nature. Maybe you were watching the sunset somewhere, or a sunrise. Or perhaps you went for a stroll, or a surf. Or maybe you were sat with friends around a fire, or a picnic blanket. Doesn’t matter, just think of a moment when you were out […]
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Who get’s the callback
At one of my recent team building engagements, the client had hired a firm of industrial psychologists to do some assessments and present the findings as part of the day. Since the industrial psychologists’ session was ahead of mine, I was in the room during the presentation. They made an error, one that cost them. […]
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The sales department at Paramount Pictures
Why are those outbound call centres so bad? How is that we can tell in the first 5 seconds of answering the phone that it’s someone from one of those call centres? The first thing that I and most people pick up is that the calls are scripted. You can tell almost immediately. But I […]
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And the Oscar goes to…
I don’t know how many movie scripts get written every year, but I bet it’s a lot. And most of the studios turn most of them down. Famous actors get sent scripts all the time, scripts with very big checks paperclipped to them. And they turn lots of them down. I was just having a […]
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This ain’t a scene
One of the most famous races in history doesn’t include any runners. No bicycles or boats, not even a barouche. Oh, and it almost ended the world. I’m talking, of course, about the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union that started in 1947 and resulted with them pointing around 40 000 […]
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It’s not about the beer
Today in my CEO mastermind one of the business owners asked a question about enterprise sales. In response another business owner said that one needs to use multiple channels; that email and phone calls are insufficient. And then he gave an example. In the experience share, he described how one of his salesmen was working […]
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Why are accountants friendly?
A product is a physical item you can hand to someone. A service is something you do for someone. An accountant will do something for you (submit your tax return). She’s in the service economy. An accountant who knows the law, and correctly submits your returns (the service) is providing a good service, and an […]
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The Sucker’s Game (pt 2)
If you haven’t read it already, check out the Sucker’s Game (pt 1) here. So how do you tell if the game you’re playing is still a winners game, or if it’s become a suckers game? Firstly, you need to cultivate an awareness of your own assumptions. What things does your business or industry take […]
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The Sucker’s Game (pt 1)
In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb describes a sucker’s game as a game in which “the benefits are small and visible, and the side effects potentially severe and invisible.” Shane Parish from Farnam Street would call this first-order positive and second-order negative, or negative asymmetry. Basically, suckers take a small and visible win in the short term, […]
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Don’t be chicken
There’s a kind of Matrix effect going on. There’s a bunch of people living in a world that doesn’t exist, and they don’t understand why things don’t add-up, constantly taken by surprise and dismayed at bad outcomes. If you think the world is one way, and it actually turns out that it’s another, things are […]
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It’s time to tinker
The way you make your product, or serve your customer, the way you deliver value, is a process. You do not have the perfect process. It’s merely the way you’ve always done it, or the best one you’ve tried so far, or the one your boss showed you. But only a fool would claim it’s […]
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But I’m not a creative
You’re a lawyer, or a bookkeeper, or a receptionist. Maybe you work with spreadsheets, or people, or machines. Designing experiences is done by people who work at Disney, and that’s not you. That’s a widely held truth, and it’s wrong. We don’t ship the work because we’re creative. We’re creative because we ship the work. […]
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Make some trouble for yourself
If you do what you’ve always done, or what everyone else does, you can’t create great experiences. That’s because the way it’s always been done becomes the expected way, the average way, the invisible way. It becomes mundane. If you want to create great experiences, you have to do things that haven’t been done before. […]
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Out of thin air
In business, we’re often afraid that someone’s going to try to eat our lunch; steal our idea, or copy our product, or walk off with our customers. That’s certainly something to worry about if the stuff you make or the things you do are fungible. But what if the the whole is greater than the […]
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Can you bake the cake
I belong to a peer mentoring network called Civitas. (they’re great – check them out) At one of the sessions today they said: Most business struggle because the product or service is not good enough Very few products and services are really loved by their customers Consider the following statement by Jeff Bezos If there’s […]
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Escape to the edge
Maybe you’re not in an industry that’s typically associated with experiences. Maybe you’re afraid that by using experiences as a basis for competition you’ll become a caricature, or maybe you’re afraid that you’ll look foolish, or you’re afraid that you don’t know how to do it, or that it won’t work. That might be because […]
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Framing
As the industrial system becomes more and more efficient, and the difference between the spec and quality of competing products and services races toward zero, the shift by consumers to judge you by the quality of the experience you create is creating new winners and losers. Sometimes the difference between winning and losing is merely […]
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Include the others
It’s certainly possible to enjoy a sunset, or a concert or a workshop on your own. But experiences are usually better with others. So try thinking about ways of intentionally including others in your process, whether that’s the process of making the thing you sell with your team, or the process of delivering it to […]
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What does the skipper do?
Scuba diving is clearly an experience. It’s not a product, you can’t hold it in your hand. It’s not a service, you don’t have clean carpets or freshly mowed lawn when it’s done. The thing about scuba diving is that’s done in the middle of the ocean, and nobody lives in the middle of the […]
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Sausage factories
It seems to me that a choice, even a passive choice, not to enter the experience economy is a choice to be a sausage factory. If you aren’t competing on experience it seems to me that the other levers will regress to price. If 5 stars is average, and a good product and great service […]
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It’s not about entertainment
Given that the most obvious examples of the Experience Economy are from the world of entertainment, it’s easy to think that advocates of the Experience Economy (like me) want you to make everything you do entertaining. That’s a mistake. The Experience Economy isn’t about entertainment, it’s about emotion. If you give someone a good emotion, […]
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Second star to the right
Thinking about the world through the lens of experiences isn’t how most people do it. It’s a new game for most, and sometimes a new game requires courage. The courage to stand out – because you’re the first in your group to switch games, because you aren’t very good when you start, because the new […]
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Proliferation
At first, all work is lousy. The way to get good is to be prolific. Set aside some intentional time to work on your craft every day. But who has the time? That’s the right question, and we’ll come back to it. When you choose to be prolific, to work on your work daily, things […]
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Stay in your box
In writing about the experience economy, there is some danger that I’m heard to be saying that you should create novel experiences at all costs, but somewhat counterintuitively, you probably need to stay in your box. People often talk about ‘thinking outside of the box’. I’m not talking about that. The people you bring your […]
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You might die, but you probably won’t.
Create an experience, and ship it. It might feel a bit awkward at first, but can you actually die of embarrassment if you start your meeting a little differently? Probably not. Will trying something a little different this time kill your business? Probably not. Have you got something to lose? Maybe your sense of comfort. […]
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Compound interest
Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. No, I’m not talking about money – that was someone way smarter than me. I’m talking about compound interest; curiosity, attentiveness, captivation, concern, enthusiasm, importance, passion, significance, sympathy. You can apply your interest to your work in a way that compounds your customers interest in your […]
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How to win a medal
If you’re new to thinking about the world through the lens of experiences then you shouldn’t feel flustered if you don’t know where to start. When we’re present for a great experience, it feels like magic – how on earth did anyone come up with that idea, with all those moving parts, in that order, […]
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Do things that don’t scale
One of the aims of experience design in the context of an experience economy is going to be scale. We want to be able to repeatably deliver novel experiences that create a competitive advantage at scale. And to do that, we have to do things that don’t scale. You aren’t going to get it right […]
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No business like show business
“The experience economy is only for creatives.” Well that’s just false. Yes, it’s true that I happen to run a business that many would put into the ‘creative industry’. And I regularly hear clients say things like, “we’re a bunch of [accountants / lawyers / engineers / bankers / practically any industry you like] so […]
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Invisible water
The story playing out in my head isn’t the same as the story playing out in yours, and that’s ok. It’s probably also inevitable. And when we’re designing customer experiences, it’s critical to remember and so very easy to forget. We forget because we’re like the fish in the ocean who doesn’t know that it’s […]
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Blowing bubbles
Of course magic exists. And there’s a chance you might just stumble upon some. And if magical moments are wonderful things that make life richer, then leaving them to chance seems rather unfortunate. Now, I’d put the chance that there’s a fairy living at the bottom of your garden very low the scale of reasonableness, […]
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Foreshadow the friction
It’s a really good idea to use foreshadowing to maximise the potential of positive moments. But foreshadowing isn’t just for the good stuff, it’s really good at mitigating friction too. Let’s say that bad experiences are on a scale. At one end are experiences at that are, at their very core, simply just bad. Nothing […]
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Foreshadow the promised land
It’s going to be really tempting to foreshadow the awesome features of your product. That’s a mistake. You want to foreshadow the promised land, and your product isn’t the promised land. Your product is merely some kind of magical artifact that helps on the journey. If you’re a financial institution and you have the fastest […]
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Making magic
Where does she want to go? And what does she need to get there? If I said I was writing about Cinderella, then you might already know the answer to those two questions. And what if I said that the story wasn’t about Cinderella, but about your customer… Would you know where she wants to […]
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Foreshadowed is forearmed
You are creating expectations for people. There’s no way around it. Every interaction, and every lack of interaction contributes toward an expectation, a prediction of what it’s like to interact with you. You have no choice in whether or not to create expectations for people. But you do have a choice as to the direction […]
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Play to keep playing
One of the most important jobs of your business is to stay in business. Sure, there are a number of other jobs-to-be-done, but if you don’t stay in business you can’t do any of those other ones. And when we recognise that everyone makes (or claims to make) great products, and everyone delivers (or claims […]
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The story you tell yourself, is it working?
We all have stories we tell ourselves. We’re either justifying who we are, or we’re shaping who we will become. Your business is the same. It has a stories about the industry you’re in, and the way things get done. And those stories shapes your customers’ experiences. But is the story working? Or is the […]
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Manufactured authenticity
In The Practice Seth Godin contrasts Steely Dan with musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, and Aretha Franklin: “Steely Dan continues to sell records and stream near the top of their niche… they created and performed their work in a studio… and then spent months or years polishing the recordings to a bright sheen… But […]
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But not all the time
It’s true that many great experiences are built out of many moments, many iterations, but it’s a grave mistake to try and be remarkable all the time. The remarkable experience you seek to create is way more likely to be successful if the journey you take your customer on is mostly expected and occasionally remarkable. […]
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Many moments, many iterations
Great experiences don’t come into being all at once. They’re both a daisy chain of small moments, and a culmination of small iterations. You don’t just sit down and create a great experience for your customers. That’s not how it works. You sit down and you pay attention to the moments that already exist. And […]
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It’s fake, and that’s great
It’s fake. Of course it’s fake. And that’s ok. In fact, it’s often better than ok. It’s often great. If all your experiences were always 100% true beneath the surface, then almost all of your experiences would be on a scale from ‘meh’ to ‘bad’. The statistical odds of the serendipity required for great things […]
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Watch and learn
But not like Buzz Lightyear… Once you recognise the value of the experience economy, and you’ve decided to start adding experience design into your interactions, at some point you’ll need to try something you haven’t tried before. In fact, that’s the definition; everytime you try something new = something you haven’t tried before. The difference […]
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Ordinary people creating extraordinary experiences
You could kid yourself and try to hire “great” people. People who are always on form, who never have a bad day, who are Jedi-zen-emotional masters. But they don’t exist. Instead you could design interactions so that everyday people like you and me can consistently create great experiences. That means designing them. That means asking […]
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The authenticity of manufactured moments
Some people have a concern that manufactured moments aren’t going to be authentic. It might be true that manufactured supawood isn’t so-called “real wood”, but experiences aren’t supawood. Experiences don’t work like that. It’s easy to think about an example; in the middle of an argument, we can recognise that sometimes feelings might arise which […]
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Time to grab your surfboard
Experience Design is all around us, it’s just not widely recognised, and that might be because good experience design is invisible while the obvious attempts aren’t good experiences. And so if someone hasn’t encountered the concept of the experience economy before they look at me like I’m completely nuts. “You can’t manufacture emotions in people […]
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A surprising experience
Some people love surprises. Others hate surprises. Clearly we have a distinction between types of people… Wrong! We have a distinction between types of surprises. A surprise is a deviation from what was expected. When reality deviates from our expectations our dopamine system trains us. If the deviation from expectation resulted in something better than […]
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The experience of fairness
Humans have an innate sense of what is fair, and our sense of fairness is apart from where we grow up, or how old we are, or what we believe. When you behave in a way that’s counter to our intuitive sense of what is fair you create a terrible experience. We suffer an offence. […]
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Cutting through the fog
Some people are naturally great storytellers, maybe even some people on your team. Some people are naturally great entertainers, and maybe they even create great experiences for your customers intuitively. But no people are great all.the.time. And so great experiences need to be designed. If you and your team design the experience, then experience can […]
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Chase your audience
I read classic crime fiction, and James Hadley Chase is one of the best known crime thriller writers of all time. From 1939 to 1984 he wrote 90 titles, 50 of which have been made into films. His books are page-turners. People love them. And yet I have 15 of his books sitting on my […]
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Stepping stones to serendipity
It’s true that great experiences can be truly serendipitous, that they can happen entirely by chance. But chance doesn’t scale. You don’t have a great experience at Disneyland by chance, you have a great experience at Disneyland by design. We seem to value serendipity though, the feeling of discovery, of stumbling upon something great. And […]
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The telos of experience
Experience design seems to be a consequentialist act. Of course our intentions matter, but it seems likely that success or failure of an experience will be judged by the outcomes rather than by the intentions. We can imagine a case in which we’re at a restaurant, and something goes wrong… perhaps we take a mouthful […]
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The courage to be peculiar
The experiences we remember, the moments we talk about, the ideas that spread, they are all peculiar in some way. And yet we’ve been taught that being peculiar is scary and dangerous. How can that be? The case for peculiar If those experiences and moments and ideas weren’t peculiar; if they were the average kind, […]
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Make it an occasion
What an occasion! Imagine people said that about the moment that the plumber unblocked their toilet… Seems far-fetched, but let’s imagine… An occasion is a special event, often a celebration. It’s something that happens occasionally. And perhaps most importantly, there is no law of physics that I’m aware of which objectively qualifies one thing as […]
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Pick your moments
We’re in an experience economy now, and to be among the winners you need to be remarkable. But you can’t be remarkable all the time, because if you were, whatever you were doing would become the normal thing, the expected thing. And so you need to pick your moments. But how? One heuristic that might […]
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Re.Mark.Able
The ideas that spread are the ideas that win. The businesses that people eagerly want to tell other people about are the businesses that win. What would it take for your business to be a topic of conversation that someone is eager to tell people about at a dinner party? When someone says, “Hey Sam, […]
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Moments that win
Competition in the market is fierce. And if you’re playing a game where the winner is the one who gives the best customer service then it’s easy to understand why you might be seduced to try and exceed your customer’s expectations in an attempt to beat the competition. Except that the winners aren’t even playing […]
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Action dissolves worry
Worry is about the future. We want the future to turn out a certain way, and we worry that it won’t. Well, action dissolves worry. When we take action, we feel a sense of agency. Our actions affect things, sometimes in a very tangible way. The feeling that we can have an affect brings with […]
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Create great experiences
We live in an experience economy. If you look around your life you’ll know it’s true. Everything is star rated, and if it’s not 4/5 or higher nobody’s interested. Everybody promises a great product, great service; and if everyone does it then it’s not the basis for competition. The corporate culture at the place where […]
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Helpfulness, reassurance and the end goal
Helpful. I didn’t get here by myself, not by a long shot. You didn’t either. We all got a lot of help along the way. And we need to help others. We might think we have a choice in it, but we probably don’t. It might be that the only choice we have is whether […]
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If you want to do it, do it for them
There’s so much stuff we want to do, all of us, things we want to accomplish. We’re the centre of those narratives. And yet, when we put someone else at the centre of those narratives, the likelihood of us getting where we want to go seems to go waaaay up. It’s empirical. Just look at […]
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Starting is the most important
They tell me that “done is better than perfect”, and I think it’s over-hyped. Starting is more important. “Done is better than perfect” – It’s supposed to anesthetise my ego, to free me from the attachments I have to the work. If I’m worried about how the work will be perceived, about how I’ll be […]
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Enrollment and buy-in
When we want to make a change, a change for ourselves or a change that helps others get to where they want to go, we’re going to need enrolment. There’s no way around it. Enrolment. Your name needs to be on the roll, the long list of names rolled up into a scroll in Medieval […]
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Amat victoria curam
This is popularly translated as “Victory loves preparation”, however I recently came across a few discussions on latin in which it is suggested that the literal translation is “victory loves care”, meaning care in the sense of taking pains to achieve something. From that comes the popular translation “victory loves preparation”, though it also puts […]
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Pings
It seems that everything pings these days, everything except the things that matter. Browser alerts, desktop notifications, calendar alarms, a thousand apps with a thousand pings – they do it because it works… for them. The fact that most pings are set up to be self serving doesn’t change the fact that the ping works. […]
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Lining up a heap of masks
My gym drew a line. Wearing masks is compulsory. Unless you don’t feel like it. That’s not exactly what the message they broadcast through the speakers says. They actually say that wearing a mask is compulsory unless you’re doing vigorous exercise. The problem is that they thought they drew a line in the sand, but […]
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Fully baked
When we get a taste of something amazing, a new innovation, a work of art, an incredible song, it’s easy to forget that often, we’re tasting something fully baked. The fact that it’s fully baked is so obvious that it hides in plain sight. But before it was fully baked, it was a bunch of […]
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It’s time ‘synthetic’ got some better P.R.
Could it be that ‘authentic’ is overrated? Could it be that you should be a little more synthetic? Authentic has a lot of good P.R., synthetic – not so much. We tend to think of authentic as pure, the true version, the real deal, and we tend to think of synthetic as artificial, not natural, […]
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Innovating without a 4th wall
I’ve been an entertainer for 28 years. Not an actor, an entertainer. One difference between the two is the 4th wall. When you’re an entertainer, there isn’t one. When there’s no 4th wall and you get something right, you know, you can feel it. And when you get it wrong, when something bombs, you feeeeeel […]
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Problems, puzzles and mysteries
The world is full of problems, puzzles and mysteries, and you should be solving puzzles. (Unless it’s one of our Murder Mysteries, in which case, you should totally solve the mystery!) But the rest of the time, you should be solving puzzles. Why puzzles? Why not problems? Problems have solutions. That’s what makes them problems. […]
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How much rope?
There’s an idea in the western world that freedom is good, and following on, that maximising freedom maximises good and that restricting freedom is bad. This idea is so ingrained in us that it can trip us up. A well meaning, generous leader who wants to give a team the power to exercise their skills, […]
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Leadership is a practice, and it could be yours
Stepping out of your comfort zone seems like it must, by definition, be an uncomfortable act. But what if it wasn’t? Putting your hand up to make a change can be scary. You’re volunteering to step out of your comfort zone and into the unknown to make a change, and there’s a chance you might […]
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The canary in the call centre
“But sir, I’m just doing my job“ That phrase is a canary in the coalmine that’s become your customer service department. If your staff have to use it, you have a problem. If you’re a leader, and you hear it, you have made some serious mistakes. That phrase is a defence mechanism used by the […]
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Juggling shiny things
In The Practice Seth talks about how he’s taught a lot of people to juggle, and the lesson is that in order to learn to juggle, one needs to ignore the outcome, that (perhaps counterintuitively) catching the ball isn’t the most important part of learning to juggle. Reading the passage, it strikes me that learning […]
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Creative courage
I often hear people claim that they aren’t creative, but I don’t think that’s them, I think that’s fear talking. It’s not that you aren’t creative, it’s merely that you think being creative can be fatal, which is absurd 99.9% of the time. The streets are not littered with people rolling on the floor who’s […]
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Ringing in the rituals
What is a ritual? What’s it for? The graduation ceremony. An engagement ring. An 18th birthday party. What are they for? In our culture rituals are often used to mark a change of state. You were a student, and now you’re qualified. You were single, and now you’re betrothed. You were a minor, and now […]
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Who’s watching you play?
If you want to get good at tennis, you need to hit lots of tennis balls. And while you’re hitting all those tennis balls, you can see where they go and try making various adjustments. What you can’t see is the arch of your back, the angle of your hips, where your feet are at […]
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The Quantum of Solace
Who would have thought I’d be learning about relationships from James Bond… I’ve invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace. Ian Flemming, The Quantum of Solace So what does it mean… Quantum: (noun) allowed amount.Solace: (noun) comfort. The Quantum […]
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The leisure trap
Talking about our festive season break, a friend just said to me, “Relaxing is incredible”… Yes, I agree. And what makes it incredible; in-credible… impossible?Why is relaxing so extraordinary? Often the insidious trap with a break from work is that we fill it with leisure instead of idleness. We replace business with busy-ness; we meet […]
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Who plays the game
If you’re a freelancer working for yourself, or a member of a team who needs to ship the work, then your job is to get onto the field and play the game. If you’re a bootstrapper building a business bigger than you, or the leader of a team then your job isn’t to get onto […]
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Frustration leads to burnout
Whether we’re leaders, team members or freelancers we need to watch out for frustrations that mount over time without resolutions. When we become chronically frustrated our ability to care begins to wane. That’s going to turn out badly. We don’t want lives or workplaces filled with people who have ceased to care. We must take […]
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What goes with YOU?
Birthday cakes go with… Birthdays! What else goes with birthdays? Decor, entertainment, catering, venues… Find the people who supply the things that go with what you do. The mom who wants to hire a face painter for her daughter’s birthday probably also wants a cake. The face painter (probably) doesn’t bake cakes, but you do! […]
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Where are they
Where are they, the people you seek to serve? If the people you seek to serve are all hanging out at the mall, then be present at the mall. If the people you seek to serve are all hanging out on LinkedIn or Twitter, then be present on LinkedIn or Twitter. Your business social media […]
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The Competence Problem
If you’re a freelancer, a creative, a small business, then you probably have a competence problem, and not the obvious one. The obvious one is lacking competence. Not that one. That’s probably not the problem. No, your problem is the opposite. The competence problem is that there’s too much of it. Every Facebook group, every […]
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Show your work
A fellow creative recently pondered whether creatives need a degree or not. I think a degree is for HR departments. It helps them whittle a thousand job applicants down to a hundred. Barring obvious professional qualifications (I want to drive over a bridge built by a qualified engineer, not someone who taught themselves on YouTube) […]
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Spend or pass
We can choose to spend our time, or pass our time. Spending is on purpose, it’s a choice, it doesn’t happen by accident. Passing just happens. We don’t decide. Time passes whether we decide what to do with it or not. So will you choose to spend your time, or pass your time? And when […]
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Moments of delight
We’re diligent, we put in the effort, we try to do work that we’re proud of.Well, the moments between work matter too. Be intentional about your moments of delight. I’m sitting outside right now enjoying a peaceful cup of coffee, and Friday morning seems to bring with her the promise that the weekend weather is […]
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Try it on
Finding the things that lead to our flourishing can sometimes be a little confusing. Part of the process of flourishing comes from leaning into who we really are, from figuring out the difference between what we want and what we only think we want. It can be confusing because sometimes it’s hard to tell the […]
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Take action, on purpose
I’ve very much enjoyed these past days and months. That’s not too say they have all been fun, or that they’ve all been easy. There’s been a pandemic after all. And yet I have enjoyed these days and months very, very much. I think it is much easy to enjoy moments, days, months, even tough […]