Articles100
If you buy a coal mine, the business model is simple: dig out as much coal as you can economically justify, then walk away. On the other hand, the model for a brand or a community or a movement is to relentlessly generate value, connection and possibility. Growth can be sustainable and occasionally exponential. Too […]
We avoid this question all the time, and it costs us. Don’t put kerosene in an electric car. It won’t work. Don’t give your dog dark chocolate, it’ll make him sick. And yet, we often hesitate to be honest about what gets us moving. What puts something at the top of your priority list, or […]
Organizations invest to create an audience that sticks with them, either because they have no choice or because of an emotional connection. When this occurs, most then take profits. They decrease service, increase pricing and generally seek payback for the work they did to get to this position. But there’s another path. Every change creates […]
The mass market is seductive. It’s ‘everyone’. The mass market is powerful, but it’s only slightly interested. The opposite of mass is special. People who have chosen not to be in the mass market. People who want something else. Perhaps something better, certainly something interesting. You can seek to serve the masses. Or you can […]
The last of the series! Thanks to everyone who was part of it. Danny Meyer has changed the way we think about hospitality and what it’s like to eat out. His new book comes out in a few days, and it was a great excuse for two friends to sit down and talk about solving […]
We can either accept that this is the state of our audience and plan appropriately… Or do the very difficult work of changing their state.
Jennifer is a marketer, project manager and impresario. We’ve worked together on projects, and it’s always a delight. She and I sat down to talk about the hard work of what’s next.
The problem is with the “and.” (Often a ‘but’ in disguise.) I want to make the art I have in my head, and I want the market to love it. I want to have the wedding of my dreams, and I don’t want to worry about money, and I want my cousins and friends to […]
I don’t believe we’re each born with a purpose. We have more freedom than that, the freedom to choose the impact we’ll make. Our work, though, does have a purpose. The change we seek to make. The people we’re here to make it for. When we commit to work with purpose, it transforms us as […]
Nicole Walters is a bestselling author, a TV star, a community leader, a mom and a maker of magic. Here’s the conversation we did about The Knot. PS to celebrate the book, my publisher put the Kindle edition of This is Strategy on sale for $2 this week. CORRECTED LINK: Today at 10:30 ET, I’ll […]
They’re not the same. They (mostly) don’t even rhyme. People can evade responsibility by saying it’s someone else’s fault. They can take responsibility, even if it’s not their fault. In fact, being an adult involves taking responsibility for things that we could point out are not our fault. We can soothe our unwillingness to take […]
Our world is shaped by contagious and competitive games. Along the way, we invent scoreboards that change the culture, and badges that we award to various players. An example: How did we end up with weddings that cost $200,000? It’s a great example of a runway cultural dynamic, a system within a system, a game […]
Who’s it for? This problem you’re solving–is it your problem or are you focused on someone else? I had a conversation with Rodrigo about his restaurant in Mexico: You can have your own conversation with a colleague: find the free tool at: theknot.chat
I’ve built a simple website that facilitates the conversations that can help us get unstuck. In The Knot, I describe how we get entangled, hoping for two things to co-exist that cannot. We hide behind the entanglements, refusing to see them, and so our problems can feel permanent. Working with thousands of people over the […]
All this week, to celebrate the launch of The Knot, I’ll be posting conversations I’ve had about problem-solving. Some are more focused on the structured approach built into the free tool I built (find it at theknot.chat ) while, others, like these two, are a bit looser. The first one I recorded was with the […]
But you can. Especially if your community is there to help. All help is self-help, multiplied by the expectations, support and compassion of the people around you. Willpower and self-control are a mystery–we’re influenced far more by our situation, by the culture around us and by everything that’s come before. A mechanistic view of a […]
The sensitivity analysis for a decision is easy to overlook, because we tend to focus on the expected outcome. Perhaps it makes sense to begin with the edges instead. Upside: If this works, really works, what are the implications? Downside: If this fails, totally, what are the costs? After we understand the edges, then it […]
If you sit down to watch a documentary and realize, about ten minutes in, that it’s actually a feature film, everything about it feels off until you shift into a different mode. Walk into a new doctor’s office, and it might take a few minutes to realize they’re not the kind of doctor you’re used […]
Sometimes we make poor choices. And, unrelated to that, sometimes bad luck happens. The real problem kicks in after that. One bad decision after another. Choices that compound the problem instead of solving it. Digging a deeper hole, amplifying the damage and spreading the effects through space and time. We often try to justify previous […]
If you can provide the cheapest, fastest and best option, there will be a line out the door for your service or product. Most providers know, though, that good, fast and inexpensive are trade-offs. You will have trouble offering all three. And in a competitive marketplace, as soon as someone starts racing to the bottom […]
But this job is. We all need to feed our family, find shelter and contribute to the community. Finding useful work is a key part of the human condition. But that doesn’t mean the thing you’re being asked to do right now is required. In fact, it’s optional. It might come with this particular gig, […]
Maps are easy to sell. If you know where you are and where you’d like to go, the map solves your problem. Maps are all around us: how-to, what-to, step-by-step. The compass is more resilient but less descriptive. It shines a light, gives us clarity, but the next steps are up to us. In an […]
Let’s imagine the airline you run had to cancel just one flight a year. You have three days notice. How would you go about it? You might begin by considering the travelers with the tightest itineraries, and explore which options exist and prioritize them. Then, this being late-stage capitalism, you might look at the passengers […]
One person isn’t a lecture, it’s lunch. Three people is office hours. Six people is a seminar. At some point, we shift from interaction to performance–but the people are the same people, the very ones that were happy to simply sit and have lunch with us. Bring in some cameras and it goes from a […]
The office worker has learned to dread the annual review. For many good reasons. It’s going away. Now, like workers on the factory floor, it’s likely that the metrics will be exposed and the system will be contributing a review, not just the boss. AI will show up with your score, once a day, or […]
Seen. Remembered. Understood. It might not be enough, but it helps.
The Knot is coming. On sale today, a limited-edition pennant made by hand in Buffalo… The five-pack from Porchlight (with bonus Spindex) is still available as well. The launch event on September 21 is fully sold out. Spotify chose The Knot as an editor’s pick this month, and the Next Big Idea Club shortlisted it […]
Lazy isn’t a moral failing. It’s an economic consideration. We have limited time, limited energy and limited resources. Allocating that effort is often done in response to what’s at stake and what’s on offer. The clean room at a silicon fab or operating theater is clean because everyone involved puts in a lot of effort […]
One kind of school is about culture, compliance and community. We indoctrinate kids, for better or worse, in what it means to be in this world we’ve built, and how to do it together. We teach them how to be kids, how to be citizens and hopefully, how to be adults. And the other kind […]
The opposite of “I don’t know” isn’t “I’m certain.” No, the opposite is, “I’m not sure, but…” “I don’t know” is a conversation ender. It is almost never followed by a useful question. Instead, it’s a form of surrender. Teach me! Show me answer! Don’t make me figure it out. Most of all, let me […]
Culture is built on the stability of persistence. Pop musicians have farewell tours that last for decades. The local print shop is still there, reliably getting the job done. We want things that last. And yet… When it’s time for a company to raise another round of investment, the smart investor treats the new round […]
At the lab, they don’t know the right answer. They are explorers and scientists. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough. The work at the lab requires mutual support, shared information and a commitment to the process of discovery. At the factory, the answer is known. It’s productivity that’s being pursued. Do it […]
We called them this because they used tools. The first proto-humans to clearly do so. The question that we need ask ourselves today, “Are you a tool user or a tool maker?” Everyone uses tools. But only a few people, even with access to AI and systems of leverage, choose to make tools. Part of […]
If you have a phone, you can call anyone you like. The recipient doesn’t have to answer, but the network is an open API, available to anyone. The Bell System began as an actual networked system–many companies, using the same protocol, shared calls with each other. When Bell got greedy and stopped interconnecting, phone use […]
We have no idea. Of course, there’s plenty of behavioral data. Say this phrase, or offer that treat, and this particular dog is likely to act in a certain way. But our inclinations about what it’s actually like to be a dog are all inventions, reverse-engineered to give us a clue about what they might […]
“Why are you taking this class?” That seems like a fair question. After tenth grade or so, it’s a choice, after all. One honest answer is, “I have to get a good grade to get to where I want to go.” That means certification, compliance, regurgitation. It means enrollment in the outcome, not the process. […]
Apophenia is the uniquely human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns or connections in random or unrelated data, events, or objects. Humans are story telling machines. And one thing we do is turn co-incident events into more than coincidences. When we see faces and shapes in clouds, apophenia wastes our time in the form of pareidolia. […]
Frederick Taylor taught Henry Ford how to do mass production. Deming brought quality, systems understanding and respect for the worker. And operations research brought insight. If you have a repeated production process, the method for improving it is almost always the same, regardless of what you and your team produce: 1. Measure before you change. […]
The first day of classes, some students slouch in the back row, unprepared and uninterested. Some are up front, eager and ready. But it’s only the morning of the first day–these attitudes aren’t related to the teacher. It’s a pattern, one that is the result of culture, systems and personality. Many of these students have […]
Snap, crackle and pop. A set of German-made socket wrenches can turn a bolt in a similar way to a cheaper alternative, but it feels far more rewarding. More than forty years ago, I started using a Mac. The first thing one noticed was hard to put words on–everything about it simply clicked better. The […]
For fifteen or twenty years, this question is relentlessly answered, whether or not we ask it. After we learn fractions, the teacher moves on to decimals. After we read O’Connor, we’re handed Faulkner. In music history, Debussy follows Brahms. Chemistry after biology. It persists in some places after school… the museum hangs Picasso in the […]
It’s not up to us to fix the world all by ourselves. But we vote with our attention and our dollars. If we’re attracted to the wrong stuff like moths to a flame, don’t be surprised when folks spend time building new fires. Each of us knows that we’re motivated by positive feedback. We’re drawn […]
It might be at school, at work or at home. Hunkering down, hoping we won’t get noticed. A safe spot, worth concealing. The problem with hiding out from responsibility or change is that we’re also hiding from time. But time always finds us.
Three paths are now available: We face this choice daily, but rarely name it or prepare for it. The moment just before shipping is where magic and leverage can dance together. Updates: Live in NY on September 21: I have 55 seats left for the Knot launch event happening in a few weeks. All the […]
That’s pretty new. Letters sent by Thomas Jefferson from France often took months to get a response. No points for shaving a day off a 90-day correspondence lag. The 800 toll-free number shifted the dynamic we expected from marketers. If we call you, we expect you to answer. Now, not later. FEDEX did the same […]
Peter Drucker argued that the purpose of a corporation is to serve the customer. It turns out that organizations that focus on this do well. Milton Friedman argued (mistakenly, in my view) that the corporation doesn’t need to care about customers, unless this helps increase the value of the company to shareholders. Corporations are a […]
That’s not only good dieting advice. It works in just about every endeavor we sign up for. The system would like us to be insatiable on its behalf, but that’s not an invitation we’re required to accept.
It’s possible that you were undermined, endangered, cut off or disrespected. But if we begin with that, then the relationship gets shaky. Perhaps the other person simply didn’t understand. It might be that they are focused on their issues, not yours. It could be that they’re dealing with something you don’t see. And most likely, […]
Tic tac toe with a 3 x 3 board is trivial and not much fun. Tic tac toe tic tac (5 in a row) with a 15 x 15 board is endlessly fascinating. Simple doesn’t mean dumb. When we add layers and community and options, it can generate all sorts of possibilities. Connection is always […]
Teaching and learning aren’t always aligned. Sometimes organized teaching is defensive. “Here, take all this down in your notes, it will be on the test.” This gives the teacher deniability, but might not create the conditions for the student to actually learn. The alternative is to seek the “aha.” This is the autodidact moment, the […]
It’s not technically a tax. Taxes produce valuable public benefits, like medical research and parks. This is simply legal theft. Amazon makes nearly a billion dollars in profit from search ads. Every week. Each week, they sell merchants and publishers enough search-distorting ads to capture a billion dollars in revenue. Amazon makes enough in search […]
Find a safe critic. Upload your essay, your book, your artwork, your business plan or your resume to Claude. Then, pick a critic. “Write a detailed, specific negative review that might appear on Amazon/in ArtNews/at a Ph.D defense/from a disappointed venture capitalist/from a recruiter” A few things happen. First, you’ll likely read some 1-star reviews […]
Here’s a simple hack/reminder: If you buy something that has a filter or other part that needs replacing, create a recurring event in your calendar. Also mention where you store the extra filters, and include a link on where to buy more of them. Works for monthly dog meds, too. And… If you paint a […]
Culture provides scaffolding, and learning happens over time. The result is that we’re each capable of extraordinary feats. People can fly planes, ski down mountains, figure out how to use Photoshop or a solve a crossword puzzle. But… Most people only exhibit this skill when there’s months or years of exposure combined with cultural forces […]
After doing an autopsy at the morgue, it’s a good idea for doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies. A few hundred years ago, Ignaz Semmelweis proved this now-obvious insight about hygiene. Doctors don’t scrub because it’s fun or convenient, they do it because it’s a powerful way to create better outcomes. When I […]
Is it helping? You wouldn’t stay by passively if someone else was beating you up. Perhaps we shouldn’t accept it when we do it.
The Decware triode amp is the best low-power stereo amp I’ve ever heard. And it’s a bargain. If you have the right speakers, it’s an extraordinary device. And there’s a two-year waitlist. 2000 people, 11 pages long. This approach to timing and production serves all the people that matter to the company. Employees are free […]
If you win an auction to get a click, you probably overpaid. Every other bidder stopped bidding, that’s why you won. Putting attention up for auction is a good business model—for the seller.
When your project, proposal or resume is rejected, it’s tempting to try to understand why. Scrutinize the rejection letter and turn the short sentence into a paragraph or an essay, then play it over and over in your search for how to do better next time. If you can simply answer this rejection, next time […]
Keith Jarrett on improvisation. When the artist is creating in real time, in conjunction with the witnesses in the room, “performance” goes away. It’s creation. Improvisation is a privilege, a chance to create without a guarantee.
There’s a village in Luxembourg that’s right outside the main metropolis. A farmer often ties up a donkey to the little bridge leading to town. The juxtaposition of international digital trading and donkeys is a reminder that as fast as the future arrives, the past also sticks around. We can measure the distance not just […]
You’re not a crow, neither is your project. To get from a village in rural France to Los Angeles, the trip to London might be a tiny fraction of the distance from London to LA, but it takes more than half the time. It’s easy to imagine that every step in our journey proceeds at […]
Is this where books go to die? There are about 7500 public libraries in the US, and until recently, more than a third of their transactions were for DVDs. What’s a library for? The media has changed, our needs have changed, but the dynamics of funding, architecture and expectation have largely remained the same. The […]
They’re often out of whack. A Hard Day’s Night took less than 15 hours from idea to finished record. More Than a Feeling, from Tom Scholz and Boston, took five years. Each pleased their audiences. One is not 1,500 times more valuable than the other. Sometimes, work that requires effort leads to scarcity, and that […]
People lie. They lie in focus groups, they lie on surveys and they lie to themselves. Culture can be seen as an organized lying function. Be aware of what other people are thinking and make choices about your preferences so you can fit in. Without this effect, we wouldn’t have trends, fads or hits. Part […]
It doesn’t have to be well-crafted, historically important or aesthetically unique. It simply needs to be famous. Celebrity art is famous, with a story and thus emotional resonance. It’s a souvenir for our eyes, a chance to have proximity without ownership. It conflates familiarity with scarcity, the power of in-person experience with the context of […]
“Working in the studio is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live is like being on a rowboat in the ocean.” Jerry Garcia You probably need some studio time, but you definitely need to play live.
What if they meant it? What if your return felt special to the people behind the counter? What if they knew, without looking it up, or being told–what if they knew that you were here, again, a vote of trust and confidence. Returning home is one of the oldest human desires. It’s a feeling that […]
We transferred an idea from engineering to culture, but it’s incomplete. If you build a watch that doesn’t tell time, it’s fair to say it doesn’t work. But when a critic says, “that joke didn’t work,” after seeing a comic perform to a raucous audience, what they probably mean is, “that didn’t work for me.” […]
“How few people can we get away with?” That’s a question many bosses think hard about. Automate. Streamline. Improve productivity and take humans out of as many tasks as possible. It’s a time-tested way to create profits and to increase a certain kind of reliability. Claude Code is popular with many organizations for precisely this […]
We work so hard to have freedom and leverage and choice. And then, as soon as a social network, boss or cultural force instructs us to do something, we fold our tents and go along. Responsibility is scary. Sometimes it’s easier to find someone (or something) to blame. Just because AI tells you to put […]
When new creation technologies arrive, they make the best a little worse and the bad a lot better. Desktop publishing made every local garage sale sign a lot more legible, but can’t quite replace the hand-kerned and tweaked typography of the era before. A smartphone in your pocket takes far better video of the family […]
Organizations thrive on incremental improvement. They find a stable foundation and then build a feedback loop of relentless improvement. This leads to great efficiency, higher productivity and more profits. It enables more throughput and builds market share. Except things change. Optimized offerings are brittle. When the foundation shifts, all of that incremental improvement breaks into […]
For generations, the rules of Lego were simple: many pieces, all able to connect in many ways, led to many outcomes. That almost drove the company into bankruptcy, though. Lego kits saved the business. Each kit has just one way to do the work, follow the instructions carefully. Industrial indoctrination in a box. While it […]
Built into the concept of “interesting” is the unexplored. The temptation of discovery and the new. And so, by definition, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s likely that there is something more interesting somewhere else. The people at the next table may be talking about something more fascinating than your date is… the only […]
Nailing it in the first take is a sign of preparation and professionalism. No need for two tries if you are clear about what you’re doing and how. The next take is where hope lies. This one was pretty good, but next time, we’ll bring it. And the last take is good enough. That’s why […]
One of the best traditional bakeries in New York has a kitchen you can see from the counter. People wait in line for their handmade French baguettes, and the confirmation that they were made right here and right now is reassuring. I noticed that the baker was using a mechanical gadget called a loader. It […]
Compared to what? 98% of the time, the state champ loses at nationals. Every billionaire but one isn’t the richest person in the world. Only one of the 300 people who direct a feature film each year will win an Academy Award. And only one public company has the greatest share price growth. Competition is […]
It’s a dance between workers, bosses and the market. The most stable quadrant happens when a thoughtful and consistent boss hires the right person, pays them fairly, creates positive working conditions and useful training. In return, the company gets extraordinary performance. That’s someone doing a good job who also has a good job. A particularly […]
Hank Green has an interesting take on the scientific method: We advance because scientists work to persuade others that they’re correct. Every paper, statistical analysis and experiment is nothing but an argument designed to persuade an intelligent critic. The method of argument is determined by the audience–if they require double-blind studies and useful statistical models, […]
The folks at TryAI put Fable to the test in directing a music video. The AI glitches show up from the start and continue. But it’s even more unsettling than this. When AI tries to create and direct joyous human dancing, it fails. The dancers look like retired accountants at a wedding. The stiff awkwardness […]
The nearest lightning was 1,200 miles away. At least that’s what the weather site reported. When lightning is that unlikely, we don’t worry about it much. It turns out that this is the best time to install a lightning arrestor on your home, though. The urgency of the moment might be the push we need […]
There are lots of things you can do, but it’s not clear you should. OpenAI has virtually unlimited resources. And in addition to building a chat-based AI, they chose to launch pretty good image generation, a basketball, a meme video generator (since cancelled), an upcoming speaker that actually moves around your house, and a myriad […]
The right words in the right sequence create information. Ideas that change our world. The first kind of word salad allows the writer to hide. Fancy words, carefully juxtaposed, saying nothing. This can serve a valuable function for politicians, academics and bosses–but there’s no real information for the reader. It’s simply a collection of words […]
Even though it’s invisible, easily transported and weightless, software used to stick around. It took years to architect and build a complex bit of software, and thousands of people to help maintain it. Even a complex website could be seen as a durable technical asset. Now, with Claude Code on everyone’s desk, new software is […]
The meeting is now broken. Even if you were actually engaging with the attendees before, it’s over. You took a new medium and stuffed an old one into it, changed the dynamic and ruined it. Zoom is a device that eliminates physical distance and enables a synchronized conversation. Interactions in real time. In particular, groups […]
When we upgrade something in our lives, the thing we used to be satisfied with is no longer satisfying. That’s the nature of an upgrade. After a certain point, the only thing we’re buying is the way the upgrade makes us feel in the moment, not our satisfaction going forward. Stereos, salt, art on the […]
This is a useful term. It helps us understand a topic or theory that can be considered from multiple points of view by people engaging with good intent. “Pluto is a planet” was a controversial statement among some people who study the solar system. On the other hand, it’s not controversial that Pluto actually exists. […]
Last year, the recording session I did with Mel Robbins was going so well that her producers asked me to stick around–four hours later, we had recorded enough for two episodes. One never knows how these things will feel until after the fact, but part 2 is live now. I hope you get as much […]
The moment you start treating your customers as captives, they begin to make other plans. It might take a while, but they always end up leaving. The first step is warning away their friends. On the other hand, when we treat our customers like the free agents they are, they often choose to stick around […]
More than 345 riffs, worthy of a calendar, all in one place. They don’t fit in a blog post, so I made a page of them. Hit the refresh above to see another one, or see them all, and vote on your favorites, at sethsriffs.com On the riffs page, you can click the ? icon […]
The professionals you have the most in common with may be your competition. They wrestle with similar problems and have similar goals. And you can offer value by sharing what you’ve learned and what you know–and that value will often be reciprocated. I met Tom Rielly when was running PlanetOut in the 1990s. About forty […]
What’s this idea (book, meme, song, TV show, marketing campaign) for? Perhaps you want to reach the largest number of people. Or make the most sales. Or generate the most word of mouth. Or be notorious. Or change part of the culture. Or get good reviews. Or have people actually finish your book. You might […]
A hundred and fifteen years ago, Christian Larson wrote one of the first popular self-help manifestos. The Optimist’s Creed argued that it was a choice, and a useful promise. Not to promise the world, or the boss, or the market. To promise ourselves. Optimism is not a mood. It’s a discipline. Last week, Reid Hoffman reminded […]
The world is like this and therefore I feel like that. That seems right. It’s raining, so I’m sad. The person cut me off in traffic and so I’m angry. Ford makes better cars, so I like them more than Chevys. Occasionally, this cause and effect is what happens. But more often, it goes in […]
The more often we succumb to the urgency of the moment, the more urgency we create. The next minute is probably not the last minute, but when we treat it this way, it will be soon followed by another last minute.
Freedom is responsibility with a sexier name. 250 years in, democracy still matters. Click to upvote the ones that resonate and please share.
“I blame myself.” Said no one, ever. At least not the consumers I know. When a careless woodworker loses a digit on a table saw, they almost certainly blame the design and instructions of the device, not their lack of care. On a less gruesome note, the user who fails to read the website before […]
It’s difficult to ride a bicycle in the pitch darkness. We need to see where we’re going to avoid obstacles. And it’s hard to maintain our balance. When we choose to avoid the conversations that make us uncomfortable, we’re pedaling in the dark. Talk about it. Turn on the lights.
The standards have changed a lot in the last few millennia: The big man said it. The book said it. The newspaper said it. I saw a photo. I saw it on TV. I read it on the internet. That’s what the AI said. There has always been room for doubt. But the last century […]