Flubber!

seth — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:00:18 +0000

Businesses Should Be More Like Flubber

Yesterday a coworker asked a great question: ”Quick Poll: What do you think is the most valuable productivity goal in terms of employee-to-employer contribution — A) units of profitable new ideas per employee, B) units of work per hour, C) both, or D) something else?”

My answer? None of the above. I’m not sure yet what would be better, though. And here’s why: current corporate structure and measurement is essentially based on Henry Ford’s “they can have any color they want, as long as it’s black” assembly line process innovation, where manual laborers were interchangeable. That still basically works in a physical labor/manufacturing setting. Maybe. But, according to “the Support Economy,” people are now looking for “psychological self-determination.” We want something other than a black Model T now. Also, good chunk of our economy is now built around “knowledge workers,” who are significantly less interchangeable. That framework is self-limiting.

People (employees and consumers) are forced into a box. That box doesn’t recognize or capitalize on the parts of the person outside the box. We need a new paradigm. IDEO calls it looking for “T-Shaped people.” David Armano, from Critical Mass, calls it the “Fuzzy Tail.”

We need something less like a Rubik’s Cube, and more like Flubber. Once we have the structure, then we can measure.

What do you think?

Maybe Seth Godin is full of, well, you know.

seth — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:30:09 +0000

I know he’s just being provocative, but I’ll bite anyway. In a recent blog post, Seth Godin says “The Internet Is Almost Full.” He goes on to say that there’s so much content out there now, we are full– our attention is full. You used to be able to stay in the know about everything that mattered. You used to be able to make an impact easily. He advises “so if you have something left to say, better hurry. Once it’s full, it’s full.” I call shenanigans.

It’s not about seeing or being or doing everything. It’s about passion.

Whether you’re creating or consuming, it’s about finding that handful of things that you can’t stop thinking about. Joseph Campbell called it “following your bliss.”

When you’re creating (products, experiences, blogs, etc): focus. Find the things your market is passionate about– recognize the value they’re already creating– and help them on their quest for “psychological self-determination”

When you’re consuming: focus. Unless you’re god or a ninja, you’ll never be omnipresent or omnicient, so don’t even try… unless your bliss is drinking from a firehose of information, ideas, and idiocy.

One of my passions is music– listening, writing, recording. And I particularly enjoy finding new music. Let’s apply Godin’s logic to that crowded, noisy space: people have no more room in their lives for your music, young band, so you should either get in now, or not at all. Tell that to The Beatles. Or Mozart. There was already a plethora of perfectly-good music to go around when they got in the game. But that didn’t matter, because they were following their passion.

Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs happen in a crowded space.

What do you think? Is Godin right? Or is he full of it?

seth gray » the support economy

Flubber!

Maybe Seth Godin is full of, well, you know.