Four days prior to 8/23/11's "DC Quake", I sent this text to a friend.

Success is a function of how far into the future you can see.

A study of success is inevitably a study of those who were capable of seeing further ahead than their contemporaries in a given field.

How to see the Future: Two propositions.

First, the Physical and Quantitative: The future, defined by Physics, is a function of the instantaneous positions, velocities and forces acting on all particles within a defined system. Simplistically, the more accurately you can measure more data about a system’s present, the more accuracy with which you can predict its future. The Future is constructed upon the relevant data of the Present.

Second, the Philosophical and Qualitative: As a Quant, this is outside my comfort zone, but it cannot be ignored; for data acquisition there must be analysis. This is the process of assembling the physical data puzzle faster than nature. Because you can’t see everything, nor filter all which is irrelevant, some pieces will be missing, and some will be from other puzzles. But the second key to seeing the future is to allow yourself to attempt to see it. Ask yourself, consciously, what is going to happen next? Be willing, extremely willing, to be wrong. Track and measure your estimates. Study an event, however mundane, and evaluate the contributing factors to its ultimate, inevitable intersection with the present.

Practical examples include the acquisition and expectation of the behavior of traffic, or the developments of a current event in the media. Allow yourself to collect, expect, re-collect and revise that expectation, always noting the contributing factors. With practice, you may direct your collection and estimation attentions to more complex, more significant systems within work and life. You should measure improvement, and you will be experiencing a heightened sense for the developing road ahead.

A Viking-era key, before you ask

I like participating in “the Conversation” when I feel I can add something novel. The link below is to a well-drafted article by David Coursey for Forbes. Included here is my reply to Mr. Coursey’s article, which comprises my latest post, below.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/18/how-dropbox-will-die/

(My reply)

David,

Great thoughts. You’re right that Dropbox will die, or at least cease to grow, overtaken by superior competitors.

But, should we really care?

What matters is our data. Whether security issues or features lacking hinders the growth of Dropbox, any competitor must address migration of current userbase. You can’t simply build a better mousetrap, you have to map out the transition for those who’ve invested in the old mousetrap infrastructure.

Examples include Gmail’s overtake of Ymail and Mac’s moderate surge against the Windows-dominated PC market as a legitimate business tool with the “Switch” and “Get a Mac” campaigns, as well as Windows-running software like Parallels.

It will not necessarily be “sourcecode: Dropbox” happily, securely, economically fileserving our future data access needs, but something will be there. Whatever it is, Job 1 will have been to find a way to not only lure, but transition users from the market’s 800lb gorilla, whoever it was.

(Additional for the blog, by me)

There’s two lessons we can learn from this thought-experiment about poor Dropbox.

First, is the obvious. It will be OK if/when Dropbox fades as its market becomes saturated, what matters is the Data. And, when migration happens, it will be when we’re ready, with the right service, for the right reasons *cue the coming-of-age movie music*.

Second, mousetrap infrastructure. When marketing, remember to Start with Why, but Close with How (thank you, in part, Simon Sinek). Accept that healthy markets do not hop on the solution du jour simply because it’s “better”. You’ve got to build that roadmap from their current “Okay, I can deal with it” service to your “Totally awesome we should have done this sooner” service.

Modern hearth - literal

The internet allows us to learn from experiences moments old, and to congregate a community around metaphysical hearths, Ideas. For better or worse, we have itemized and inventoried our relationships and can now quantify, in a very real sense, the thoughts of those in our social network.

The use of this is potentially boundless, however metaphysical. Methods of efficient, informed communication (rich communication?) give us insight into our recipients state of being in a passive sense before active communication has begun. This is strides beyond email, a mere virtual representation of a physical entity. Much of our lives are beginning to operate in a semi-transparent virtual community where physical limitations do not exist. The tools for idea exchange have evolved, and as we gain comfort with them in the social setting, we will learn to rely on them for our professional endeavors.

Heatmapping of a common website. Apply to your prose and prosper.

When writing informative material, write hierarchically. This is as opposed to chronologically, the way you were taught to write in the second grade. Writing hierarchically ensures the most important material is read; those interested in details can dig for them. Don’t leave your reader waiting for the punchline. Often they’ll be bored or distracted before the other shoe drops. The idea is to imagine your draft being lit on fire from the bottom; if only one line survived, it would be the most important, at the top. Two lines, top two.

Newspapermen call this “don’t bury the lede” (lede is pronounced and also means “lead” – as in the lead line of an article). In civil war times, front line correspondents would have both limited and unpredictable access to telegraph machines, as one never knew when the Army would need the machine or the wires would be damaged. The method was also agreeable to editors who, in working stories like Tetris pieces onto a page of print, often cut stories from last paragraph, up.

I woke up at 4a.m. this morning, on purpose.

Technically it was 4:19, but the point is that it was quite a leap from my usual 6a.m. arousal.

The importance of being abnormal.

“Keep doing what you’ve always done and you’ll get what you’ve always got.” Changing things is important.

Success is probably a function of one’s willingness to do uncomfortable things.

I’m personally an essentialist. I learned the hard way years ago that no man should ever become too dependent on his possessions. For this reason I do everything as ‘light’ as possible. The guy who actually uses the screwdriver in his swiss army knife? Yeah, that’s me.

Saddening news, this morning. Google has received their final shipment of Nexus One handsets, and will be discontinuing the project.

I’ve been reading “Made to Stick” (henceforth “M2S”) by brothers Dan and Chip Heath, which needs to be on the nightstand of every business development specialist. Every-single-page in this book is 24 karat gold. While the as-titled theme of the book is how to make your messages sticky (ie: remembered well enough to influence behavior), there’s a ton of great takeaway for business development.

The best example of this is the discussion of the “Core” of your business. M2S discusses Core in the sense that it must be Sticky, and they delve into examples of Core as-used by Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines, and Hoover Adams at the Dunne Daily Record – how Simple-yet-Specific Core Messages (or, Mission-Statements) can guide the decisions of every member of the organization in nearly every situation by combining a clear organization-wide objective with their own built-in human intuition. A Core (or a Mission Statement) serves the purpose of a guiding North Star for everyone associated with your organization. No matter where you are, separated by time and distance, you have that guiding light to make decisions you know are right by the whole.

That’s great, except, in many businesses I’ve worked with, there was no Core; or if there was one, certainly no one was reminded of, let alone guided by it! I know, it’s post-1980’s and no one wants to be defined by something as simple as one little sentence and we’re all a million different people from one day to the next, blahbleh. Unique Snowflakes out there, take heed of Tolstoy’s quote from Anna Karenina: “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Apply that to business, and be on your way.

So, you need a Core. This can be intimidating. Simple-yet-Specific seems pretty confining, so it’d better be good. Say you were to try to create a Core for your own life; a Rule by which every decision in your life would take into consideration. If your Core was “I am, THE fastest guy in my town.”, that might affect everything from your diet and workout routine to your choice in town you live in. Sure, it’s Simple-yet-Specific, but when you draw out the permutations of how this Golden Rule of your Core might change your life, it gives you pause. You’re not certain you want to be the fastest guy in your town bad enough to eat only bran and chicken, work a job that allows for your stringent training regiment and live in a town populated by un-athletic citizens exclusively. Let’s leave off Self-Coring for now and get back to business.

For a business, finding a Core is a bit easier. I’ve come up with a few questions to help develop one. The first is “What do I want our clients to expect from us?” More specifically: If you imagine your Ideal Client, someone with a need that’s right in your wheelhouse, what kind of expectations do you want them to have at the outset so that they’re more than 100% satisfied when you deliver? The second is “What is the single thing the organization shall prioritize over profitability?” for the sake of argument, let’s ignore the priority of the general safety, health and well-being of staff and clients – unless that is your specific business (lucky you!). More specifically: Clients do not walk through your doors seeking only to provide you business (unless they’re your grandparents). Clients come looking for a product or service to be delivered to them in a certain way. They have an expectation of what it is you will provide in turn for their monies. They should not invent this expectation on their own – it should be clear to them, via the Core. M2S’s example of Southwest uses “We are THE low-fare airline.”; OK, clients know it, employees know it, everyone’s on the same page. Adams’s Dunne Daily Record operates on a similar principle that exemplifies his relentless local-news focus – “Names, Names, and Names”; OK, if I’m a reporter, I know what I’m shooting for; if I’m a subscriber, I know what I’m expecting. It’s not exciting, it’s not unexpected. People are paying their hard-earned money here… this isn’t a magic show, no one’s paying to be surprised. The third question kind of encompasses the first two, that is: “What single idea or concept do I want to run through the mind of every member of my organization before they make a decision?” Specifically, what are our clients expecting, and what is it we’ve agreed to provide them, regardless of profits?

So here it is: A Core from which we can build our own.
[Company Name] strives to provide (Inexpensive/Quality), (Prompt/Deliberate), (Reasonable/Accurate) (Products/Services) to (Niche Market) Clients.

Mix-and-match as necessary and remember that out of Done Cheap, Done Fast and Done Right, you can only have 2. Simple and Specific don’t have to be Polar ends of the spectrum, and you don’t have to sacrifice one to gain in the other. “We are THE Low Fair Airline” and “Names, Names, Names” are super-brief examples that shine bright to every wayward employee, client and vendor. Here’s another by a company called Sonicbids, an online networking service for … well, you’ll see: “We want to help musicians get gigs, and promoters book the right bands. We’re a bunch of people who think music can truly change the world, and make it smaller and better.” Simple? Check. Specific? Double-check. When Suzy the Intern gets an idea to create a genre-based rating system so bands and promoters can give feedback other users can use to make better selections, she’s got a pretty good idea that contributes to the Core. However, when she considers an offer for local music shops in the area bands are touring to pitch them ads for sound equipment, she should recognize that, though potentially useful, it’s not helping Sonicbids get closer to their Core.

In business development, it’s too easy to get caught up in the generic demands that come with bringing a product or service to market. Nowadays everyone’s burning endless brain-calories stressing over server-racks and marketing campaigns; hurdles every operation has to leap that have nothing to do with direction or expectation. The temptation to draw out plans to endless (and useless) degrees of detail is powerful. However, without a Core to guide the decision-making process, opposing forces only negate each other and waste energy. A Core keeps everyone rowing in the same direction.

Have you ever heard “Necessity is the mother of invention”?
Often, the people who develop a product or service are not necessarily experts on the topic, but customers of that market that understand best how the product or service will be used and could be made or delivered better.

We all remember Sy Sperling’s trademark phrase “I’m not only the Hair Club President, but I’m also a Client!”, right?

Sy’s catchphrase stuck for a few reasons. First off, it was ridiculous. It made viewers chuckle and spawned thousands of parodies. It was simple. There was no question that Sy was saying he believed in his product. And, it was real. Sy wasn’t a pro pitch-man – and the story goes HCM had come out of the gates with a slick professional ad campaign that bombed before throwing out Sy’s cameo and taking off. It came from Sy – a bald guy who’d found the answer- to another: “here’s a product that works for Us”.

It’s not that people like to buy things from people who are like them.

Frankly, people like to buy things from experts. Being an expert, or having an expert to vouch for your product or service is certainly important and useful – however, when it comes to product creation, it all comes down to who best understands the need, not the application. I call this person the Elite-User.

This isn’t that uncommon. Look at celebrity endorsements as a great example of Elite-Users in action. Professional athletes aren’t necessarily full Experts in the design and manufacturing of the equipment they sell on billboards and tv – far from it. But they are, however, Elite-Users of the equipment in application. Lance Armstrong may not know how to engineer an entire professional racing bicycle, but there’s no argument he knows how to ride one. Lance didn’t build the product, he uses it. Lance’s status as a Successful Elite athlete combined with the image of him using the bicycle suggests the same success will be had by the target audience. Sy Sperling’s TV ad showed him with a full head of hair (success) contrasted with a portrait of him as bald (user). At some level, they’re all Customers, and are or were once just like us, the target audience.

So we’ve talked about Customers, Experts and Elite-Users and product creation, design and marketing. So what’s it all mean?

In short it means the best person to sense a need and create a product is a Customer, and the best person to perfect and authenticate a product is an Expert, and the best person to develop and market a product is an Elite-User.

Final thought: While I love a good celebrity endorsement, the real hero of this story is Sy Sperling. “… I’m also a client.” Has genuine meaning when establishing a level of understanding with your market: It’s important to be a member of your market. Whether you’re in the phase of selecting a product, or working to establish a better connection with your existing leads, you’ll do well to remember Sy’s advice.

Here’s a great video on Sy’s story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHpZPaQB9KE