Art is what we call...
the thing an artist does.
It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.
Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.
Showing posts with label Seth Godin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seth Godin. Show all posts
Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist - Seth Godi (via Seth's Blog)
Seth Godin reminds us to think through what the customer wants before presenting ideas. True for preachers as well (via Seth's blog)
The most effective way to sell the execution of an idea is to describe the use case first. And before you can do that, you need to have both the trust of your client and enough information to figure out what would delight them.
Then, describe what a great solution would do. "If we could use 10,000 square feet of space to profitably service 100 customers an hour..." or "If we built a website that could convert x percent of ..." or "If we could blend a wine that would appeal to this type of diner..."
After the use case is agreed on, then feel free to share your sketches, brainstorms and mockups. At that point, the only question is, "does this execution support the use case we agreed on?"
Seth Godin offers 20 often surprising thoughts about "Where ideas come from?" Which did he miss (via Seth's blog).
Where do ideas come from?
- Ideas don't come from watching television
- Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture
- Ideas often come while reading a book
- Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them
- Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom
- Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide
- Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do
- Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner's mind. A little awareness is a good thing
- Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week
- Ideas come from trouble
- Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless
- Ideas come from nature
- Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence
- Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice
- Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we're asleep and too numb to be afraid
- Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we're not trying
- Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute
- Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones
- Ideas don't need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity
- An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn't join us here, it's hidden. And hidden ideas don't ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone.
A leader looks for the hard stuff and does not hide from it. Check out "Sure, but what's the hard part?" (via Seth Godin)
Hard is not about sweat or time, hard is about finishing the rare, valuable, risky task that few complete.
Don't tell me you want to launch a line of spices but don't want to make sales calls to supermarket buyers. That's the hard part.
Don't tell me you are a great chef but can't deal with cranky customers. That's the hard part.
Don't tell me you have a good heart but don't want to raise money. That's the hard part.
Identifying which part of your project is hard is, paradoxically, not so easy, because we work to hide the hard parts. They frighten us.
If unreasonable stuff is succeeding, then is being unreasonable the new reasonable? (via Seth Godin)
The paradox of an instant, worldwide, connected marketplace for all goods and services:
All that succeeds is the unreasonable.
You can get my attention if your product is unreasonably well designed, if your preparation is unreasonably over the top, if your customer service is unreasonably attentive and generous and honest. You can earn my business or my recommendation if the build quality is unreasonable for the intended use, if the pricing is unreasonably low or if the experience is unreasonably over-the-top irresistible given the competition.
Want to get into a famous college? You'll need to have unreasonably high grades, impossibly positive recommendations and yes, a life that's balanced. That's totally unreasonable.
The market now expects and demands an unreasonable effort and investment on your part. You don't have to like it for it to be true.
In fact, unreasonable is the new reasonable.
You can do more, you can go faster. How about do it better? (via Seth Godin)
The easiest form of management is to encourage or demand that people do more. The other translation of this phrase is to go faster.
The most important and difficult form of management (verging on leadership) is to encourage people to do better.
Better is trickier than more because people have trouble visualizing themselves doing better. It requires education and coaching and patience to create a team of people who are better.
You have to risk alienating the 2% in order to please the 98%, btw they will be alienated anyway (via Seth Godin)
When a popular rock group comes to town, some of their fans won't get great tickets. Not enough room in the front row. Now they're annoyed. 2% of them are angry enough to speak up or badmouth or write an angry letter.
When Disney changes a policy and offers a great new feature or benefit to the most dedicated fans, 2% of them won't be able to use it... timing or transport or resources or whatever. They're angry and they let the brand know it.
Do the math. Every time Apple delights 10,000 people, they hear from 200 angry customers, people who don't like the change or the opportunity or the risk it represents.
If you have fans or followers or customers, no matter what you do, you'll annoy or disappoint two percent of them. And you'll probably hear a lot more from the unhappy 2% than from the delighted 98.
It seems as though there are only two ways to deal with this: Stop innovating, just stagnate. Or go ahead and delight the vast majority.
Sure, you can try to minimize the cost of change, and you might even get the number to 1%. But if you try to delight everyone, all the time, you'll just make yourself crazy. Or become boring.
Change: the fearful loudly resist, the hopeful quietly disbelieve, inertia results (via Seth Godin)
People who fear they will be hurt by a change speak up immediately, loudly and without regard for the odds or reality.
People who will benefit from a change don't believe it (until it happens), so they sit quietly.
And that's why change in an organization is difficult.
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