Mike's notes.
You don’t go to church to learn the 11th commandment.
Posts written. Tasks completed. Books read.
It feels good. It looks good. It makes sense.
But it’s not always right.
New and more feels like progress.
New clients. More calls. New products. More sales.
But sometimes it’s not.
Sometimes we have what need, we just need to use it.
You don’t go to church to learn the 11th commandment.
In Uncommon Service the authors note that customers want businesses to suck at something. It’s a Never Split the Different vibe. Or in terms of a karaoke bar: Play the hits!
A visualization from the book:
Restaurants have different attributes: food quality, pacing, pricing, ambiance, and so on. For a celebration, people are willing to trade price for service. This is the sort of “context” at the heart of JTBD.
“Our business,” listings read, “has 100 years of combined experience.” Well, that sounds like a lot. But is it two people with fifty years or ten people with ten? Then again, is fifty years of experience good? Do you want a doctor who went to medical school in the 70s?
There’s no answer, it’s all contextual.
But we do make trade-offs and must be honest about what they are and what that means.
How to Fly a Horse is one of the best books you haven’t read. It’s part inspirational (like Rosling) part instructional (like King) and part historical (like Dan Carlin).
Simply, we are capable but more importantly, we are responsible for the world we want. “Everything around you that you call life,” Steve Jobs said, “ was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”
But this ain’t influencer stuff.
Everyone has creative potential, Kevin Ashton writes, but it takes work. “Time is the raw material of creation.” As Steven Pressfield noted, put your ass where your heart wants to be.
That’s just Insta-advice.
The world does not want creation. The system is designed against it in two ways.
A me problem.
We block our creations. There’s the genius myth: Creation is for a select few. That’s just not right. The End of Average explains this nicely. ‘Genius’ (or ‘athletic’ or ‘industrious’ or ‘lazy’ and so on) are collections. There’s no genius metric because there’s nothing to have.
Ya got it or you don’t is not true.
But this isn’t enough. It takes work, work, work. For a species designed for ease, work is hard.
There’s a paradox too: The better we get at something the more efficient we get and the less likely we are to see novelty. Think of “expertise” Ashton writes, as “efficiency”. There is nothing more deceptive, wrote Arthur Conan Doyle, than an obvious fact. Tyler Cowen calls this “once and for all-ism.” Experts have been rewarded for seeing the world a certain way, why change?
The solution to the paradox is to bring experience but not beliefs. To have a light identity footprint. To see the unexpected, expect to see nothing.
A them problem.
They, the others, those folks don’t want to see it. Or they can’t see it. It’s helpful to remember Demings, “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” People don’t randomly red-pill, laissez le bon temps rouler!
The status quo is humanity’s default (this is an assumption of JTBD).
‘Different is bad’ is evolutionarily good. Our ancestors were the ones who didn’t try the new berries.
Rejection, hesitation, and reluctance are good things. First creators must expect it. Knowing first drafts suck, progress is slow, and TK takes the sting out. Second, creators must use this for guidance. Feedback presents the soil to sew, the path to plan for, the itinerary to travel. Ashton advocates for the creator to utilize not internalize rejections. Ask, okay, so how could this be better?
–
The book is full of pithy quotes. Let’s end with two:
“We sell our soul when we waste our time. We drive neither ourselves nor our world forward if we choose idling over inventing.”
“The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know.”
–
This book was mentioned in Bob Moesta’s Learning to Build.
Rather than a traditional review, think about Learning to Build in the context of jobs to be done.
We believe there’s no such thing as a bad book so much as bad timing. In some version of the multiverse, you need any given book right now!
Similarly, jobs theory is about finding the pushes and pulls, habits and anxieties, and contexts for when people act.
In that spirit, here are the Jobs books for this multiverse.
Learning to Build is an introduction to someone who wants to learn more about Bob Moesta’s work. It introduces the five skills: empathetic perspective, uncovering demand, causal structures, prototype to learn, and making tradeoffs.
Demand Side Sales is for someone in sales who wants a fresh idea. Never Split the Difference, Start with No, and The Sandler Rules also build the “talking to people” skill.
Competing Against Luck is for someone with a strategic angle. It’s for someone asking: What should we do here? The Mom Test is a faster, less academic path with similar idea vistas. How to Fly a Horse is a bigger and wider picture, with more history.
How Will You Measure Your Life is for someone who’s seen these ideas and needs a fresh – and personal! – perspective.
26 Jobs to be Done is my short e-book about grokking jobs.
Keep learning. Keep building. Keep growing.
Uncommon Service is a “what to do and how” kind of book. If Atomic Habits is a what/how book for the person then Uncommon Service is one for service businesses.
It’s organized into four parts:
One: The tradeoffs. To have uncommonly great service, a business must make tradeoffs. Importance requires attention – and there’s an opportunity cost to that attention. In Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara writes about the front-of-house staff that aims to create “legendary” moments for the guests. They Google the guests. They run out at the last minute for just the right gift. They go above and beyond above and beyond.
But they don’t shine glasses, clean tables, or sweep the sidewalk. They don’t help with any of the hundreds of tasks that need doing every single night. That’s a tradeoff.
The LinkdInfluencer scoffs, be the best. But businesses that dig deeply into customers’ jobs find there are things the customers want more than others. Your customers want tradeoffs.
Two: Things cost money. Uncommon service isn’t free.
Customers could pay more and get more. Premium services like Disney’s Backstage Magic tour and The Four Seasons work this way but these opportunities are limited. Most businesses cannot simply charge more.
Instead, most businesses must find holistic solutions. Exceptional service leads to more word of mouth and less marketing spend. Specialized service leads to better processes and less loss or more gain. When Publix employees walk customers to requested items – rather than tell them the aisle – does that increase sales and decrease theft? Certainly.
Few businesses can claim it cost more and it’s worth it, but all businesses can think creatively about how to offer more and how to pay for it.
Three: A business’s team reflects a business’s tradeoffs.
Florida has a lot of mom-and-pop pool cleaning businesses. Our neighbor likes reports that detail the pH, chlorine, and salt levels. For him, the JTBD is visual and numerical.
But most cleaners want to show up, clean, and move on – while listening to whatever on Bluetooth headphones.
So the business owner makes it easy for their employees. Rather than have the cleaner communicate with the customer, they communicate with the office that prepares the report. Cleaners take a few photos, report some numbers, and move on. The office makes it look as nice and tidy as the pool.
(Alternatively, a business can try to hire people rather than design the system. We write a lot about that at Daily Entrepreneur.)
Four: Prepare the customer. The authors suggest service businesses imagine they are manufacturers. In ‘goods’ businesses customers don’t wander around the plant, inspecting machinery, and tinkering. No – and they shouldn’t do that in a service business.
But customers are part of the experience: they have varied expectations, arrive at different times, and spend different amounts. They are “locally logical”: what makes sense to one will not make sense to another.
Like employees, a business has two options. They can change the system for the people or change the people for the system.
We’ve written about financial stakeholders. An investor is only as good as their capital base. This is part of Warren Buffett’s persona: he draws people aligned with his approach. He picks the people for the system.
But not every business can filter their customers. In those cases, they must focus on the customer’s experience. How can a business operator systematize the times they bend over backward?
Historically Harvard Business books run dry with too much theory or too specialized examples. This book did not. It was uncommonly good, fast, and helpful.
Notes. Never Split the Difference addresses tradeoffs well. Both Never Split… and Uncommon Service are recommended by Bob Moesta.
In her book, How to Change, Katy Milkman writes:
“We’re more likely to pursue change on dates that feel like new beginnings because these moments help us overcome a common obstacle to goal initiation: the sense that we’ve failed before and will, thus, fail again.”
New year, new week, new me. It’s a birthday. It’s a new job. This time is different.
But it’s only different when the structure changes.
Reliance on fresh starts fails because only the narrative changes, not the structure.
Milkman writes about a study of college transfers. Some kids transferred from the local two-year school while others came in from out of town. The local kids made fewer changes – good and bad! Fresh starts with a different structure push the variance of the changes outward. Sometimes the changes are a desired direction and sometimes not.
“When we hope to change,” Milkman writes, “we have an opportunity to try reshaping our environment to help us disrupt old routines and ways of thinking.”
Successful resolutions are an issue of design, not mindset. Like the high jump, the physical surroundings matter!
Want to stick with resolutions? Change the rules.
How Will You Measure Your Life? (book review)
How Will You Measure Your Life? is about what investors call “out-of-sample tests”. If an idea works in more than one area then it probably will work again.
Wisdom is an example. Proverbs 16:32, He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city becomes, it’s not if you win or lose but how you play the game.
Timeless.
Clayton’s choice combines business ideas with personal goals in two areas: career and relationships.
Measuring your career. There are legible aspects to a career: money, titles, promotions, and career paths.
Clayton cautions not to over-index on the legible. Careers, he writes, offer a mix of “hygiene” and “motivation” factors. Money, health insurance, and perks are hygiene factors. These factors have capped advantages and diminishing returns.
Non-legible, like motivation, interesting problems, and growth have an upside. This is the good stuff. Just because it’s hard to count doesn’t mean it’s not of value. In fact, it’s really valuable!
And because it’s hard to count and valuable means people underrate it.
But there are legible things to count. How do you spend your time? Your money? Do these reflect your priorities, hopes, and dreams?
Through legible and not, the aim is intentionality. Are you intentional about the important?
Who is this choice for?
“Parents have their own job to be done, and it can overshadow the desire to help their children develop processes. They have a job of wanting to feel like a good parent: see all the opportunities I’m providing for my child. Or parents, often with their heart in the right place, project their own hopes and dreams onto their children.”
We don’t have to teach our kids to tie their shoes. With technology, fashion, and other people it doesn’t have to happen. But it does.
Now apply that to everything.
Helicopter or consultant parent provides a good contrast. It feels good to be a helicopter parent. “See all the opportunies…”. But helicopter parents are selfish parents. Their choices are first for them, not their kids.
Instead, Christensen uses a short-term-pain long-term-gain model. Live verbs first. Experiences are expensive tuition but essential in the school of life. It’s the right choice for them.
…
How Will You Measure Your Life? is a difficult book to report because the lessons are personal. For every, I never thought about it that way situation, someone else would have solved it years ago.
I needed Christensen to write this book.
It’s written by a man of faith. A Harvard professor. He’s a best-selling author. He developed a famous business theory. Anyone that knew him brings up how much they miss him, years later.
I needed his permission.
Permission to think about life, not hacks or hustle. For the important things, not the urgent things. You read it as a reminder of why we live and an admission that we need help to live better.
It matters that it’s Clayton freakin’ Christensen. He lived well and we aim to.
Via Schwab: Read the article
It’s not a terrible list of nine ideas, but it is a superficial one. The problem is that each of the ideas has to do with money, which isn’t really what gift buying is about.
#2, Set a budget. #4, Don’t go into debt to pay for gifts. #7, Don’t buy more online just to get free shipping. I violate #7 most years.
Gift giving is really about connection. It’s about our relationships with other people and symbolizing them. Gifts are a proxy. They’re an artifact. They mark something intangible as tangible.
Here’s what I would have written for Schwab.
It’s that time of year again. Last year, at this time of year, Americans spent $1,600 dollars on holiday gifts. There are work parties, family parties, white elephant, and fireplace stockings to stuff. There are kids, parents, parent’s kids (those dang sibling gift exchanges) and more.
It’s too much.
It’s okay to say it’s too much.
Because here’s the thing – it’s too much for them too.
Here’s a two-step plan for making this year a great season.
Step 1: Buy the gifts you’re excited for. Kids love presents. Dads love new socks. Teens love new hoodies. If you know the perfect gift for the perfect person – get it! That’s what this is all about.
Step 2: Share your priorities. When our money goes to one thing it doesn’t go to another. It’s the “opportunity cost”. We mostly understand that when it’s said but we forget when it’s not. So spend your money intentionally.
“Dear Mother-in-Law, here is some chocolate/coffee/flowers. We’re trying to spend a little less this year because we are saving up for a big family trip to Florida. We know the kids will love exploring the sand for shark’s teeth, soaking up the sunshine, and splashing in the waves.”
Instead of a vacation maybe it’s college or a new, more reliable, safer car for your spouse. Whatever it is, make sure it’s intentional. And make sure the gift receiver understands that it’s important.
“It’s better to give then receive”. That’s advice you don’t understand until you’ve gotten older. Then it’s obvious. By not getting someone something you’ve let them become the giver rather than receiver. Your in-laws have “given” you a slice of tuition, vacation, or locomotion. They’ve connected.
Some people won’t get it. But if you live intentionally and remove the frivolity from not just the gift-giving but the rest of your financial life, they’ll start to see it.
Happy Holidays from all of us at Schwab.
Happy Holidays.
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen and How To Change by Katy Milkman are different books with the common theme of goal alignment.
Do short-term choices, options, and incentives align with long-term aims, hopes, and dreams?
Christensen writes in business terms, specifically innovation. Disruption theory notes that when incumbents serve their best customers they miss new opportunities. It’s a dilemma because the opportunities have worse short-term outcomes than “business as usual” – but possible long-term rewards.
Milkman writes in psychological terms. “Doing the right thing,” Katy conveys, “is often unsatisfying in the short-term.” Instead, bundle working out with watching Netflix. Get Starbucks at the airport. Do your taxes and then go out to eat.
Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
These books exist for a reason: We are myopic!
But with reflection, intention, and design goals align.
“You have to be careful,” warns Clayton Christensen in How Will You Measure Your Life?
When things are going well with your friends and family. When your kids are doing well. When your spouse is happy. You have to be careful.
“When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships onto the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake.”
I’m in good shape for forty-one. In December I ran a 1:37 half-marathon, impressing myself.
But my neighbors say I don’t need to run because I’m already fit.
The causality is backward.
The Millionaire Next Door profiles people with large net worths and how they did it. They invested, worked smart and hard, and checked their expenses. They wore simple watches, drove older cars, and traveled simply. You don’t need to live so cheaply, their nosey neighbors might note, you’re already rich.
Parts of How Will You Measure Your Life? are about the “dilemma” between short and long-term incentives. Measuring your life is a long-term game that needs long-term incentives. And “you don’t need to… because you are already…” is backward logic.
You need to.
The Waiter's Pad 