Tag: book

Bourbon Jobs

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We hire jobs to be done for three reasons: functional, emotional, and social. This is clear at the liquor store.

In college, we bought cheap beer. The function was to get buzzed and the social job was to have fun doing it. We might upgrade to Coors Light or even PBR which our favorite wing place always had on tap. Even the upgrade is social.

Liquors differ. They’re packaged more colorfully. The containers are shaped. Their origins matter. It’s more story. People like us drink things like this.

In his book, Pappyland, Wright Thompson discusses the bourbon’s brand:

“The reason Pappy’s office was built to look like Monticello, with the leafy grounds of the Stitzel-Weller plant made to feel like an oasis from modern life, was because he knew that bourbon drinkers were often motivated by nostalgia—It’s a drink made for contemplating, and what is usually being contemplated is the easy and often false memory of better days.”

If our core emotions fire on danger, food, and sex then bourbon serves anti-danger. Bourbon serves ‘southern comfort’. It feels like the good old days, with dad or grandpa. Bourbon ads are warm. It’s a drink to sip. We never drank bourbon in college.

Vodka sells sex. Rum sells fun. Gin sells sophistication. Tequila sells a little bit of everything.

“A bottle of bourbon,” Thompson writes, “is a coded way for so many unspoken ideas to be transmitted and understood.” Often jobs are coded, sometimes they’re an enigma. Sometimes not.

But to really understand bourbon’s job, we’d have to go deeper. What’s the context? If this were a documentary what would it look like and feel like? Who is there? What are they wearing and where did they come from?

Mary and Rory: Two Great Brits

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If you want to change, writes Katy Milkman, consider the advice of Mary Poppins. In every job that must be done. There is an element of fun. And a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

But we don’t do this. “When committing to a healthy new eating regimen, we buy a basket of the most sinless foods – broccoli, carrots, kale, and quinoa – without regard for taste.”

Ahh, yes. Of course! Rory Sutherland enters.

We are rationalizing creatures. We ask, Why is this so cheap? If junk food tastes great then healthy food must taste bad. It’s the gross medicines that work best!

But, but, but, Milkman butts in. That’s what the research shows.

Think of things you want to change as chronic conditions. Diabetes is a chronic condition. Stress can be chronic too.

But so is shelter. That’s a recurring problem people deal with every day. So is food. And Milkman argues, so are your habits. So make them fun.

…

We have learned a lot from Milkman and Sutherland because they both share lessons that work. It’s not whether something works, but where, when, and with who. Monster Energy is large, full of caffeine and calories, and it tastes great. It found a where, when, and with who. Snickers found a context too.

Boiling water softens a carrot and hardens an egg. Solutions must match their contexts.

The Starbucks of Authors

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There’s no way this can be good, or so I thought. He’s the McDonald’s of authors. Cheap and everywhere. 

I was wrong, he’s more like Starbucks. 

James Patterson by James Patterson was fun! And reading should be fun. 

An “ego-biography” the book runs through Patterson’s life, from blue-collar Massachusetts to New York madmen to Palm Beach production. And the book runs. It’s fast. Short chapters. Strong stories. No wonder people love the guy. 

If there’s a summary of Patterson’s story it’s this quote from his grandmother, hungry dogs run faster. Peterson was hungry. 

He worked at McLean Hospital where “I had begun scribbling short stories…I couldn’t stop writing if I wanted to.” Catholic high school, Catholic college, a year or so at Vanderbilt, writing all the way. 

He moved to New York City. Patterson got a job at J Walter Thompson. The job was “hell” but “I’d write early in the morning, every morning. I’d lock my office door at lunchtime and write for half an hour. I’d write on the plane during every business trip. I’d write pages at four in the morning, and I’d write again until midnight. I refused to give up on myself.” 

He succeeded in New York City, rising through the ranks of J Walter Thompson. “Why? Because I chopped wood—I worked hard—and I could write. I could also write fast.” 

He wrote in New York City, finishing his first book. Then, he got “the best advice” from a fellow author, “Write another book. Start tonight”. So Patterson wrote. 

He sold in New York City. In 1993 he published the first Alex Cross novel. By 1996 he was just an author. 

And then he became ‘Starbucks’. 

At the same time I read James Patterson by James Patterson, Chat GPT became popular. The AI tool will reshape work. In Average is Over, Tyler Cowen writes about how the most successful chess teams are not computers or humans but humans using computers. Similarly, Chat GPT will not replace ‘knowledge workers’ but the best knowledge workers will use Chat GPT. 

That analogy makes sense.

Good organizations use leverage like people, money, and intellectual property to scale their operations. Technology companies are easy examples, but we’ve looked deeply at why Disney had to buy Pixar for the same reasons. 

That analogy makes sense. 

Except when it comes to writing. 

Patterson’s collaborations were icky, were too processed. But that’s the wrong analogy. 

Patterson writes an outline and has his collaborators fill it out. But don’t think “middle school notes”. Instead, think about a manager asking someone to start a new product. James starts the car, the collaborators run the race. 

It works because Patterson is mostly hands-off. Peter de Jonge wrote, “One of the best things about working with Jim, and this may be the key to why he is a publishing juggernaut, is that he is almost pathologically open-minded. If an idea adds stakes or drama or weight or in any helpful way propels the story forward, he’s game. As he told me once, you can tell any story you want, but it has to be a story.”

It reminded me of how Apple built the iPhone. Steve Jobs told the team what to do, they built it, reviewed it with Steve, got feedback, and built more. Jobs didn’t tell them how – well, sometimes he did and sometimes he was wrong – he just told them what. The same with Patterson. 

And this is great. Patterson’s book was fun. Reading should be fun. More Patterson books, more fun!

“Your Product Sucks”

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“Your product sucks,” said Steve Jobs.

It was 2010. Bob Iger and Jobs came together a few years earlier when Disney acquired Pixar. After years of a cantankerous relationship with Iger’s predecessor, the two titanic executives had become good friends.

But that didn’t spare him from Jobs’ biting criticism.

“Steve, you’re wrong,” replied Iger.

It wasn’t often that Steve Jobs was wrong about the consumer’s taste. But Iger had the research, experience, and authority to disagree.

With a budget of two-hundred million dollars, Iron Man 2 earned over six hundred million at the box office. Steve Jobs was definitely wrong.

These are huge numbers, from huge companies, but the lesson applies to entrepreneurs.

Your product is not for everyone. Steve Jobs was not the customer for Iron Man 2. When you listen to your customer make sure they are your customer.

This is a cross-post from the Daily Entrepreneur newsletter.

Real Advice

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Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray wanted to create a television show for MTV that capitalized on the 90s teen culture.

But they had a problem. 

Scripted shows like Beverly Hills, 90210, and Melrose Place were expensive. So the staffers looked to MTV’s roots for inspiration. 

Successful businesses deliver value to customers in a sustainable way. Apple doesn’t sell iPhones for less than the cost to make them. The local lawn care company won’t mow for less than the cost of labor. 

MTV’s original secret was just that. The musicians paid for their own videos. MTV got them for free. MTV sold advertising on the broadcast and the artists got attention. 

Bingo, thought Bunim and Murray. Find “free” content.

MTV’s Real World premiered on this day in 1992. 

Around the same time, Mike Reiss was writing for the Simpsons. In his book, Springfield Confidential, he writes that he’s not a religious man but he’s spiritual in the sense that there’s always a perfect joke. Every gag, prompt, and setup has a perfect punchline. They didn’t always find it, Reiss writes, but they always tried. 

That’s was Bunum’s and Murry’s mindset – find a way. 

When money is tight, when skills are scarce, when growth has stalled – find a way. 

This is part of the Daily Entrepreneur series, sign up here.

Domino’s Lesson

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Domino, a famous stallion, was buried in a grave with a worn marker just on the side of the road. Domino only produced nineteen foals yet is in the pedigree of the greatest horses that ever lived: Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Assault, Bold Ruler, Whirlaway, War Admiral, Gallant Fox, Omaha, Native Dancer, American Pharoah. Of the thirteen horses to win the Triple Crown, nine have Domino in their family tree. Now he was forgotten on the side of a road.

Wright Thompson, Pappyland

The Lego Story (book review)

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The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen and the story is told in The Lego Story by Jens Andersen.

The takeaway, like all successes, is to work hard and get lucky. Rather than a review, let’s tour history through industry.

1919, Denmark’s economy slows. “Farmers in Billund and other districts benefited from Denmark’s neutrality during the First World War, by selling grain and meat to the warring nations and earning some extra hard cash by producing peat.” When farmers have money they can pay carpenters like Ole Kristiansen. And if farmers don’t, they can’t.

1925, a fire in Ole’s woodshop. This will be a recurring theme.

1929, the depression. “For a while, the future looked promisingly bright, but shock waves from the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 that wiped out billions of dollars in wealth quickly spread to Europe. Germany and England, Denmark’s biggest trading partners, were badly affected, and the price of grain, butter, and pork crashed.”

1932, anything that sells. Though woodworking had been his trade, it was the 1931 Yo-Yo craze that inspired Ole to make toys. “By the 1930s, yo-yo-ing had become a nationwide fad,” writes Chat GPT, “with tournaments and competitions being held across the country.” Ole’s brothers and sisters want to know why a good carpenter would waste his time, “I think you’re much too good for that, Christiansen—why don’t you find something more useful to do!”

1933. “We worked like dogs, my wife, my children, and I, and gradually things began to pick up. Many days we were working from morning till midnight, and I bought a cart with rubber wheels so the neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed when I took the packages to the station late at night.”

1940, Germany invades Denmark. Though occupied (and part of the resistance group, running grenades to saboteurs in LEGO boxes) it was a good time for LEGO. Parents were “keen to protect their children from hardship,” and during the five years of occupation, LEGO’s revenue grew.

1942, another fire in the woodshop.

1946, plastics? Ole buys a plastic molding machine. Through the early 1950s executives at LEGO will say no no no, plastic toys will never take off.

1947, Ole sees his first plastic brick from an English toy manufacturer. This is the seed for LEGO but will prove a thorn in their intellectual property side for decades to come.

1951, the top-selling LEGO toy is the (plastic molded) Marshal Plan-delivered Ferguson tractor.

1955, LEGO bricks roll out to toy stores.

1956, LEGO bricks roll out to Germany. Andersen writes, “Selling toys in Germany would be like selling sand in the Sahara.” LEGO advertises in one city, Hamburg, creating a two-minute film to play before features. Word spreads.

1958, good news, LEGO invents the tube on the underside of the LEGO brick. Ole Kirk passes away and his son Godtfred takes over.

1962, the Scale Model Line. Godtfred grows up playing LEGO, so do other people. What if we make LEGO for professional adults? The Scale Model line is for engineers to design with LEGOs. Even the everyman could create his own house. The project fails but leads to the 1/3 size pieces ubiquitous in today’s sets.

1968 LEGOLAND Denmark opens. It’s a hit.

1976 oil crisis. “A significant part of LEGO’s challenges in the 1970s could be ascribed to two separate oil crises, a stagnating global economy, Denmark’s falling birth rate, and a declining toy market abroad.”

1978 minifig enters. Lego, Kjeld Kristiansen notes, has three phases: blocks, wheels, and mini-figures.

1989 LEGO pirates. But Gameboy too.

…

If there’s one consistent lesson through each decade of LEGO it’s the importance of sales. Every few years someone comes along and says the toys are good enough and every few years someone else reminds them but we have to sell these things. It’s just hard work.

Looking Stupid

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“As president,” David Brooks writes about Dwight Eisenhower, “he was personally willing to appear stupider than he really was if it would help him perform his assigned role.”

“I didn’t think you were that smart,” a friend told Bob Moesta, “because you ask all these, almost stupid questions. But those questions are how you understand contexts.”

We’ve looked at looking stupid before but it’s an idea worth repeating.

Is the goal progress or satisfaction?

These aren’t mutually exclusive. Often progress and satisfaction accompany one another.

But sometimes they don’t.

Arguments carry this tradeoff. Is the point to prove how smart you are, or something else?

It’s ego.

Annie Duke offers an alternative. When she coaches poker players they gripe that nothing is happening. Good players, Annie advises, sit out a lot of hands.

But, there’s still a lot going on! It’s in your head.

What’s happening is the decisions. Framing the ‘action’ as mental appeals to progressing players.

Looking stupid isn’t stupid. It’s a path to the destination, a choice even our ego can love.

The End of Average (book review)

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If markets have a limited supply but high demand then prices will be high. Disney vacations are one example. Human capital is another. Computer science majors earn the highest salary out of college and humanities majors earn the least. Employers distinguish students (supply) by their degrees.

But how do you distinguish among the computer science majors? The answer is included in Todd Rose’s 2017 book, The End of Average.

Rose’s big idea is economic – society overpays for talent!

Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, modernization has been an experience of measurement. At first, the outcomes were crude because the measures were crude. Take the twenty years of Moneyball progress and stretch that through two centuries. In the same way that baseball teams overpaid for home runs, society overpays for talent.

Rose offers three explanations for our mistake.

1/ Jaggedness. What makes a good first baseman? That depends. What makes a good leader? That depends too. Unfortunately, nuance is neglected in our day-to-day functions. We tend to use loss-aversion-based heuristics. When you evolve from mammals focused on danger, food, and sex there’s only so much digging our default allows.

Winston Churchill is an example of a jagged leader. He excelled in oration and “stature” but less in collaboration. During the war, certain skills were more important than others. This brings us to…

2/ Context. Brent Beshore’s people are messy comment summarizes Rose’s idea. Instead, think of people as complicated creatures who act using If/Then statements. Someone may be honest or careful or diligent based on the situation.

We miss this, Rose writes, because our samples of other people aren’t wide enough. Jessica from the office may act snooty or kind at work – the only place we see her. But does that encompass her at church, at home, and with her family?

3/ Paths. There are not a million ways to do something, Rose writes, but there’s also not one. Think of a situation like being lost in the forest. The goal is to get out. One option is to find the path and follow it. But one could forge their own as well. Too often the focus is on the path and not forging a way out.

If a group undervalues these explanations then it restricts the possible outcomes. Imagine a rule that in order to start a business someone had to give up listening to podcasts. There are a lot of great business podcasts and the budding entrepreneur would be worse off – and so would we, missing out on the upside of their creation.

…

The End of Average is a Bob Moesta book suggestion and reading it from his point of view offers additional information.

Moesta is a product designer, researcher, and marketer. Put on that POV and we can see how products fit within Rose’s explanations as well. Our hunger is jagged, hence the difference between Snickers and Milky Way. Our purchases are context-based, Moesta comments that hot dogs and steaks are both the right meal for the right context. Lastly, consumers end up at a product in a variety of ways, there’s not a single sequence of “I need a new car”, but there’s not an infinite either.

My first impression of The End of Average was that I kinda already understood these topics and didn’t need to spend time on the macro-educational angle. Both impressions were true but there were deeper ideas too and giving names to jaggedness, context, and paths is and will be helpful.

Measure What Matters (book review)

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Measure what matters book review

There are two aspects – contents and context – to John Doerr’s 2018 book, Measure What Matters, a book about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).

Content.

Objectives are “what is to be achieved, no more and no less.” Grow the blog, lose weight, or strengthen important relationships.

Key Results are ways to “benchmark and monitor how we get the objective.” List ways to grow the blog, lose weight or build relationships. “It’s not a key result,” Marissa Mayer would say, “unless it has a number.”

Straightforward enough. Is this a book that could have been a blog post?

Maybe, but Doerr offers a trio of cautions.

Warning 1: OKRs are not a way to show activity, they are to focus attention and weigh the opportunity cost. Organizational achievements, not ego appeasements.

Warning 2: Sometimes incentives hijack the Key Results (Goodhart’s Law). An antidote is paired counterparts. In the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal the Key Result of open accounts could have been paired with monthly active accounts.

Warning 3: OKRs are a tool to use not a dogma to follow. If objectives change then OKRs change too.

Context.

Context is a Bob Moesta word encompassing who, what, when, where, why, and how? Steak and hot dogs are ‘good for dinner’ within the right context. The same goes for OKRs.

Doerr is a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins. OKR adopters include Intel – where Doerr learned from Andy Grove – and Google among other technology firms.

The OKR system, Doerr wrote, “was a great impedance match, a seamless gene transcription into Google’s messenger RNA. OKRs were an elastic, data-driven apparatus for a freewheeling, data-worshipping enterprise.”

Google was a perfect match. But your business may not be.

OKRs, as Doerr presents them, requires a certain culture. Part of their effect is to argue well. Andy Grove set the Intel culture for OKRs because Andy Grove was at Intel. Once he left the culture changed from bettering to bullying.

Doerr has many examples, one of which is Zume Pizza, but they’ve gone out of business. What’s the right lesson in that? What’s the context?

OKRs are lightweight, malleable tools. But their usefulness varies. Will OKRs be OK for you?