BenCrowder.net

If you haven’t already seen it, check out What Matters Now, a free 82-page ebook by Seth Godin. It’s a collection of short essays by people answering the question “what matters now,” and there are several gems in there. Here are my favorites:

Chris Anderson

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and little bit of self-taught expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and if it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production. They are a virtual microfactory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; everything is assembled and drop-shipped by the contractors, who can serve hundreds of such small customers simultaneously….

Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, DIY and UGC — all these digital phenomena are starting to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution gets real.

This makes me giddy. He’s right — this is going to change the world in a huge way. Most of the stuff I make is purely digital, unless it’s a book or a magazine or a chart I get printed, and while that’s not a bad thing, it gets a little ethereal at times, just a bunch of bits floating in cyberspace. I’m excited to make it real and start creating some hold-it-in-your-hands bona fide objects. (Objects that weren’t previously possible, that is — tools and gadgets and the like.)

William C. Taylor

Imagine any and every field possible. There are so many brands, so many choices, so many claims, so much clutter, that the central challenge is for an organization or an individual is to rise above the fray. It’s not good enough anymore to be “pretty good” at everything. You have to be the most of something: the most elegant, the most colorful, the most responsive, the most accessible.

I’ll save my thoughts on this for the blog post I’ve got in the oven, but let me just say that I agree completely: quality is better than quantity.

Daniel Pink

Management is great if you want people to comply — to do specific things a certain way. But it stinks if you want people to engage — to think big or give the world something it didn’t know it was missing. For creative, complex, conceptual challenges — i.e, what most of us now do for a living — 40 years of research in behavioral science and human motivation says that self-direction works better. And that requires autonomy. Lots of it.

If we want engagement, and the mediocrity-busting results it produces, we have to make sure people have autonomy over the four most important aspects of their work:

• Task – What they do
• Time – When they do it
• Technique – How they do it
• Team – Whom they do it with

Hallelujah! This is music to my ears, and it rings so, so, so true. In my line of work, autonomy trumps management, period. If only there were more of it…

John Moore

A winning business understands that to gain a customer it must first be willing to lose a customer….

Costco wins customers by losing customers. Its membership model shuns consumers not willing to pay the yearly membership fee. Its broad but shallow merchandise mix turns off consumers wanting more choices. Costco makes deliberate sacrifices because its customers will also make deliberate sacrifices in exchange for lower prices.

Winning businesses have a common trait, an obvious and divisive point of view. Losing businesses also have a common trait, a boring personality alienating no one and thus, sparking passion from no one.

This goes along nicely with William Taylor’s essay. You can’t do everything, and if you try, you’ll be mediocre at best. Also, take risks. It’s the only way to succeed.

J.C. Hutchins

Most of us settle in, and settle for what we have. Rather than pursue, we accept. Our lives become unwitting celebrations of passivity: we undervalue our work and perceive ourselves as wage slaves (and so we phone it in at the day gig), we consume compulsively (but not create), we pine for better lives (but live vicariously through our televisions).

These corners we paint ourselves into, it’s no way to live. There’s no adventure here, no passion, no hunger for change. Remember that relentless optimism you once had? The goals you wished to achieve, before settling in? They’re still there. You need a nudge to find them; a little gumption.

You can start that business. You can lose that weight. You can quit smoking, and learn to garden, and write that book, and be a better parent, and be all the things you want to be…the thing this world needs you to be. It requires courage and faith, both of which you can muster. It requires effort — but this effortless life isn’t as satisfying as it seems, is it?

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you’re over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry — hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap ’em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.

Love it. Grab some gumption and go do cool, beautiful, wonderful things.