ChaosScenario

The Day the Expert Died

While reading the memoirs of my anthropologist-archaeologist-former-priest great, great uncle, Luther Cressman, I came across an anecdote that reminded me of the times I've read various experts -- Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Chip and Dan Heath, etc. -- and disagreed vehemently with what they said, took note of it, and still was able to learn something useful without allowing that disagreement to soil my appreciation of them. Some aren't so lucky. There's a certain responsibility to being considered an expert in any field field, because there's a clear danger to the public when anyone's thoughts are not subjected to public examination.

Here's the (paraphrased) anecdote.

With his marriage to Margaret Mead on the rocks and having doubts about his involvement in the clergy and the church, Cressman ran across a man with whom he attended seminary and explained that he was planning to leave the priesthood.

The priest responded something along the lines of, "That's great. How I wish I could!"

In his book, Cressman reflected how, at the time, he was sympathetic to the priest's feelings, but ultimately he was even more sorry for the man's parishioners.

While I'm tempted to warn people to stick to what they know lest they become "dead experts" to those who had read them in the past, I concluded that it's fitting and proper that experts stretch themselves -- as long as they're intellectually honest enough to be open to be shown wrong -- especially when the area in dispute is foundational or categorical -- and to correct themselves when they are proved wrong.

The Expert Curse

It's possible to reach the right conclusion even if the premises are wrong. It happens probably more often than you think.

When it does happen, it can lead others to accept on faith that all the underlying principles are also correct, even though the expert doesn't really have any expertise or evidence to make a strong case for the premise. This premise becomes "common knowledge" and much of the world thinks about he underlying idea less critically, causing errors in fact and logic that lead to sometimes devastating mistakes in business and policy.

The answer isn't necessarily to shut out the experts entirely, but to remember to examine their assertions carefully and test them against both reason and experience.

These, along with will and courage, comprise our best defense against the designs of the experts and charlatans alike - even if they're the same group of people. - Cam Beck

The aged online

 It wasn't too long ago when everyone thought only "young people" were online. Older generations, especially Baby Boomers and generations older weren't expected to really be heavy online users. Some of us marketers were guilty of making fun of the older generations for not getting it.

In the last couple of years, things have changed. Compete reports that "50-somethings, 60-somethings and 70+ use many technologies at or near comparable rates as younger age segments." Increasingly this generation is getting more and more frustrated as well. "Older consumers reported a higher level of frustration with the complexity of technology.  Sixty percent of consumers aged 50 and older indicated that a product having too many features was a main reason for being frustrated with technology, compared to 39 percent of consumers aged 18-49."

I'm afraid that the first inclination of a lot of marketers will be to ignore this segment. That could be because of Madison Avenue's obsession with youth or maybe marketing is just mirroring our culture in general. The fact is, however, that we ignore them at our own peril, especially during this recessionary economy where advertising dollars are harder to come by. Whereas younger segments may be more tech savoy and trendy, they don't have the spending power that this segments has and they don't represent as large a part of the population as the 50 plus generation does.

Maybe it's just me getting older but I'm becoming more aware of how we just seem to toss this group or even individuals to the aside. Not only are marketers ignoring them, on a much more personal level I think that we don't value the wisdom and experience that this generation brings.

As a marketer or a person, ignore them at your own peril.

- Paul Herring

Have the courage to be wrong

Over the weekend, CK reminded us that great minds don't always think alike. She cited the example of Christopher Columbus, who, in her words "thought 'round world' when others were 110% certain that it was square."

This is a widely reported myth repeated at a time when the truth, I think, provides a stronger argument for CK's central point.

The Great Columbus Hoax

In our more romantic versions of Columbus' life, we're told that Columbus squared off against charges of blasphemy from Kings and Lords to prove that the earth was round. He courageously convinced an open minded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (of Spanish Inquisition fame) to fund his journey of discovery so he could prove to all the world that they were a bunch of backward-thinking nimrods.

It's all a big lie.

Christopher Columbus didn't find the "new world" because he believed the world was round and others thought it flat. By 1492, most intellectuals of the world pretty much accepted the world was round. However, their arithmetic, relying on a method used in ancient Egypt by Eratosthenes, determined that the earth's circumference was about 4,000 miles longer than the Ptolemaic methods Columbus used estimated.

(Ptolemy [AD 83- c. 168] was a very gifted cartographer and philosopher from whom we derive much of our mapping vernacular, but his estimates of the earth's circumference were way off).

It's true that others initially resisted Columbus' efforts find a path to the Indies through a westward sea route. But it wasn't because they thought they'd fall off the globe, as we are taught in schools, but because they thought the distance was too long for the ships (and crews) of their day to travel.

In the end, history proved his critics right, but it awarded to Columbus the honorary posthumous victory.

Genius Principle #1: The Profit Motive

In defense of those critical of Columbus' voyage, they simply didn't realize there were any large land masses between Europe and the Indies. If they had, perhaps they'd be more motivated to explore them. However, that wasn't anyone's motive at the time.

All they wanted to do was to make money, and at the time Indian trade was potentially pretty lucrative.

But there was a  problem.

Traveling over land was slow and filled with hardships, and the sea route was the domain of pirates.

Genius Principle #2: Try Something Different

Everyone was tired of paying ransom to the pirates for the privilege to keep their own property. So rather than acquiesce to the time-honored practice of bribery, Columbus dared to champion a different solution:

Don't pay them. Go around them.

And though it would be another couple of decades before anyone successfully circumnavigated the globe, it was partially because of the discovery arising out of Columbus' voyage that someone dared make the trip at that time.

(I chose not to attribute the ownership of that discovery to Columbus, since he went to his grave believing he landed at the Indies, not an entirely new heretofore unrecognized land mass).

History may have proved his critics right, but Columbus was proved bold. And sometimes that's enough. - Cam Beck

Nothing is free. Not even this headline.

When David Armano describes the "Gift Economy," he rightly puts the word "free" in quotes. He does so, I suspect, because he realizes, like economist Milton Friedman said, "There is no free lunch." More accurately, nothing finite is free. But what we have in infinite abundance is worthless.

Love is free. Commitment is not.

You could say, for instance, that love may be infinite and therefore can be free.

But if I say, "I love my fellow man," yet do nothing to demonstrate that love with my time, what value is it for me to say "I love my fellow man?"

This website is not free.

You may think that this website is free. It isn't. 

If you've gotten this far, you're voluntarily paying me with your attention, and for that payment you probably expect to see or read something entertaining or enlightening.

If I don't deliver, you may be reluctant to return.

If I do, you may subscribe to this blog's RSS feed.

Your attention is valuable.

And lest you believe I don't value your attention, know that between last night and this morning, I probably spent about 45 minutes thinking about this morning's post. I'll also take another 30 minutes or so to write it, given time for editing and proofing.

This says nothing at all of the time I continuously spend trying to improve the veracity of my thoughts or the manner in which I can deliver them in order to gain and keep your trust.

How to love your customers

When you say you love your customers or clients, do you mean it, or do you simply value the revenue stream they represent?

We value money because it is scarce and because it allows us to buy other things that are scarce, but time is the great equalizer. Some people have more money than others, but each of us has the same number of hours in a day.

And we're all going to die one day.

Therefore, the first way you should show your customers you love them is by respecting their time.

If you're not going to help them make their time more enjoyable (and don't overestimate your ability to do that with marketing fluff), help them use their time more effectively. Stop treating them as if their time -- or their loyalty -- is free.

It isn't. Nothing is. Not even this closing sentence. - Cam Beck

4 On-Demand Ads That Can Change the World

Although if asked, a lot of people will say differently, ads are not universally despised. Most of the time, people not only don't seek them, they actively avoid them. As it turns out, though, they're just despised when they get in the way. When they're relevant to a specific task at hand, ads are not only tolerated, but welcome.

Consider the following examples:

• Christmas Gifts - The day before Thanksgiving, at 2 p.m., at the request of my wife, I went scouring the area for a newspaper. I ran into a lot of people who, like me, were store-hopping to find a newspaper so that they (or their wives) could find the sales that were going on the day after Thanksgiving.
  
  I stopped by 3 grocery stores and 2 drugstores and one convenience store. The last place I stopped was Walgreens, where the cashier told a group of us looking that all newspapers in the area had sold out by noon.
  
  None of us knew we could view the ads online (though I later found out). Knowing I could have just booted up the computer to show my wife the ads at the time could have saved me an hour of driving in the futile hopes that I could find a recent newspaper. Think of all the gas we could have saved.
  
  
• Electronics - Every Friday, particularly among the programmers and techno-mavens, is "Fry's Day," when we all flock to the coffee room to huddle around thefull 4 page broadsheet ad placed in the Dallas Morning News by Fry's Electronics store.
  
  There's typically only one of these available for viewing at a time, so at times we're practically throwing elbows for a little room.
  
  It's possible to find the ad online, just like the Christmas ads, but it's impossible to spontaneously buy online directly from the ad.
  
  Failing to deliver this useful feature simply encourages comparison shopping and undoubtedly costs them sales.
   
• Groceries - Every Sunday, thousands and thousands of thrifty shoppers get their local paper (often two) to find the best deals and coupons, hoping to save money at the grocery store.
  
  The process of clipping coupons and organizing them effectively can take hours each week.
  
  Wouldn't it be cool if you could just subscribe to (and even pay for) access to an online coupon retriever, set up preferences so that you can download, print, or send to your mobile phone the coupons you want each week?
  
  Now, there are accounting rules to consider with this solution, and the rules that govern coupons' impact on balance sheets almost certainly should be updated in order to meet the demands of customers and make the entire process more efficient. Doing so may marginally increase productivity and would be less wasteful.
  
  
  
• Movie Trailers - Imagine you're sitting at home on Friday evening with your spouse, flipping through the 329 channels on your DVR-enabled satellite receiver only to discover there's nothing good on.
  
  "Hey, honey, why don't we see a movie? Twilight is playing."
  
  "Twilight? What's that again?"
  
  "Let me show you."
  
  You then choose the menu item that displays the latest movie trailers. Choose "Now Playing" and select your trailer.
  
  Distributors could pay to have their trailers listed and/or based on how many households view them.

These things are not necessarily logistically easy, but for most of them the individual pieces exist independently somewhere. All it will take is the willingness of category experts (as well as their financiers) to expend the effort to make it happen. - Cam Beck

Outliers: Redefining Success

I'm not one who usually criticizes books on spec, but after numerous discussions and a lot of public praise and outrage engendered by Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers, which I haven't yet read, I feel confident enough to remark on a few points.

"He challenges the American Dream," claimed John Keehler, author of Random Culture and Director of Strategy at the company I work for, Click Here.

"Gladwell conveys how systems and environments favor certain people and not others," wrote my brother, Gannon. Consequently, he says, Gladwell "gives luck far more weight than it deserves."

The Hockey Problem

In the example in Outliers I hear most frequently, Gladwell notes that a person's month of birth determines how successful they are in hockey, because the cutoff age favors the older players at an age when 11 months difference can result in huge disparities in talent.

This systematic disparity rewards the older, more developed players with more attention and even further development at the expense of those whose only drawback was to be born a bit too early or too late, which, of course, they had no control over. Over time, this advantage exponentially rewards the older players (relative to the cutoff date) and confounds the younger into quitting.

Theoretically, this same advantage applies to children in school, who face similar cutoff dates and rewards the children who have had proportionally more time to cognitively develop.

All of these things may be shown true by statistics, but that does not mean that success is determined by the luck of the draw, or when one's parents happened to procreate.

What is an Opportunity?

As Gannon said, there is a stark difference between learning opportunities and success opportunities.

Learning opportunities, which are plentiful and unlimited, cost a lot in terms of time or both time and money. It is what well-meaning coaches and parents provide to the older hockey players and students. The chance to learn something new. Or the chance to learn something better.

Success opportunities are typically more financially rewarding, and they favor those who risked their time and money to become experts in an area where those opportunities abide.

Based on the reviews I've read and the conversations I've had, Gladwell seems to discount the probability that people are capable of overcoming the obstacles put in their path by the systems of which they are a part.

He correctly notes the most people don't, and incorrectly concludes that because of that, there's a significant problem with the system.

Economist and author Thomas Sowell puts it this way:

It is not easy, however, to share the author's belief that social policies can spread the advantages of some to the population at large. It seems even less likely that empowering politicians to do so will make things better overall than they are in the very imperfect world we currently live in.

As Gladwell says, the famous people we correctly admire did not achieve all that they achieved by themselves. They were the beneficiaries of all sorts of advantages and opportunities.

However, Gladwell incorrectly focuses on the success opportunities, not the learning opportunities the "lucky" put themselves through in order to be in the position to take advantage of the success opportunities.

The Problem With "Success"

Part of the problem, I think, is with Gladwell's notion of success. It is not just the Bill Gateses, Benjamin Franklins, Alexander Hamiltons, Oprah Winfreys, and Wayne Gretzkies of the world who are successful.

It is also the teachers, mentors, and coaches who saw something in them that is worthwhile enough to lend them a hand. To help them develop in spite of whatever shortcomings they may have had.

Yes, the more well-known individuals achieved something few ever have and few ever will. They are outliers in the pantheon of success.

But what they accomplished could not have been but for the contributions of a lot of good, common people who willingly and without remorse gave of themselves to others -- people who contemporary society views with less admiration.

Why is it that we only recognize success if people have written books about them? Or if they have achieved some measure of fame in their own right?

Fame isn't success. Fame is fame. Prosperity isn't success, either. Prosperity is prosperity.

Perhaps no one knew this better than one of Gladwell's "outliers," Benjamin Franklin, who once remarked, "I would rather have it said, 'he lived usefully' than 'he died rich.'"

Know Your Role - And Exceed It

Success is measured in one's ability to constructively contribute to a noble and worthwhile goal in ones' existence or beyond.

You may be the one who, like the people mentioned earlier, is recognized for his contribution. Or you may be the one who gave the key insight to someone who took advantage of an opportunity to make a connection no one else previously had.

You get there by helping people, not by whining about the system seemingly stacked against your accumulation of material wealth or knowledge.

And you will frequently find yourself in position to help people only if you're dedicated to learn and share what  you learned.

It matters not one bit when you were born.

- Cam Beck