Monday, December 12, 2016

Two quality spirals worth avoiding

Seth Godin

The downward quality spiral: You cut some corners, saving some time and some money.

For a little while, you can coast on that.

But then demand goes down, you can't get the same pricing, there's less money, which means you can't invest, which means quality goes down again, and again, and then you lose.

Or, consider the other direction:


You improve what you make, you invest the time and effort and resources and you make the best thing you can imagine.

The crowd goes wild, you get more invitations, more revenue, more opportunities.

And then you exceed expectations again.

It's great, until. Until you become paralyzed. Until you decide (mistakenly) that you are in the exceeding expectations business. That can't possibly scale forever. So you stop.

And then we all lose.

Seeing a spiral coming is the key step in avoiding it.

The productive professional realizes that keeping promises is often enough. Randomly exceeding those promises is magical. But the key is 'randomly'. Unexpected delight is priceless, and something you can deliver on.
We need you to keep showing up.

[Today, Monday, is the last day to order my titanic new collection, What Does It Sound Like When You Change Your Mind, if you want delivery before the holidays. You can find out more about it right here. I'm so pleased at how it all came together. (Canadians, alas, your copies are caught in Customs, but we're trying mightily.)

Here are some unboxing photos...

And Your Turn, my most recent full-length book can most probably get to you in time for gift giving as well. Thanks.]


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