Every day, this blog is automatically echoed on my Linkedin channel. Over the last few years, the traffic to those posts on Linkedin is down more than 90%. Understandable. Platforms evolve, people shift their patterns and interests. I recently did a manual post on Linkedin, though, and was amazed to discover that within minutes, it had 10 times as much traffic as a typical post does.

Gall's Law is appropriately simple: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” This is why sudden change rarely is, and why persistence and user feedback end up changing the systems that run our world. Begin. Learn. Succeed. Then add complexity.

Of course, a book with a title like this gives us pause--when we think of marketers, we don't ordinarily think about Jerry, Phil, Bobby and the rest of the crew. But that's one reason why the insights are so profound. Marketing isn't hype or hustle or scamming. It's not spam or manipulation either. We already have words for those things.

The most useful definition of quality: It meets spec. The hard part isn't putting in enormous effort to somehow beat the spec. The hard part is setting the spec properly. If you're not happy with the change you're making and the customer experience, change the spec. And when you meet spec, ship the work.

The worst sort of powerlessness happens when we're seduced into doing it to ourselves. Waiting to get picked Repeating and rehearsing negative self-talk Only choosing from the available options Refusing to do the reading Not having a budget Not having a timeline Avoiding new ideas Undermining your own work Seeking useless criticism Avoiding useful feedback Having a tantrum Focusing on the short term Avoiding generous connection

It's almost never exclusively based on logic. We navigate the world with stories, beliefs and assumptions. And the people you're trying to persuade have a different set of all three than you do. "If I were you" is a hard sentence to sell, because you're not me. A convincing argument works when the recipient is convinced, not you.

The other day, Tom Cruise gave a long acceptance speech. But unlike every other speech of its kind, there were no notes. No rambling. No false starts. He did what he always does--he outworked everyone else. It must have taken weeks to write, rehearse and edit this performance. And then he intentionally added a layer of awards-show stiffness to make it seem real.

Most cultures are built around the idea of private property. Grain is harvested once a year and stored for months. If someone steals the grain (which is difficult to securely lock up), it threatens the livelihood of the farmer and the stability of the community. By the time Hammurabi codified Babylonian law around 1750 BCE, grain theft was already so universally recognized as a crime that the code specifies not just the crime itself, but elaborate provisions about liability in special cases.

Which is worth more, Kind of Blue from Miles Davis, or the third Boston album? It depends on your taste. I hope we can agree, though, that the fact that Miles spent four days on his album and Tom spent eight years on his is irrelevant. Sometimes, we buy the story of inconvenient creation. The carrots at the farmer's market or a hand-crafted piece of pottery is worth more because we know the focus and care that went into the creation of an item.

Marshall Sahlins and others showed that early hunter gatherer societies generally didn't work very hard. Two or three hours a day were spent gathering food, and the rest of the time was for social engagement and family. With all the technology and innovation that has followed, why do we work four times as hard? One reason is leverage. The tools we have offer apparently bigger prizes in exchange for the next unit of incremental labor.

Every one of the pings, dings and clicks on this page gives me the hives. Run them in a quick sequence and I need to leave the room. They are our Pavlovian bells, designed to trigger us into action. At the bottom right is a button that says 'stop all.' That's a useful idea. We didn't sign up for this all at once. We were seduced into becoming trained seals gradually, fish by fish. Important work might not be quick or automatic or easy.

If someone hands you a deck, you can be sure there are 52 cards covering four suits. The universe is finite. The cards are the cards, and games work precisely for that reason. Every deck is the same, and all the players have the same options. Some of the systems we compete in have a limited number of cards, known to all.

I'm not sure this is the right word for it, but we certainly need one. Not 'entrepreneurship' which is a distinct skill. That term is usually reserved for people who start at zero and get to one, and mostly for people who operate in small businesses creating financial value through assets and equity. But what about the person who navigates an important non-profit through changing times?

Play Bongo on Puzzmo, Five words. Infinite strategies.

When the long-term cost of our situation is uncomfortably linked to the short-term expense and pain of changing the situation, it's easy to feel stuck. One way to deal with the feeling is to insist that there's no way to change the situation. That the price we'll have to pay upfront is so big, we simply have to live with the day to day consequences, forever.

This is the challenging insight that every generation comes to grips with. It might be a rising cohort of teachers or managers. It might be the next cycle of companies. And it might be the shifting power dynamic in families or organizations. No one gives you a certificate, an endorsement or a magical sword pulled from a stone. The moment simply arrives. What will you do when it's your turn?

Ideas open doors, lead to connections and make things better. But not all good ideas are good businesses. Crop rotation is a good idea. So is sous vide cooking and the sport of juggling. But these aren't good businesses. A business thrives when it can charge a premium--selling something for more than it costs. That means that there has to be a competitive advantage, an asset that produces value.

This is a bonus post about a couple of my hobbies. We will return to our regular scheduled post tomorrow. Wonder is the feeling we have when our experience extends beyond our expectations. It's uniquely human, and available whenever we can create the conditions for it to occur. Wonder is a fine place to do your work, but it’s also a reliable way to find joy in your hobbies.

Seth Seiders, (Al Capone's accountant) wrote a book about the "pivot man." This is a key function in industrial organizations, bureaucracies and any organization with more than thirty people. It's someone (often not a 'man') with a boss and with employees. In our modern world, this person goes to meetings. That's their job. The company can afford to pay them well and give them resources to help keep things in sync.

It might be your website, your brochure, the inside of your store... This is a fine thing to do, but it's not particularly effective. The secret isn't to optimize the landing page. it's to optimize the reason people are coming to your site. You can't convert people who don't want what you have… you need to attract people who do.

If the answer is over there, then we're off the hook. If it comes from the future, comes from away, comes from someone else, then our job is to simply wait for it to arrive. But it could be that your organization already has all the resources it needs to change the dynamic in the marketplace. It could be that your keyboard has all the letters needed to allow you to type the book you have inside you.

We can't change the past. But the future might be up to us. It might be best to daydream about what might be, not what already happened.

Each task brings three options. But first, let's be clear what we mean by "delegate." If I can hire someone to do a task so well that my customer can't tell, I can choose to delegate this work. The Uber driver is probably capable of changing the oil in the car, but if the passenger can't tell, doing it herself is a choice, not a requirement.

Landlords collect rent, tenants pay it. Landlords own an asset that increases in value over time. Tenants have the freedom to move on. If you're building a business, it pays to own an asset. Your labor doesn't scale well, and success can be exhausting. It's better to be Google than it is to be hoping for traffic from Google. And it's better to own trust and attention than it is to have to borrow or lease it.

The second time you install vacuum tubes into a handmade 2A3 stereo amplifier, you'll know that two of the four pins are slightly larger than the other two. And you'll know that the tubes go in pretty easily, you don't have to force them. You may know these things because the first time you did it, you pushed really hard and wrecked the tube. Experience has easily measured value. If it's important, don't hire a rookie.