The cycle of simple

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I’ve noticed a pattern in a few areas of business that goes roughly like this:

Simple –> Complex –> Simple

Websites

The first place I’ve noticed this is with website design. When someone is just starting out, they build very simple sites. As their skills improve, they load websites up with more bells & whistles and various features. Finally, as they really understand the purpose of what they’re doing, the sites become more simple again so they can focus on the main thing. Simple, Complex, Simple.

Tech in Meetings

I’m also seeing this with tech in meetings, and this is a transformation I’m personally working on.

When you first start participating in meetings, you bring a notepad. Over time, you introduce a laptop, perhaps a mobile hotspot to keep connected, or maybe your iPad. All of those can be valuable in meetings, and I still use them at times, but whenever possible I’m going back to simpler tech (either a normal notepad or my reMarkable) so I can be more present in the meeting. Simple, Complex, Simple.

Focus

The factor that impacts both of those is focus.

If you’re building a website, the focus should be on the goal. Animations, sliders, and other eye-catching things might help reach that goal, but often pull focus away from where it should be.

In meetings, you’re often best when you can focus fully on the others in attendance. There are times when I need my laptop to pull up data or run slides, but eliminating that distraction whenever possible to create a deeper conversation is something I never regret.

The initial “simple” in the cycle is often naivete, but the the final “simple” is focus. Getting over the often unnecessary middle step of complexity will land you in a good place.

Reading versus studying

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A little over a year ago I shared my shortcut of using Blinkist to read book summaries in about 20 minutes versus the hours it takes to read a full book. There are advantages both ways, but I’m finding that Blinkist helps meet the Pareto Principle — I’m getting 80% of the value of the book in just 20% of the time.

It’s the point now where I’ve decided that pretty much every non-fiction book that I want to read will done via Blinkist, rather than taking the time to read the full book. I’ll miss some context from the book, for sure, but it allows me to read at least five times as many books.

Fiction

This doesn’t work for fiction books, though. For example, I read Mark Richt’s excellent “Make the Call” last year, and a summary of the book just wouldn’t work. I wanted to hear his stories, not a summary of what stories he told in the book.

I’ll still perhaps read a short summary or review of a non-fiction book to make sure it’s worth my time, but those still ultimately require a full read.

Favorite Authors

There’s also the case of new non-fiction books from authors that I love, such as Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and Adam Grant. If any of them release a new book, it’s very likely that I’ll read it cover-to-cover.

This can still happen with my Blinkist books, too. If I finish “blinking” a book and really feel like I want more, there’s no reason I can’t go back and read the full book. However, I find that in most cases I’m able to extract almost all of the value from the book in a fraction of the time, so why not just do more of that?

Reading versus studying (or reading for work versus pleasure)

For most of the books in front of me, the reason why I want to read it is the key. If it’s a book for work/study, then hacks like Blinkist are fantastic — I simply want to extract information from it, so efficiency is key. If it’s a book that I want to read for pleasure, then taking my time and enjoying the full work makes a lot more sense.

My plans on this will still likely flex a bit as time goes on, but right now I’m really enjoying this setup. I’ll again point you back to my older post about Blinkist if you want see more about exactly what I do, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you most efficiently work through business books.

Authenticity > Automation

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A few days ago, I received an email from a company that could “help us out”. Among other things, they promised to show us great ways to do telemarketing, email blasts, and ways to automate our connections and messages on LinkedIn.

If you’ve followed this blog much at all, you know that I detest automated LinkedIn messages, and if you consider your email marketing to be “blasts”, then you’re doing it wrong. It was such an awful email that it almost felt like I was being pranked. It reminded me of the episode of the office where Jim intentionally gave Andy awful advice to try to win over Pam:

Of course, this post isn’t really about poorly targeted messages — it’s about finding ways to actually connect with people instead of just automating our days away.

I’m with my current bank and my current insurance company because I’m a real person to them. I bought a car a few years ago because I was able to talk over email with an actual person instead of a bot. This isn’t difficult.

Some automation can be amazing if done right, but if you can be more authentic you’ll win every time.

Your product doesn’t need to be perfect

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Your product isn’t perfect, and that’s probably ok. In most cases, the perfect product doesn’t exist, so you just need to have the best available option.

Take any product that is considered to be best in class, and you can quickly find some issues with it. The iPhone doesn’t offer some of the flexibility of Android. A Tesla doesn’t have the same range as gas-powered cars. Gmail is missing some features that other alternatives provide.

Seth Godin put it this way:

If the perfect option existed, they’d buy it. Since there’s no such thing as the perfect offering, people are happy to settle for the Next Best Alternative.

If you need a new phone, you probably have an idea of what the perfect phone would be. It doesn’t exist, and so your “next best alternative” is likely going to be something like the iPhone 13 or the Pixel 6. They’re both imperfect, but one of them might be what you consider to be the best choice available.

Your product or service offering is the same. It’s not perfect, and people shouldn’t expect it to be. In fact, if you aren’t ashamed of those shortcomings, it can help your customer better appreciate what you have to offer. It’s not unlike saying “no” to help give your “yes” more power.

A good example with GreenMellen are our LaunchPad websites. They’re fantastic and have proven to be very popular, but they’re not perfect. We even say on our website exactly why they might not be a good fit in every situation. If those reasons apply to a potential client of ours, then we all know it’s not the best way to go. However, if those reasons don’t apply in their case, then it makes the LaunchPad even that much more appealing.

A perfect product is essentially impossible. As long as yours can be the next best alternative, you’ll be in good shape.

Data beats Modal Bias

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The concept of “modal bias” is simply the thought that our idea or approach is best. We all think that, but it can become much more troublesome when a HiPPO (the highest paid person in a meeting) falls into that trap and we all need to follow it.

Once a HiPPO thinks they have the right answer, the only way to fight back is with data.

Avinash Kaushik has discussed this on his blog a few times, and I’ll paraphrase some of his thoughts here:

It’s critically important to support business proposals and decisions with data. In the absence of data, you’ll ultimately be forced to do things the boss’s way. Modal Bias ensures that the bosses think that their way is best, unless you can prove otherwise. In a battle of opinions, the HiPPO always wins.

If you can bring data to support your points, your boss should pay attention to that. If your boss repeatedly refuses to see the data, that’s another problem entirely. If you find yourself as the HiPPO in a situation, try to stay open to other ideas and data that may refute what your initial thoughts were.

W. Edwards Deming summarized this nicely, and I agree: “In God we trust… all others bring data.”

Lead with empathy

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Shari Levitin has a theory that the two main things a leader needs are competency and empathy, and empathy needs to come first. If you lead with empathy to build a relationship, then your competency can come into play to help close the deal. If you’re lacking either one, you’re out.

Ultimately, she says that trust is formed with five pieces: Empathy to open the door, and then reliability, competency, integrity and vulnerability will help keep you there.

Here is Shari breaking it down with a short story:

Empathy

Empathy is easy to consider, but can be tricky to really uncover. I think there are a few things we can all do to help increase our level of empathy for others:

  1. Appreciate the concept of sonder, that everyone has a story as rich and deep as yours. It’s easy to feel like the main character in life, but no one else sees you that way.
  2. Try to see both sides of every situation, especially those you disagree with, and then learn to engage with compassion for both sides.
  3. Try to figure out the reason why others act the way they do. Maybe they’re jerks, or maybe you’re showing up in a way that brings out the worst in them.

It takes work. Beyond the overall concepts I listed above, focused effort (like the salesperson did with Shari’s husband in the video above) can make a huge difference. Finding mutual friends and interests can make a huge difference.

You still need to be able to back things up with competence to build your trust, but empathy needs to come first.

Plans never work perfectly, but they’re essential

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We’re coming to that point in the year when many January 1st goals are beginning to fade. In some cases that can be kind of a bad thing (“no more eating healthy!”), but in a lot of cases it’s because your plans have merely shifted, and that’s often a great result.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said:

“No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one… Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

When we’re building a large website, it’s often a 4-6 month process that involves many hundreds of little steps (inside of five big steps) along the way. As things progress, there are always some tweaks to be made to keep things going toward the goal that was set, and this “battle” never goes precisely according to plan.

On the other hand, of course, if we set up no plan and all and just dove into the project to see where it might go, that would have a disastrous outcome.

Let your plans be flexible, but don’t think they can be ignored completely.

Is your product the best use of their money?

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When you have a product or service for sale, your main goal is generally for people to exchange money to acquire what you’re offering. They key to remember is that your product needs to literally be the best use of their money in that time.

Whether you’re selling a $2 soda or an $80,000 car, in either case that customer needs to feel that giving you that money is the best thing they can do with it.

I’ve shared before that once I bought a 20oz bottle of Coke for $5, and I considered it to be an amazing deal! At that moment in time, there was nothing else that I would have rather done with that $5 in my pocket. Particularly at lower price points, instant gratification will seal the deal.

In other cases, though, people need to believe that your solution is in their best interest in the long run. If someone spends $20,000 on a website, they’re not expecting huge results tomorrow but they’re confident that investing $20,000 on a new site is a better use of that money than anything else that $20,000 could do.

Josh Kaufman summarized this whole concept by simply saying:

Every time your customers purchase from you, they’re deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment.

As a consumer, that really makes me pause and think. The next time I buy something, I’ll wonder if it’s really the absolutely best use of that money at the time.

As a business owner, though, it makes me remember that we always need to be showing a higher perceived value than what the monetary cost is, and then back it up with actual value down the road.

More data = less value

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Our agency is a big believer in data. We track website metrics, social media metrics, email marketing metrics, and pull in great tools like heatmaps to take things even further. However, a problem that can quickly arise is having too much data. It’s easy to build a giant report that shows everything, but the result of that is often that the key metrics get buried.

My friend Jake Albion recently put it this way on Facebook:

The biggest offenders tend to be digital marketing agencies and SEO agencies that send 100-page reports to their clients. It’s always a big red flag. Usually means it was outsourced by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

Experts know how to make things easy to understand, not harder.

It’s not unlike a famous quote attributed to Blaise Pascal: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter“. It takes work to refine a ton of data down into meaningful bits, but that work is essential.

In our case, we build custom dashboards that pull together the most meaningful metrics that our clients need to be aware of. We can certainly dig into the depths of Google Analytics as needed, but a 100-page report every month will simply be ignored.

Our dashboards work well, but really any method that you use to take lots of data and break it down is an excellent way to provide more value to those you serve.

If you can’t describe it, you don’t know it well enough

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A key to understanding how well you know a subject is how easily you’re able to explain it to others. As I shared last year in “Explain it to me like I’m five“, being able to distill a complex subject down is a great skill to develop.

In the case of that post from last year, Oscar was very quickly able to come up with an analogy to share with Michael to help explain the situation, and for me, that’s a big designation of whether I really understand something. With most aspects of what I do, analogies can go a long way toward simplifying an explanation of something that’s really more complicated.

For example, understanding the difference between a website “domain name” and website “hosting” can be tricky if it’s not something you deal with regularly. A quick analogy might be to explain the domain name like your mailing address (so people can find you) and your hosting like your land (where all of your stuff is).

Another one is the example I shared last year that used an analogy to attempt to explain the difference between the data you get from Google Analytics versus the data you get from Google Search Console.

If done well, analogies can be amazing.

The Process

Taking it further, you should be able to explain the process for doing what you do. If you have to resort to “it’s just too complicated to write down the steps”, that’s not a good sign. As engineer W. Edwards Deming once said:

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Dam Roam had a similar thought with:

“Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.”

Writing out the process of your work can be beneficial in a few ways:

  1. It helps you to better understand what you’re actually doing. Taking the time to write out a process is often very beneficial for the one doing it.
  2. Long-term, it makes it easier for others to help with your work. At the time of this writing, our project manager at GreenMellen is out on maternity leave, but the processes that we have in place for her work allow us to continue on relatively seamlessly (though we’re very excited to have her back soon!).

Having a solid understanding of what you do, including analogies and processes, will help make your work easier for others to understand, and the output of it more valuable for others to consume.