What are libraries for?

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What is the purpose of a library? Really, what is it?

There are two ways to look at it:

  • The library is a place to share information and learn.
  • The library is a warehouse of books to be lent out.

While the two are similar in practice, the philosophy behind each is very different.

In Seth Godin’s famous “Stop Stealing Dreams” article (which you should think of a free two-hour book, not just a super long blog post), he draws out the comparison:

“Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.”

I think most of us agree with the second concept of a library, and it’s a fantastic way to view them, but it comes with complications when it comes to copyright and legality. If we want libraries to be centers of learning, then e-books should be freely copied and given to all who want them. If we want to focus on the concept of a warehouse, then tight rules indeed need to be in place.

I don’t have the answer here. I’d love to see things given away with few restrictions, but authors certainly need to be compensated for their work. What do you see as a solution to this?

The WordPress drama shows why WordPress remains the best choice

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Over the last few months, the WordPress community has been a bit of a mess. The short version of the “mess” is that Matt Mullenweg (the man behind WordPress) is not happy with WP Engine (a major host of WordPress sites) and it’s causing a lot of fallout. My friend Aaron has a great timeline of events if you want to dig in a bit deeper.

While it’s all very unfortunate and it’s hurting the WordPress ecosystem quite a lot, it also shows why WordPress remains the best platform for most websites.

Because WordPress is self-hosted (you can download it and run it wherever you want), there is only so much that Matt (or anyone else) can do to break things. He’s causing a mess, and many of our clients are hosted on WP Engine, but the direct impacts have been minimal because with WordPress you fully own your site.

Matt isn’t happy with WP Engine, but he can’t do much about it. We have a lot of clients hosted on WP Engine, and their sites are fine.

Why not Squarespace?

This is the main difference between WordPress and other platforms like Squarespace or Shopify. If Anthony Casalena (CEO of Squarespace) or Tobias Lütke (CEO of Shopify) had a similar beef, they could literally just shut websites down if they wanted to. They both seem like solid leaders, but many thought the same of Matt Mullenweg until recent months. Things can change.

We’ve actually seen this happen in small doses, like when Squarespace shut down the website for America’s Frontline Doctors. The question of “should they have shut them down?” aside, the fact is that companies like Squarespace have the power to do that with the push of a button. With WordPress, they don’t.

With WordPress, the worst case would be for your specific hosting company to decide to shut down your site, at which point you move to another host and keep going because you fully own your site.

This WordPress mess is frustrating, but it’s exactly the reason that we’ve been such a proponent of WordPress over the years. This may have long-term implications for the platform, but for now your WordPress sites will remain fully in your control and no one can take that away from you.

When preventing the Osborne Effect hurts

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Back in 1983, the Osborne Computer was selling relatively well when the founder of the company announced plans for the next version of the machine that would be coming out in the next year or so. The new one would be much better, so people stopped buying the current version and the company went bankrupt before the new one launched.

The lesson learned was to not reveal a follow-up product too early as to avoid hurting sales of the current model. It makes sense, and it’s generally a good thing, but there is still a down side.

reMarkable Paper Pro

A friend of ours just purchased reMarkable 2 tablets for their entire company, as they felt they’d be beneficial for the staff to use. It was a good move, but came just a few weeks before reMarkable surprised everyone by releasing their newest tablet (the reMarkable Paper Pro).

reMarkable kept the new tablet under very tight wraps, and even people who followed them closely had no idea that a new one was coming. This helped keep sales of the reMarkable 2 steady, but it left people (like my friend) feeling kind of bummed that they spent so much money on a batch of products that were outdated so very quickly.

reMarkable clearly learned lessons from Osbourne, but is there a better place in the middle? They protected themselves quite well and kept the older one selling, but did it hurt their reputation? I can see both sides of this, and I’m not sure what I would have done if I was reMarkable.

What would you do? How early would you announce a new product like the reMarkable Paper Pro, both to protect yourself from the Osborne Effect but also to let people situate themselves for the device that would be best for them?

The Yellow List

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I’ve mentioned before that we use the EOS / Traction model in our agency, and it’s been awesome. There are a lot of great pieces that we’ve implemented from it, but one of my favorites is the concept of the “IDS List” (Identify, Discuss, Solve). In short, it’s a place to leave ideas until a future meeting to avoid interrupting each other constantly as new things pop up.

In reading “A Minute to Think“, author Juliet Funt described the exact same system (with the exact same benefits) but under a different name:

The Yellow List is your solution. It’s a document where you “park” items that you need to discuss later. The name came from the notes icon on the iPhone, where it was born, but also holds the implied meaning as the color of deceleration between Go and Stop. With a robust use of this tool, you can strengthen your impulse control, moderate urgency, and dramatically cut down on unnecessary communication. Technologically agnostic, the Yellow List is used to collect all non– time sensitive questions, ideas, and issues for anyone you connect with frequently. You can keep one list per person or a master list separated by first names. Instead of letting any old thought plop out as it enters your brain, you use the tool to consolidate communications that can wait.

It’s been one of the best things we’ve added to our company in the last decade. It allows us to come up with as many new ideas as we can, know that they’ll be heard, but they won’t be distractions throughout the day.

Whether you call it an “IDS List”, a “Yellow List” or something else entirely, it’s a fantastic simple little tool for your team that can have a huge impact.

Throw a jacket on your calendar

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Something I’ve tried to do over the years, with marginal success, is to schedule more white space on my calendar. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive (isn’t “white space” the opposite of “scheduling”?), but it’s often the only way to make it happen.

In recently reading Juliet Funt’s book “A Minute to Think“, she had a great comparison to throwing a jacket over a seat to save it. She shares:

“If your calendar is out of control as a result of this ill-conceived protocol, and you have insufficient white space to do your best work, try throwing a jacket on it. Like when you go to the movies alone and wouldn’t mind a little room around you. One often throws a jacket on the next seat. It’s a purposeful-accidental way of staking the territory. If someone asks, “Is this seat available?” of course you move the jacket. But until then, the jacket serves you, increasing your likelihood of comfort in a crowded world.”

The follow-up question that came to mind, and Funt has clearly seen before, is explained here:

“The question in the business world is “What’s the jacket?” If everyone knew and respected the term “white space” already, white space would be the jacket, confidently blocked in bare squares and slices across your happy, relaxed calendar. But until then, you’ll have to find more subtle ways of throwing down a jacket. You can put “strategy time,” “planning time,” “thinking time,” or “creative time”—all of which signal value and boundaries concurrently.”

My calendar is getting more and more “full” with these kinds of things, and it’s quite helpful. As she shared in the first quote, the time can still be used for other purposes if needed, but you’ve given control back to yourself. If someone tries to schedule on my Calendly link, those times will be blocked for me. However, if my team needs me or something more urgent comes up, I can certainly remove the jacket and try to reclaim the white space next time.

Do put any jackets on your calendar? What do you call them?

Ruining a good thing by trying too hard

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I remember back in elementary school we had an assignment to draw a map of a fictional city. I worked hard on mine, and it was great! However, I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I kept adding more and more stuff to it until it was a huge mess. Trying too hard created a worse outcome.

I just saw a similar thing happen with a local car dealership. While some dealers were a disaster to try to work with, some were great and we simply couldn’t come to an agreement. One of those was Cobb County Toyota.

I emailed with a few folks there to try to make a deal, and it didn’t work out. They were prompt, friendly, and helpful, and while I didn’t buy a car from them this time, they left a favorable impression on me. Then they spammed me.

The email just I got was from a mailing list of theirs; it was impersonal, unhelpful, and unrequested. It was spam. In the footer of the email they explained why:

As you likely can see, there are two glaring problems here:

  • I’m on their email list because I “requested information from them“. That’s not a good enough reason.
  • “…we do not monitor replies to it“. In other words “we’re going to spam you with email that you didn’t request, but we don’t have time to listen to your questions about it“. Gross. Car dealers (and banks, often?) tend to be the worst about doing this.

This raises a major problem. This dealership, which I held in relatively high favor, now has me questioning everything. If they’re willing to be a little shady here, what else are they shady about? Misleading pricing? Bogus upsells? I have no idea, but they absolutely no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.

In the Bible, Jesus said it perfectly in Luke 16:10:

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.”

They were dishonest with very little, so will they also be dishonest with much? As I shared a few days ago, you either have integrity or you don’t, and now we know where they stand. They had a good thing, and then they tried to hard to make even more out of it and it all fell apart.

The little things that you do matter. Always do them right so that these kinds of questions never surface.

Using cash is expensive

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I recently listened a the long episode about Visa on the Acquired podcast, and it was fantastic. Visa is one of those companies that we all think we know, but it’s really quite confusing. From the show:

Visa does not extend credit. They do not issue cards. They do not work directly with merchants. They do not work directly with consumers. They are not a bank or a financial institution. They don’t ever bear any risk.

So what do they do? It’s a long answer, which the show answers well, but they essentially just connect banks to other banks and they make billions of dollars every year from doing it.

As they unpacked the episode, they spent a while talking about how “rewards” cards work. Specifically, how can companies afford to give away cash back, airline miles, and other perks while also paying the fees for running the cards? You guessed it — they raise the prices of the items that they sell.

And they don’t just raise the prices for users with a certain card, they raise the prices for everyone. This means that if you’re not earning rewards on your purchases, you’re losing money. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston put it in perspective.

  • If you pay with cash, it costs you an additional $149 per household over the course of a year.
  • If you use a card, you gain $1,133 in extra rewards over the course of a year.

That’s a huge difference! Also, that study was from back in 2010, so the gulf has almost certainly widened since then.

Rewards-based cards can be very beneficial, but those benefits are baked into the prices. If you’re not getting rewards, you’re literally losing money.

You couldn’t tell who the bosses were

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Tom Murphy is one of those guys that not enough people know about it. He ran Capital Cities Communications (which you also likely haven’t heard of) for years back in the 1960’s until it eventually acquired the ABC network in 1985, which was later purchased by Disney in 1986.

His story is fascinating, and a recent episode of the Founders podcast dug deep into it. While there were a lot of great stories in that show, and perhaps more posts to come, this one stood out the most. It’s a story of a bartender that purchased stock in Capital Cities in the 1970’s (which undoubtedly earned a massive return on investment) and why he did it:

He told me a story about a bartender at one of the management retreats who made a handsome return by buying capital city stock in the early 1970s.

When the bartender was later asked why he made the investment, he replied, “I’ve worked a lot of corporate events over the years, but capital cities was the only company where you couldn’t tell who the bosses were.”

The idea of “you couldn’t tell who the bosses were” is an interesting one. On the one hand, as the bartender shares, it can be a great thing. The bosses get along with their team, and everyone pushes forward.

On the other hand, we’ve all seen organizations where the leadership becomes great friends with the team and then is unable to make tough decisions. It’s a fine line, for sure.

Given all that Murphy and Capital Cities accomplished, not to mention the love that Warren Buffett had for Murphy’s style, I tend to think he did things the right way. Not being able to tell who the bosses were can indeed be a very good thing.

Stewardship, not ownership

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Kevin Paul Scott has a fantastic description of the idea of “stewardship” versus that of “ownership”. In his book “Return on Inspiration“, he says:

“Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like stewards because they use their resources for the benefit of their employees and customers. Everything we are and everything we have comes from the hand of God. He has entrusted goods, people, and opportunities to us. When we have that perspective, we treat employees, customers, and vendors with respect.”

Are you taking care of things for other people, or just looking out for your own interests? I’d argue that the best way to look out for your own interests is to take care of things for other people, so it should be an easy decision.

It’s similar to the idea of training people well enough so they can leave. You’re giving up some “ownership” by giving your employees more power, but it’s likely to be of benefit to everyone in the long run.

I’ve found that in most areas of life “ownership” will improve your short-term gains, but “stewardship” will lead to wildly better results down the road.

Train people well enough so they can leave

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There’s a maxim I’ve heard a few times over the years that goes something like: “You should invest in your team to make them the best that they can be. This may mean that some leave for better opportunities, but that beats the opposite of just not investing in them at all.“

This came to mind while recently listening to Richard Branson on Adam Grant’s ReThinking podcast where Branson said:

“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”

It’s vitally important to do both.

  • If you fail to train people “well enough so they can leave”, you’re stuck with a bunch of employees that aren’t very valuable.
  • Of course, if you train them super well but treat them poorly, then you’re going to have never-ending churn.

The challenge is that it takes time, effort and resources for both sides of that. You’ve gotta commit to continue to train and treat them well perpetually, but if you can do it the payoff will be amazing.