A friend our ours just died of cancer.

He didn’t want a funeral because, while he behaved like and extrovert in the work-place, he was actually a pretty private guy and firmly believed that no-one would want to come to his wake or funeral. In hindsight he wasn’t “wrong” – he was humble and didn’t want any one to go out of their way for him – even in death. Pretty amazing.

In the months and then weeks leading up to his death, nothing his wife said could convince him to change his position on the matter.

Enter a false rumor – that he had passed away.

The phone rang off the hook until the report of his demise (and apparent resurrection), were corrected by him when he answered the phone. He realized that many, many people really did care.

The experience softened his opinion on the matter and convinced his wife how important both the wake and funeral would be for all his friends and family.

Given the right reason, most folks will change their point of view.

Good communication specialists find the little difference that can make all the difference and leverage it for all it’s worth. 

I love this light map of the U.S. because it’s a great example of how meta-data can affect how you approach business and life. For example: there are lots of places to go if you love light and there are still lots of empty spaces to go if you love the dark. Maps like these are available for anything you can think of: soy-milk consumption, horse-hoof files – you name it. The data to create informative maps like these are there. When you lay a bunch of different maps on-top of each other, big data quickly becomes small and laser focused. For example: if you overlay snow-belt, low-population, Ford ½ ton truck drivers, conservative voters and HHI +$60M, you'll have a detailed map showing you where to focus your "Proudly Made In America" Snow Plow Attachments".

Data like this can really help your team rank opportunity quickly. 

I’ve been blogging since 2008 – usually once a week. My Google analytics suggest that I have a small, loyal, unsolicited following. There is no direct or obvious ROI in this blog.

Q: so what’s the point if my blog is more like a diary than a published work?

A: practice, not popularity, makes the master.

On one of my walking routes I encounter an old Chinese woman who does her Tai Chi routine alone and in silence every morning. No one greets her, or interrupts her to tell her how well she’s doing. I doubt that she’d hear them or care.

She’s a study of meditation in motion. Incredibly graceful, focused + precise. A master immersed in the moment.

I confuse many I work with by appearing to have an answer for everything. My guess is that if they stick with it for 35 more years they’ll know more and have even better solutions than I have now.

Blogging is one of the mental exercises I use to hone my communication skills.

It forces me to think clearly + succinctly. And that affects everything else I do. 

And just by watching, others will become inspired to write, do Tai Chi, or follow their heart down a new, unknown path.

I’ve seen suffocation warnings on virtually every plastic bag in the U.S. – including small dog-poo bags. They always get me wondering about the general demise of common sense. Now this.

I just don’t even want to imagine the chain of events that led to Ikea concluding that notices like these are required on toilets in their display washrooms (that have no doors on them).

Yikes!   

Most of us see Google as such a successful colossus that we forget that giants also stumble (and fall), and that success and failure are part of the same coin called life. Here are a few thoughts regarding success and failure.

Perception:  put failure in the right perspective; it’s an opportunity to regroup and learn while accepting the (failed) experiment as part of the journey of life and success.

Change:  change depreciates the value of specific historical information, making specific predictions difficult and correspondingly risky. But what goes about comes about – and while specific predictions are difficult, trends are not. Build a business plan that acknowledged the inevitable – but is not dependent on the specific. For example, northern cities all plan for snow removal based on historic trends. Specific snow days and snow volumes for the upcoming year are anyone’s guess.

Limitation:  in a world of limitation, the fundamental question is not whether people should accept failure. Rather, the question is how to anticipate failure and redirect resources to grow from the experience. On any given day there are so many variables beyond our control that it would be foolhardy to design a business plan that does not include a failure-factor. For example. At the retail level theft, breakage + returns are built into the retail price.

Information:  scarcity of good information will present itself somewhere, somehow, sometime. The key is to learn from what this new failure teaches you and prevent it, if at all possible, from happening again. For example. At the retail level we know some of our products will be broken or stolen but not which ones.

Perfection: it's unattainable - period. In most industries failure is the most inevitable outcome. So any assumption regarding perfection stands at odds with the most fundamental premise of success: failure is inevitable.

Planning:  because we cannot predict then future, we need to do our best to infer the best course through uncharted waters practically + intuitively. It’s how our ancestors discovered and settled the entire world. Today we’re exploring the solar system with exciting new tools, but the bottom line is the same for yesterday, today and tomorrow’s explorers: we do our best to estimate and anticipate risk and failure with a tolerable level of precision.

Execution:  failure is not only the output of an unsuccessful activity; it is also the input of a successful one. Performance only changes and improves to the degree that you change and improve as a result of successful and failed tests.

Consequence:  some look at failure as an extremely blunt instrument and surrender their dreams because of its potential consequences. Although tempting, do not allow the consequences of failure to harden your heart. The world is littered with the victims of failure. Yet failure leads to victory. Use each failure as feedback in your constant progression toward your goals.

Morris Saffer, one of my most insightful mentors taught me that we shouldn’t worry about stumbling or falling because that's inevitable. “Focus on how you recovery from the fall. That's what separates the winners from those who also ran.”