Tag: Godin

  • Lying wasn’t Greg Mortenson’s biggest sin

    MortensonOn Tuesday, Greg Mortenson reappeared after the scandal surrounding his books and charity to apologize for lying. “I stand by the stories. The stories happened, but … not in the sequence or the timing,” Mortenson told Brokaw. If his only fault was rearranging the facts, then I would never have cared. After all, All Marketers are Liars Tell Stories.I don't mind that he changed the truth around a bit to make a good story.

    What really upset me was finding out that he didn't run a charity focused on building schools in Afghanistan. Instead he ran a self-promotion company. Jon Krakauer's book, Three Cups of Deceit, was more damning of how poorly run the Central Asia Institute was than of the poor story telling. He showed how the Central Asia Institute seemed to exist more to promote and purchase Greg's book than to build schools. Rather than Greg's book being a source of income for the Institute, a large portion of the Institute's budget went to funding Greg's book tour and purchasing, at full market price, Greg's books. Many of the schools that were built weren't even being used.

    As Seth tells in All Marketers are Liars, everyone tells stories that have shades of untruth to them. Rearranging the facts to make a better story is fine as long as the central story is true. The real lie that Greg Mortenson told was claiming that he was trying to improve education in Afghanistan. Instead, he was just trying to get rich. This is why the Central Asia Institute has lost nearly all of its funding.

    By contrast, Kiva managed to survive largely unscathed when its great untruth was exposed.  Kiva claims to allow people to lend directly to small businesses in poor countries. Their website is full of stories of micro-entrepreneurs who need a little cash to grow their business. You can pick someone with a compelling story, lend them money, and when the loan is repaid so are you. It seems like a fun, easy way to help out. Except it doesn't work that way. Back in 2009, David Roodman showed that most entrepreneurs are funded well before their page even appears on the Kiva website. If the entrepreneur defaults on a loan, the intermediary organization that facilitates the loan repays it. There really isn't any link between the donor and the entrepreneur.

    Big scandal, right? No. Kiva quickly admitted that this was indeed the case and that it was a matter of logistics. The entrepreneur needed the cash quickly. It didn't make sense to make them wait for funding to come (or not come). Yes, the intermediary organziations would repay loans but that was to prevent occasional defaults from disqualifying them from managing future loans. Kiva was in the business of funding micro entrepreneurs, just not quite how they had originally described it. So Kiva is going strong while the Central Asia Institute is nearly closed.

    We all tell stories and no story is ever completely true. If the Central Asia Institute was doing great work in Afghanistan as Kiva is doing with microfinance, I would have easily forgiven Greg for playing with his facts. Instead, I feel as if his whole story was just a con.

  • How High Will You Fly?

    Seth's new book The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? pushes us to fly towards the Sun. The question isn't "How high are you allowed to fly" or "How high do you dare to fly" but "How high WILL you fly." Seth pushes us to dare to do the hard, emotional labor of creating change. In our deeply interconnected world where anyone can reach out to anyone else, we don't need to wait to be picked. We can take the initiative and create the situation that we want to create.

    You can read this book one of two ways. If you read it casually, it is an easy, fun read. There are many nice little bite size chunks and many parts that don't apply to your life–"I would never stoop to putting pink slime in ground beef." Or, you can take it as a challenge. You can read it with the intent to change your life–to stop waiting to be picked and to take your own initiative.

    I am a Seth Fan Boy. I've read everyone of his books. I read his blog each day. I supported this book through Kickstarter as soon as it went up. As a result of this constant bombardment of messages, I am a better person. I speak up in meetings, I dare to write this public blog, and I have become a good public speaker.

    One of the things that I love about Seth is that he is quite clear on his message. If you are happy with your life or don't want to put in the hard, emotional labor to change yourself; then don't waste your time with this book. If instead you dare to reach higher–to fly towards the Sun–then Seth is a wonderful guide.

    Yes, this builds on Linchpin and Poke the Box, but it is more powerful. I would encourage you to read all three, but start with The Icarus Deception.

  • Are you a Leader or a Manager?

    Exclusive interview with Seth Godin from GiANT Impact on Vimeo for the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast.

    There is practical, everyday management. I am not interested in that. Leadership is not practical and it is not everyday. Management and Leadership are totally different things. You think that you are being a leader, but you are probably being a manager. Seth's opening words in the video.

    I love how blunt Seth is. We all aspire to be leaders, but leadership is scary. Management is following the rules–good accounting, completing the activities in the log framework, writing complete reports. A good manager can squeeze a bit more impact from a project. Management is safe–we know what we need to do and how to measure our success.

    Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker, and Warren Bennis, as quoted in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) by Stephen R. Covey, p. 101

    The challenge with leadership is that you have to be in front. If the path was known, then a leader would not be needed. I know that I am leading when I can feel the pressure. When a coworker says, "You can't do that.", but I know that I can and think that I will succeed. When I am 100% sure of myself, I am managing. When I am pushing in a new direction and pretty sure that it will work (even if though I will act 100% sure), then I know that I am pushing the envelope.

     

    Steve Farber tells this beautifully in his free audio series (available through this website) and less well in this video (skip the first seven minutes of selling–the core content start after this introduction). His point is that if you are not scared, if you are not experiencing an OS!M, you are not pushing yourself–you are not really leading.

    And this is the challenge. Leading is hard work. It is scary. It is the only way to make a difference. To paraphrase the subtitle of Seth's book Tribes, Lead, because we need you to lead us. So what do you want to do, Manage or Lead?

  • A Little Guide to making Big Changes

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    Seth Godin's new book, Poke the Box, is a passionate manifesto to begin something and carry it through. It builds on his earlier work Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?–his guide to committing to making a difference–and the The ShipIt Journal–a workbook for getting a team to committing to completing a project.

    As with all of Seth's recent writings, it is really a collection of short essays on why we need to continually try, embracing failure when it comes, and fighting to completion as often as possible.

    Seth has given me the courage to continually fight for change–to be willing to openly question what others accepted and embrace the role of being a change agent or linchpin. My favorite quote from his earlier book was one from Steve Jobs, "Real Artists Ship." My favorite quote from this book is actually from his twitter feed, "If you don’t finish, it doesn’t really count as starting, and if you don’t start, you’re not poking."

    Seth is a fascinating person to follow because he practices what he preaches. Although he has a string of bestselling books, he turned his back on the publishing business and developed his own publishing company through Amazon. He boldly writes his own rules, tries different strategies ("pokes") to see what works and embraces the risk of failure. He even openly gives away the core story of the book through a free workbook. 

    This is a great book for anyone looking to be the change that they want to see in the world.

  • How much Clout do you have?

    Fareed Manjoo wrote in Slate that Tweeting a protest against a company has more success when you have more followers and are therefore perceived as having more clout. However, the number of followers is less important than who the followers are–the President's Daily Brief is written for a select audience, but one with a lot of clout.

    Seth Godin points out that the "web" knows how much "clout" we have and how much are followers have. It knows if our tweets are retweeted, if our followers have lots of followers, and which of our ideas are amplified. Each of these bits of information is hidden in a different place, but they could be aggregated together. Whether we like it or not, someone is going to figure out how to do this. 

    Are you ready to have your clout measured? Would you pay to have that information on your followers? What about your competitors?