How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent

Adaobi has many great suggestions about how to make a difference on a team. Here's just one of the great ones.

Adaobi's Substack: How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent, 2024-Jan-28 by Adaobi Adibe

Most people are super sensitive to being seen as annoying, and that’s the primary reason they don’t follow up and therefore watch opportunities go down the drain. Super simple solution, follow up! Most people just forget to respond, haven’t prioritized your request, or something else along those lines. But don’t just follow up, make it easy for the other participant to act on this too. For example, if you are following up on a due-to-be-scheduled meeting with someone, offer multiple specific times (including “now”), offer to meet them where they are (if possible), and send them light talking points so that they know the meeting won’t be a waste of their time. This will make it a lot easier for them to want to accept and actually turn up.

Our Favorite Peacenik on the Ukraine War

Nonzero Newsletter: The Ukraine Archives 2023-Feb-23 by Robert Wright:

I’m proud of the things this newsletter has published about the Ukraine war—not because I think they’re all great, but because collectively they represent a clear alternative to the perspective offered in mainstream media, where both reporting and commentary have tended to succumb to the conformist pressures that emanate from wars.  

So I thought I’d mark this dark anniversary by listing some of these NZN posts—both written pieces and podcasts—along with a brief summary and/or reflection for each. I’m confining the list of written pieces to the first six months of the war, but a few of the podcasts are more recent than that.

Almost all of these posts are “unlocked”—available to the entire reading public, not just paid subscribers.

Why convincing skeptics is unnecessary

Activate a strong minority instead...

Digital Tonto: Change Consultants Recommend You Do These 3 Things. Don’t. 2021-Nov-21 by Greg Satell

There is an inherent flaw in human nature that has endowed us with a burning desire to convince skeptics. So it shouldn’t be surprising that change consultants focus on persuasion. Nothing validates a high fee like some clever wordsmithing designed to persuade those hostile to the ideas of those paying the bill.

Yet anybody who has ever been married or had children knows how difficult it can be to convince even a single person of something they don’t want to be convinced of. To set out to persuade hundreds—or even thousands—that they should adopt an idea that they are inherently hostile to is not only hubris, but incredibly foolish.

It is also unnecessary. Scientific research suggests that the tipping point for change is only a 25% minority. Once a quarter of the people involved become committed to change, the rest will largely go along. So there is no need to convince skeptics. Your time and effort will be much better spent helping those who are enthusiastic about change to make it succeed.

That’s what the change consultants get wrong. You don’t “manage” change. You empower it by enabling those who believe in it to show it can work and then bringing in others who can bring in others still. The truth is that you don’t need a clever slogan to bring change about, you need a network. That’s how you create a movement that drives transformation.

When it comes to building community, go small or go home

For years I've helped companies send hundreds of newsletters to active customers. However, the newsletter that I'm working on now will serve a community. A much different approach is required. You don't want people to click to order--you want them to engage in a conversation. Person-to-person recognition is required, and if the community will really grow, then we have probably have to staff employees to members at around 150-to-1. The total audience can be larger, but not the active community. 

Local News Lab: Journalism’s Dunbar number: Audience scales, community does not. 2019-Mar-4 by Damon Kiesow

To succeed, local media have to abandon scale and refocus on community. Advertising remains part of the equation, but reader revenue, donations, foundation funding — yard sales if necessary — are all in the mix.

Twenty years ago, evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar postulated there was a limit to the stable and close social relationships a human being could maintain. He informally defined it as the number of people you know well enough to join “uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”

“Dunbar’s number” is 150 — and he argued it was set by the cognitive capacity of the human brain. Smaller primates with smaller brains have smaller social groups.

Media have a similar limit — it is the number of readers who feel you are part of their community and are willing to invest their time or money with you.

We can work to boost that number, but it takes more than a marketing campaign. It requires actively listening and sincerely engaging with your community — see Trusting News as an example. It takes better understanding your readers, and better serving them — Shifting to Reader Revenue/API. And it takes a retreat from the artifacts of scale that litter your websites, organizational structure and business model.

What does that look like? How about fewer people focused on SEO and building products for Big Tech, and more working to source story ideas from the community — like Hearken. More ability to do targeted local news products such as pop-up newsletters and less time chasing the next “pivot” strategy — see Lenfest for local ideas. And less space on the story page taken up by spammy recommended links and… well, there is no “and” there actually, we just need less of some things.

But individual tactics are not as important as the philosophy: Local readers need to be served at local scale. The internet is infinite, your community is not. Go small or we are all going home.

How to reach inactive subscribers through subjects lines

Email marketing guru Dela Quist has a very good point about inactive email subscribers. They are labeled 'inactive' because the email server can't detect any activity, but that tells you NOTHING about the person and what they've read or done with the information you sent. I am friends with a lot of IT professionals who block systems from collecting information from them. I, myself, read some emails with the images turned off because I know that I'll get slammed with needless follow-up emails if I don't. 

1. Segment inactives.
2. Review the names as much as possible. You may find people you know to be active in responding and purchasing. 
3. Segment some more and send GREAT subject lines.
4. Assume they'll unsubscribe if they want to. 

Only Influencers: Case Study: What is an Email Address Worth and How to Increase Its Value, 2019-Nov by Dela Quist

There are two key learnings to take from this case study.

The first is how valuable your inactives are and the second is how important it is to spend time and effort on reactivation

Start by identifying your inactive subscribers, but don’t remove them from your list, though as the data proves an inactive subscriber is a way better customer than a non-subscriber. What we recommend is to treat the your inactives as a separate, high value segment in the same way as you would your frequent purchasers or 30-day buyers. 

Finally, when it comes to re activating dormant subscribers nothing beats the subject line it is the only thing every subscriber will see... 

 

Communicating one-to-few-to-many

A great email subject line is valuable, but targeting your message to the interests and preferences of your audience is even more important. If you can get someone who trusts and supports you to forward a message, that's worth more than a list. 

Quora: What is a good way to start promoting a church or business? 2019-Dec-4 by Paul O'Brien of MediaTech Ventures

Where once, a message sent was likely received by all (or at least most), now the two way relationship between communicator and receiver has changed; with the receiver being empowered to decide HOW and WHEN they receive. The communicator must participate on the receivers’ terms if they hope to be heard.... 

We used to live in a world where that 1 email, that one meeting, that one office flyer, or that one letter mailed, would reach and communicate with everyone. If I can impart upon you ONE lesson only, it’s that that no longer works.

Trickle down your communication to distinct groups, who can further and more effectively communicate what matters within their audience....

Where one-to-many... and newsletters fall short, is that they think in terms of the quality of the email exchange or the performance of an email sent. That is, they’re optimized for reception and engagement....

In organizational communication, our key metric isn’t an open or conversion rate, it’s KNOWING our “clients” and serving them meaningful communications.

The Anti-Amazon: T.J. Maxx

A strong commitment to a clearly differentiated strategy is serving T.J. Maxx. One of the hardest things for a business to do is say, "no, that's not our customer," but they know what they're doing in ignoring e-commerce. 

Forbes: How Walgreens and T.J. Maxx Are Winning With Minimal Online Sales, 2017-May-25 by Barbara Thau

The retailer’s store vibe — disheveled racks, DMV-esque lighting, barebones customer service —belies the oft-cited “experiential” checklist of what a brick-and-mortar retailer is supposed to need today: mobile checkout options, sales associates with the chops of a personal shopper, and perks from cafes to cooking classes.

T.J. Maxx has none of that.

What they do deliver shoppers is the thrill of the hunt of designer duds for a song. It marks the work of a 1,000-person buying organization and global-sourcing gurus that collaborate with 18,000 vendors from more than 100 countries in a bid to fill its unglamorous stores with an ever-changing mix of fresh and surprising finds.

As a result, T.J. Maxx is “un-Amazonable,” Chen [Oliver Chen, retail analyst at Cowen & Co.] in another research note this month. That’s because “customers engage in an in-store treasure hunt, many brands have preferences not to be online, and average ticket and prices are sufficiently low relative to shipping costs of $5 or more.