What does it take to build a successful business?
There are a lot of perspectives (like this one from the teenager who built a global fashion brand) but one that sticks out is from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (also available on Audible):
When men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of the best judgement and highest ability – and the degree of man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward.
For more advice, here are some of my favourite Seth Godin quotes from his 2023 blog posts, together with a recommended title from Blinkist.
As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. ~ The drift to normal
Learn more: Scaling Smart
As the world changes faster and faster, it seems clear that organizations that prize plasticity will thrive. ~ Plasticity
Learn more: The Flexibility Paradigm
Coordinating our tone and our tempo creates magic, and yet we often fail to lead, preferring to follow instead. ~ Leading side by side
Learn more: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge
Customer service is a chance to create delight and impact. It can amplify or undermine the marketing investments that you say are important–and yet, management often fails to see the systems they are building and maintaining. ~ Unforced errors
Learn more: Good Services
Everyone wants to be picked, but no one wants to organize the collective ‘we’. It’s the ‘we’ that creates a school of thought, a movement, a network, a culture. ~ Refusing the salon of the refused
Learn more: Never Lead Alone
If, even once, you’ve had a virtual meeting that engaged you and made you feel connected to someone else, then it’s clearly possible. The hard work is deciding to put in the effort to have it happen more often. ~ Becoming intentional about virtual meetings
Learn more: Positive Communication for Leaders
If it’s worth filling out a form, it’s probably worth replacing the form with an actual gathering of information. ~ The opportunity for AI formbots
Learn more: AI for Business Leaders
If one of your principles is, “win at all costs,” then you have no other principles. ~ At all costs
Learn more: Play Nice But Win
If the customers don’t care, perhaps we shouldn’t either. ~ Indifferent overhead
Learn more: Financial Intelligence
If you find yourself seeking to serve the largest possible number of people, you’ve signed up to be average. Without a doubt, you’re raising the bar compared to the ones who came before, but scale has its costs. ~ Regressing to the mean all by yourself
Learn more: The Entrepreneurial Mindset Advantage
If you really care about the mission, it might be better to change the system in a way that allows it to thrive. ~ Brighten up a room
Learn more: Immunity to Change
If you want to change a system, change the culture. And if you want to change the culture, it helps to create the conditions for people to step up, talk about it, and take action. ~ Five lessons from week one of This is Strategy
Learn more: The Secret of Culture Change
It’s okay to treat some customers differently, but first it pays to figure out who you’re dealing with and why you want to re-allocate your resources. ~ All customers are the same
Learn more: The Capitalist Manifesto
Maximizing something is simple and may be satisfying. It doesn’t involve difficult tradeoffs and it’s easy to measure. But that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. ~ Optimized or maximized?
Learn more: Optimal
Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and those solutions hinge on culture. ~ Problems and the clover
Learn more: The Resilient Culture
Trust and the benefit of the doubt are more powerful and resilient than command and control. ~ Coercion
Learn more: Positive Influence
We’re all participants in the systems around us, and complicit in their consequences even if we didn’t intend them. First, we need to see the systems, and then we have the opportunity to work to change them. ~ Unintended consequences
Learn more: Skin in the Game
What truly changes the game is when an organization decides to commit to being better at being better. That’s hard to do and difficult to compete against. ~ Better at being better
Learn more: Learning at Speed
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