When we get a smooth ride I’ll pull out the laptop and get an extra half hour of productive work time. So I have a personal interest in the smoothness of the ride and make a point of thanking the better drivers as I get off, hopefully encouraging them to keep up the good work.

If getting a smooth ride was important enough to me, I might even think of some simple questions to ask them in a non-distracting way about key techniques to giving passengers a smooth ride.

Then I could build up my knowledge of good driving techniques, organize them into a booklet or checklist, and offer it to the SFMTA so they might use it as a user-generated training piece.

Pretty fanciful idea, I admit. I don’t really have time or interest to embark on this project, and I’m pretty sure that even if I did, the SFMTA would thank me politely and permanently file my opus.

What’s more intriguing is the potential to create a small knowledge community of good drivers, for whom answering my questions would serve as a small diversion but possibly also make them more motivated and thoughtful.

In the process of gaining expertise, I might assemble a loose association of experts, and aggregating the information they share into a minor document with real–if minor–value to other passengers if not their employer.

The process mirrors the way millions of people today gain and share knowledge, recruit and motivate outside experts, and leverage their new expert status into something potentially worthwhile.

I wouldn’t be using social media or the internet at any point, but the fact that the drivers and I use those delivery systems to some degree would make the interaction and building of a “knowledge community” seem less weird than it would have if I had tried the same stunt just a few years ago.

A major shift in the expert paradigm, proceeding as we speak.

In my next post I’ll talk more about a practical way to make this shift pay off for you and your business.

Good advice, Seth, but deciding something is easier said than done.

Making choices and deciding is America’s new national pastime; saying yes or no, thumbs up or down, is the way we like to gain a sense of control over our world.

The most popular sites are changing before our eyes from Search Engines to Choice Engines. It’s no longer enough to find one piece of information. Without putting in much extra effort, we also want to compare and assess.

So we increasingly expect every piece of information to come equipped with an action item, making it possible to quickly and easily get a sense of accomplishment.

Unfortunately, just because we’ve set up a decision to be made quickly doesn’t mean the choice matches our needs or values.

It’s always easy to find something to decide, but we usually don’t have enough empirical data to compare two choices with confidence. So we rely on our instincts or feelings.

This makes every decision blatantly emotional. Americans have always valued our ability to separate reason from emotions, and expect important decisions to be made in “the cold light of reason.”

But what if we don’t have the time, much less the comparative data, necessary to make decisions that way?

Simply put: we don’t. So decisions tend to be increasingly driven by our preconceived ideas, or those of someone we’ve come to agree with. They’re quite often “knee-jerk” reactions, poorly thought out and too hastily implemented.

The good news is that there’s a better way to make sure we’re comparing apples and oranges, or one set of clearly defined preferences with another.

People who have identified their nuclear core message, personal brand or “mantra” only need to ask one or two simple questions before making an important decision.

Having already thought through their priorities and values, they won’t need much time to compare abstract, multi-faceted or very dissimilar choices. Or can use their time to add data and facts to their comparison

You won’t need as much time now, as comparisons become more straightforward and clear-cut.

Replace those tired, derivative old dreams with new ones that will lead to more authentic engagement.

Your own dreams, the kind that excite and motivate you.

Then express them clearly, concisely and compellingly. Get real with your dreams!

Even if they’re drawn to your site by SEO, they won’t stay there if it means reading crummy content.

And even if your site content is well written, they’ll click away if it doesn’t clearly answer the killer question, “So What?”

And even if you can answer that, they won’t spend time reading anything that lacks real value.

Email is like a letter; most web sites are like direct mail. Which do you prefer getting?

If folks must choose between poorly conceived, designed and written web sites and your great email, which do you expect them to choose?

So anyone whose site is like that is helping promote your emails.

Show you’re a friend, and enjoy writing memorable letters to everyone on an email list. Send prospects, customers and stakeholders a great email.

(And don’t forget to mentally thank all those lousy sites that help you build your business!)

That rarely works these days for two reasons.

1) What you consider a problem–a situation or condition that can be solved–is almost always not really a problem. It’s a constraint that you can only deal with at best.

2) And most of your constraints, as Richard Farson pointed out in his brilliant book Management of the Absurd,  are closely connected to a desirable state or condition (crime is actually a constraint that resists our solutions, for example; it keeps growing because of our increased prosperity).

Luckily, there are good examples of a different approach that has worked well for other companies. Ever heard of Apple?

The great Seth Godin explains how Apple dealt with the ongoing constraint of a poorly performing product distribution infrastructure.

The company stopped trying to “solve” unsolvable relationships with distributors–which had only become an issue because their products were so popular–and decided to open a network of Apple stores instead.

They quickly solved the problems faced by a retail operation. And the rest is history.

If your only tool is a hammer, as they say, every problem looks like a nail. If Apple had kept seeing its unsolvable distribution constraints as problems and kept trying to solve them with business tools that didn’t work well, they might have gone out of business.

Recognizing that distribution was a “screw” rather than a nail, and getting a “screwdriver”  from their toolkit, enabled Apple to take a different approach that fit their corporate culture, and to eventually surge past Microsoft.

Try dealing with business issues without reaching for your favorite and most familiar tools–your skills and experience. It’s a new age and you have more constraints to deal with than ever.

Follow Apple’s example and discover a way to reframe that vexing constraint as a problem, then solve it using new tools or resources easily available online. Or from a different mentor/coach.

You have a lot fewer problems than you think. And your tried-and-true skills probably won’t help you deal with constraints.

So stop problem solving. Work instead on reframing constraints as problems, then solve them with new tools and your support group.

It’s the digital-age path to success.

You recognize the intangible, long-term benefits of buying “green” products or materials. That’s why you’ve at least thought about buying them, and why you’d advertise the fact to your customers.

The internet can help you improve the bottom line in a similar way.

But first you have to change the way you see what you’re selling, and what your customers are buying.

Not every owner can manage the shift from “old” to “new” business.

You can. That’s why you’ll succeed, while your competitors keep flailing; still stuck in what Tom Peters calls the “fast failures” mode.

The following comparison checklist demonstrates your grasp of changes, and how you’ve begun moving your business into the internet age. Two lists, two eras.

Your instincts have moved you from one list to the other. Now they help you move to a new era.

No more “push-pull” communications; “green.” Your ROI and gross margin will thank you for it.

The Old or The New?

• Super Efficient or More Effective?
• User of products and services or Owner/operator?
• Depend on centralized resources or Use decentralized/alternative sources?
• Product oriented or Process oriented?
• Follower or Acknowledged expert or leader?
• Hopeful or Resourceful?
• Factory thinker or Independent minded?
• A “cog” in a corporate machine or An engine driving your own machine?
• Programmed to trudge or Super curious?
• Consumer of dreams or Creator of dreams?
• Fading out or Standing out?
• Nitpicky and anxious or A confident self-educator?
• Kazoo player or Orchestra conductor?

• Which customers or collaborators will help your business grow?
• Decision makers, always looking for high quality information.
• Information that’s relevant, clear and concise. Really concise.
• Don’t expect them to read any wordy, derivative articles or blogs.
• Or waste time at networking events and on Facebook pages.
• They demand real value, in messages that can fit on iPhone screens.
• Offer them bite-sized solutions to business problems and challenges.
• Well crafted, concise content transforms leaders into your followers.
• Intrigue them with articles like this on Twitter, posted one line at a time.
• Such messages will help your business succeed long term.
• Just keep ‘em short and sweet.
• Tweet tweet . . .

Business increasingly resembles a 3-D chess game. There are always many angles or perspectives that coplicate problems, constraints or opportunities.

At least chess pieces stay where you put them, and are easy to move . Prospects, customers and stakeholders ofte get willful,  changeable and unpredictable. The internet and social media only make relationships more volatile than ever.

What’s a business owner or executive to do?

1) Clearly communicate your nuclear core message; differentiate you and your business from the competition (this brief slideshow will introduce you to my original process)

2) Understand–and be able to articulate–exactly WHY you’re in business (this excellent 18-minute video will persuade you why this matters)

3) Put your content on a front burner. Develop a long- medium- and short term content strategy with editorial calendar that will effectively put you in front of the right audience with messages rich with relevance, proof and value.

Don’t take my word for anything. Contact me using the convenient form on the right, so you can get answers about what you need. Together we’ll make your “chess game” lie flat and docile on your lap!