Robi Ganguly’s Big Ideas

The chance encounter

The question you hesitated to ask, but finally did

The offhand mention of an interest

The tiny bounce of a ping pong ball

This entry is about those tiny little things that happen that make a huge difference in many peoples’ lives. (and yes, it’s a bit inspired by the Blink 182 song)

As we weave our way through our lives, we ask ourselves hundreds of times a day, thousands of times a week, “does this really matter?” For the most part, this questioning doesn’t even occur consciously. We sift through the minutiae of our lives on an automatic basis. Yesterday’s post was about failure and one of my examples was that of being a young child reading. It turns out that after you learn how to read and deal with mistakes, you tend to filter out words that seem alike, you process them quickly and assign them meanings automatically. This is the efficiency of the brain, the filtering mechanisms of every day life. It’s helpful, but not always accurate.

May 22nd, 2007 happened to be the day that might have changed basketball in Seattle for the foreseeable future. Why? Because of the small things of course.

That was the evening that the NBA draft lottery was held. Despite the odds, the Seattle Sonics got the 2nd pick in the 2007 draft. A bunch of bouncing ping pong balls determined that the Sonics would have the chance to draft a potential superstar.

Tonight, June 28th, was the draft. The Seattle Sonics got, arguably, the best pick in the draft: Kevin Durant. This is notable for two reasons: 1) He happens to be one of the most explosive, high potential, franchise-changing basketball players that I’ve ever had the fortune to watch before hitting the NBA 2) The Sonics franchise, until today, was mostly in shambles. Losing season after losing season, a subpar arena, a disgruntled management group and an apathetic city fan base have led most in the basketball world to believe that the Sonics won’t be in Seattle for much longer.

The bounce of a ping pong ball might have changed that. 

The fact that the Sonics got to take Kevin Durant today might have meant that Seattle, through public funding and fan interest (buying tix, lobbying the management group etc) will keep basketball in the city. As a loyal Sonics fan, this makes me exceptionally pleased. As an anonymous taxpayer, I wonder if this is the best use of resources but…

The point is: the small things matter. Not always, but sometimes.. sometimes, the smallest little detail has a humongous impact. Don’t forget that when you’re trying to decide to act/stay passive. 

Today/tonight might just have been the perfect proof of that. Only time will tell.

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Are you failing at failing?

Remember when you were young and everything was new to you? When you didn’t know what the word in the book you were reading aloud from was? When you mispronounced it and you might have felt a little silly, but mostly, you just wanted to know how to say it and what it meant?

Do you remember that feeling?

That was failing.

It wasn’t that bad was it?

Do you currently fail enough? Do you put yourself in enough situations to fail?  

I came across this short post at Futurelab about failure a bit ago that reinforces a belief that I hold strongly:

Expecting failure and embracing chance hold the key to success in business.

AND

The companies that are most able to explore and innovate – something akin to random [biological] mutation – and then rapidly and flexibly adapt when an innovation succeeds or fails, will do best.

Now, let’s think about that for a moment, shall we? I think that this is saying that if you’re not adept at dealing with change and failure, then you’re not going to do as well as those who are more capable. In business, but in life as well, I believe this to be true:

We must foster and develop our ability to deal with failure if we are to better ourselves.

So, I ask again: Are you failing at failing?

• Are you not working enough at putting yourself into situations where you can fail?

• Are you not taking enough risks?

• Are you not seeking that which you are truly hopeful about, because the possibility of failure is so disappointing as to be avoided?

I’m failing at it right now. If you are too, I have a message from the folks at Wieden+Kennedy for both of us:

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(Scroll down to skip ahead to iPhone goodies if you’d like)

I write about the nature of influence from time to time (a list of a few of those posts here) and think about it quite a lot: as consumers we market to each other, all the time.

The constant innovation around content creation and distribution tools means that peer marketing communications are, along with every other type of communication, expanding rapidly. This isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s just something that’s being accelerated by the technologies employed. Which is not to underestimate the impacts of that acceleration, but rather, to say that I dislike it when people frame this as something that is brand new and novel. It’s not, get over it.

Which brings me to a few things I’ve wanted to share:

“Advertising’s New Reality” - Aside from the unfortunate title, this is a pretty thoughtful piece about the fact that consumers are assisting in the creation of advertising and importantly, do so willingly because it fits with their interests and existing activities. I believe that thoughtful marketers have always understood that involving consumers in the process of creating, marketing and revising their products/services but now, more marketers are waking up to that fact. The really exciting thing is that it’s getting easier to connect with consumers in order to accomplish this.

“Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” - This lengthy but entertaining piece (like my blog posts right ?) focuses on one innovative musician who’s using peer communications and the new tools at his disposal to create and grow an audience (it’s not easy though, it takes a ton of work). An example of the great stuff to discover in this article (bolding mine):

Coulton’s fans are also his promotion department, an army of thousands who proselytize for his work worldwide. More than 50 fans have created music videos using his music and posted them on YouTube; at a recent gig, half of the audience members (!!) I spoke to had originally come across his music via one of these fan-made videos.

“Critical Mass: Everyone listens to Walt Mossberg” - For those of you who don’t read the Journal regularly, you might not be aware that Mossberg’s considered to be one of the best consumer technology writers out there. This piece by Ken Auletta (an excellent writer in his own right, I really enjoyed Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way) talks about how influential Mossberg is: a mention in his column can boost sales, traffic and awareness. What’s relevant here is that Mossberg writes for the consumers as a champion. The article relates that when Mossberg came up with the idea he stated that: 

If it works as I envision it, this column . . . would be the voice, the champion, of the individual person actually faced with buying and using the core hi-tech devices—the customer whom industry calls the “end user”.

Segway to a very hot discussion topic: the Apple iPhone.

Yep, I, along with every other blogger, must mention the iPhone. But I mention it as an extension of the article about Walt Mossberg. The video below is his video review of the iPhone (from the larger print review). The review is basically a ringing endorsement of the phone. For those who make it to the end of the video, they’ll see the drawbacks of the AT&T exclusivity (certainly limiting) and the EDGE network (very slow for data), but most people won’t need to get that far to buy in.

This video and review will sell a LOT of iPhones, mark my words. As someone who has successfully achieved his goal (quoted above) of being the voice of the “end user”, Mossberg has gained an amazing amount of influence. Although the hype around the phone is astronomical, there are still many taking the “wait and see” approach. Mossberg’s review does something that no amount of corporate advertising can do: it convinces you that you don’t need to wait and see.

It already convinced Jason Calacanis 

Did it convince you?

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I believe in compromise.

I don’t believe in settling.

People often confuse these two statements. I hear people using them interchangeably, but they’re not the same.

Compromise is about ideas in conflict coming together to create a workable and beneficial amalgamation, hopefully one that increases harmony, reaches a balance and combines efforts. Wikipedia says, “In arguments, compromise is a concept of finding agreement through communication, through a mutual acceptance of terms—often involving variations from an original goal or desire.” As with the concept of Yin-Yang, opposing forces can also be complementary and achieve a balance. A balance that is in movement, keeping one another in check. Compromise is healthy, sustainable and central to the process of growth and development.

Settling is about stopping. Settling is the process of coming to a stop. Bodies in motion coming to rest. When people misuse settling as a term that is interchangeable with compromise, what they’re really saying is that it’s time to give up. Time to come to a rest and stop debating, stop working towards a better solution, stop improving what exists today. Whether you’re settling for a relationship partner, or settling for a job or settling for who you are, don’t kid yourself: you’re not compromising. Rather than giving some of your ideas to a shared conception of the way forward, you’re pulling back from the conversation and refusing to struggle to be part of the better future that can exist.

There is no way forward when you settle. There is only here. Here is not good enough.

Are you settling or compromising? 

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I’m a closet baseball fan. I say this because I’m a Seattle Mariners fan. Unfortunately, being a Mariners fan has mostly meant disappointment over the years. They’ve made the playoffs a few times, but aside from the miracle/disaster 116-win season in 2001, there really hasn’t been much hope of winning the World Series in Seattle.

At the same time that it’s been tough to be a Mariners fan, I was also fortunate to be developing my sports loyalties right when Ken Griffey Jr. joined the team. These days, most people don’t give much thought to Griffey, but when he joined the league, he was “The Kid”. A boy wonder with the perfect swing, amazing defensive capabilities (the picture below is of an amazing catch he made that resulted in him breaking his wrist) and a charming personality; he took Seattle and the baseball world by storm in the 90’s.

I’ve come to realize over time that I don’t really idolize anyone. I admire people, I seek to learn from them and emulate some of their characteristics, but I really don’t idolize anyone. That was different when I was a kid though.

Ken Griffey Jr. was my first and maybe only idol. I can remember playing out in the backyard with my friend Lane, pretending we were Griffey, roaming center field, stealing home runs from hitters. Time after time, we’d throw the ball towards the other one, putting it out of reach to make the other dive for the ball. Every time we managed to pull it off, the we’d mimic the announcer’s voice, soaked in amazement at the feat he’d just witnessed. We did this every summer for years.  It was definitely some of the most fun I had at that age.

(Of course, to our parents inside the house, they’d just see their idiot kid running and diving full body onto the grass, ruining clothes, elbows and knees… kind of a funny juxtaposition)

This weekend, Griffey returns as a Red, to play in Seattle for the first time since he left. It’s been written up a lot in the the Seattle Times and they do a great job of describing what he meant to the city and why this weekend is kind of special, so I’ve included the links below. I have to admit, I’m a little sad I’m not up there to witness it myself.

Griffey returns to Seattle

How Griffey saved baseball in Seattle

Top 10 Griffey moments

So, here’s a question for you all: who was your first idol and why?

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Haven’t done this in a while, so here are a bunch of interesting links to go check out:

Funny/amusing 

Frisbee still flying high after 50 years – U.S. Business – MSNBC.com  – interesting piece that talks about the history of the Frisbee and the fact that it was almost called a “Pluto Platter”. Hard to imagine calling it that now.. I wonder if the name would have had a major impact on its success over all this time.

Phantom cell-phone vibrations - ever felt like your phone was vibrating, reached for it and then found out it wasn’t? Turns out you’re not crazy. Even better, this piece does a brief discussion of how easily habits are formed, the perceptual learning process and neuroplasticity. I love this piece because it makes me think about how I can take this knowledge and then create circumstances that allow me to program myself with good habits. For example, how could I use this knowledge to train myself to get more sleep? Is that possible?

The mad ramblings of Howard Stringer - And people wonder why Sony seems like it’s wandering in search of a strategy.. This interview made my head hurt to read.

Deeper / worth the read

It’s all about outcomes - Short and right to the point. Many folks confuse activity with outcomes, believing that if they’re busy, they must be making progress. Of course, that’s not true. But, look around you. Don’t you see people making that mistake often? Overcommitted, too busy to eat, to visit friends, to “think about the long-term plans for the business”? If you find yourself breaking your back to keep up with the pace of your life and occasionally look up, wondering where the years have gone without much change, this might have some insight for you. Stop running just to go nowhere.

The WSJ picks up on social shopping - I’ve written about this several times (this one remains one of my favorites ). Now the WSJ gets into it a bit and talks about some of the business model experiments (*cough* huge mistakes *cough*) that are in play at the moment. Of course, they have more readers than I do so the fact that they’re late to the party isn’t really an issue

Ad Age groks the aggregation strategy - As others have already commented, Ad Age is a bit behind some of the other folks in the press here already, but then again, they’re way out in front of the WSJ (should we expect this to be coming in 3 to 6 months??). I found it interesting that the Jupiter Analyst’s view was that most people only have one or two profiles at the most. There’s a pretty big problem with this conclusion, can anyone else spot it ?

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Can you say, “This wouldn’t have been seen by 5mm people 5 years ago”?

Pretty damn amazing.

Thanks to my friend Ben for passing this on.

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Last week I wrote about graduation, my sister and finding your passion, in order to really unleash your “inner honor student”, as I put it.

As is often the case, once my mind gets working on something, I find that I pay more attention to the world and look for examples/counter-examples etc in my daily life. It turns out that “finding your passion” appears to be a rather popular meme in the blogosphere at the moment, because I came across a number of posts that were talking about passion in a similar manner. I didn’t go looking for validation, but I guess I found some

Most emboldening, however, was footage from the conversation between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the “D” conference. Below is the final segment of their talk, where they took audience questions and if you forward to the 8:50 mark, you’ll see them answer a question by talking about loving what they do. Jobs, in particular, talks about it really eloquently.  

By the way, I highly recommend checking out the entire video, if you’re interested. These are two of the greatest minds in technology and their interaction, respect for one another and viewpoints are, for me, really quite inspiring to watch. You can find the comprehensive coverage at the All Things D site, here.

Also, given that one of the above-mentioned posts about passion that I came across was Drew Meyers’ riff on the same topic, I thought I’d link to his post as well.

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As a person with a number of friends in various graduate schools, I know quite a few folks who’re graduating this May/June. So, of course, I say to them, “Congrats!!” and look forward to seeing what they do with those fancy new letters after their names

But, I’d like to send a special shout out to my little sister Anjuli, who graduated from San Francisco State last Saturday.

Amazingly bright and insightful, she didn’t really find that “spark” in high school. Uninspiring teachers, the pressures of stressed out parents and unfair comparisons to her siblings probably made it harder to focus on doing well academically than it should have been. If you didn’t know her that well back then, you might have thought she was in big trouble.

You certainly wouldn’t say that now.  

So, what changed?

In short, she found one of the only things that really underlies success: passion.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Quitting is, in today’s very short-term society, often the easiest choice. Going from failing high school classes to being one of 12 honors students in the Psych program at a very large state school is damn near impossible. But she did it. She kept working at finding it, and when she did it, she even made it look easy.

I’d like to leave you this point:

I sincerely hope that we can all focus on finding that fire.

Be honest with yourself, make the pursuit of your true passions a continuous process and unleash your inner honors student.

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