FAIL

Are you wow blind?

Kevin asked me: “Do ‘great ideas’ possess universally some sort of Wow Factor?”

The problems with this question: What does ‘great’ mean? And who decides what ‘wow’ is?

The challenge is this: lots of people think they know what both words mean in their area of endeavor, and many of them are wrong.

Consider the case of web 2.0 companies. People like Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are brilliant at understanding what wow means from the point of view of an investor. They have great taste about what’s going to pay off. They have a sense for which teams and which ideas will actually turn into great businesses.

Read more

How to fail

There are some significant misunderstandings about failure. A common one, similar to one we seem to have about death, is that if you don’t plan for it, it won’t happen.

All of us fail. Successful people fail often, and, worth noting, learn more from that failure than everyone else.

Two habits that don’t help:

  • Getting good at avoiding blame and casting doubt
  • Not signing up for visible and important projects

While it may seem like these two choices increase your chances for survival or even promotion, in fact they merely insulate you from worthwhile failures.

I think it’s worth noting that my definition of failure does not include being unlucky enough to be involved in a project where random external events kept you from succeeding. That’s the cost of showing up, not the definition of failure.

Identifying these random events, of course, is part of the art of doing ever better. Many of the things we’d like to blame as being out of our control are in fact avoidable or can be planned around.

Read more

Twitter: The single reason not to have someone else Tweet for you

Someone asked me recently how I come up with content for my blog. Honestly, when I started it, I had that same question but if you are on Twitter daily–as I am–there is unlimited content and ideas coming out of the “tweet stream” across my iPhone. Just today, I saw some debate on the benefits of hiring a “virtual assistant” to “tweet” for you. Really? I was amazed but I’m sure people are doing it and thinking of doing it.

Read more