TLR Ruminations Flashcards
TLR - On means vs goals
“Clarity about means is significantly more important than clarity about goals… Means are real, goals are not. Goals tell you absolutely nothing about means, but you can discern a lot of information about goals by looking at means… If they don’t align, goals with means, you have a problem. Indecision and paralysis (as seen in marketing) is best addressed by focusing on means (example Contact Actions and Line of Escalation) and not on goals… Goals are important, but only AFTER we are clear on means (think of a game where you don’t know what you can DO… The goals mean nothing, when you know what you can do, you find emergent behaviour. Being creative means understanding novel combinations of your means, not of your goals.”
TLR - On ideas being cheap
Reality is a bitch. Ideas are cheap. All ideas are shit, until proven or demonstrated to be not-shit. It’s applied Bayesian logic
TLR - On lines of authority vs lines of feedback
Lines of authorisation need to be split from Feedback lines. In order to devolve rather than just delegate, these lines have to be split. If you have an authorisation line and not a feedback line, then you have not effectively devolved. There needs to be a limit to decision making in the devolved structure, and when a decision goes beyond it, the decision should still be made, but the feedback needs to be immediate rather than periodic, so the report to a higher authority about the exception needs to be made the moment the decision is made, but doesn’t have to wait for their approval: It’s approved until unapproved (thus reprimanded). This system makes decision making significantly faster without losing control.
TLR - The Systemic subclasses of Marketing (2)
“Marketing problems as a class belong to systems characterised by communication and adaptation in social organisations.” – this adaptation occurs in both the organisation and the client. Marketing aims (systemically) to change (adapt) the thinking of a prospect through communication.
TLR - On Tradeoff balance of writing
“If you’ve found a cheaper and more efficient way to transfer complex and lengthy information to several people in a non-synchronous and repeatable fashion than writing… then please let me know.” - TLR
TLR - Where experience can make you worse.
Strategy falls in the same category (as mention by Geoff Colvin) as some other fields where experience is no predictor of success. This happens mainly because the skill in strategic thinking happens and is cultivated with auxiliary activities rather than the act itself, because the length between action/prediction and results is too long to be an effective feedback loop on performance, which means there is no adjustment from data about the event itself. Experience made Napoleon worse as a strategist… “victory has defeated you” as Bane said.
TLR - On spotting truth
In quickness is truth. Hesitation precedes thought, not honesty
TLR - On personal energy breaking conservation of energy
Emotional energy is a truly amazing thing, if you walk into a room with positive energy, you energize others, make them happier and engaged… But it takes Nothing away from the giver… If two people with energy walk in, Both leave with More energy… You can energize an entire Room and be none the worse for it, quite the opposite! This breaks newton’s laws, which means that it isn’t really energy, it’s something else, something less tangible, but no less real. It makes the converse true too… Negativity and heaviness in a personality takes energy away, but without them gaining anything themselves, there is just loss, a Net loss… A negative (heavy) person has no place in any exchange, he/she has Just waste associated with them, they don’t even gain themselves while they take away from you.
TLR - On working for hidden rewards
You don’t discover treasure on maps
TLR - On the subordinate role of Brand
The Brand must enable effective communication, never get in the way of it (if we can’t communication with something because it isn’t “in brand,” then the brand isn’t flexible enough, and thus it is flawed)
TLR - on the only value of the past
The only value of the past is as a more reliable datapoint you can use to extrapolate the future that includes that datapoint… but you have to be careful about the hierarchy and reliability of that information. You can’t account for the past, we can only talk about the future. Paying for the past is an absurd notion, it’s always irrational except for when you try to take away something that might be damaging in future by using a specific past observation as the strongest point of evidence
TLR - How I want to change the world
I want to change the world by changing how the people think in it.
TLR - Marketing is an extension of customer service
“Proper marketing, and especially content marketing, is an extension of customer service and aims at directly achieving customer satisfaction by means of meaningful, informative communication. It plays the game against uncertainty, and we map the uncertainties we understand a client could possibly have connected to the purchase decision. We do not mistake hesitation for distrust.”
TLR - On introverted vs extroverted Marketing
Marketing in the extrovert’s world has too many assertions and too little ARGUMENT. That’s why they don’t care as much about the downstream damage of ambiguous assumptions, because they only care about assertions and appearance. A more introverted approach is to first make you buy into the premise before selling you the conclusion… And you’ll be able to make up your own reasons why, reason again and come to the same conclusion.
TLR - On Marketing being an eclectic field
A non-eclectic approach to marketing (and strategy for that matter) is an absolute travesty. It’s the one field that you CANNOT be a specialist in but can only truly have applicable competence in as a generalist
