Seth Godin

By Jessica Grant

Here at Incuheal we’re obsessed with Seth Godin. He’s the marketing and tribes guru behind the popular TED Talks videos ‘How to get your ideas to spread’, ‘This is broken’ and ‘The tribes we lead’. He has also written several books on the topics.

We’ve recently started watching Seth’s Blog and following the short snippets of insight he posts daily. 

Of his recent posts, our favourite is this:

Waiting for all the facts

"I'm just going to wait until all the facts are in..."

All the facts are never in. We don't have all the facts on the sinking of the Titanic, on the efficacy of social media or on whether dogs make good house pets. We don't have all the facts on hybrid tomatoes, global warming or the demise of the industrial age, either.

The real question isn't whether you have all the facts. The real question is, "do I know enough to make a useful decision?" (and no decision is still a decision).

If you don't, then the follow up question is, "What would I need to know, what fact would I need to see, before I take action?"

If you can't answer that, then you're not actually waiting for all the facts to come in.

This struck a chord with us because we are in the process of launching a product to a group over on the other side of the globe, and while it is imperative for us to conduct analysis, talk to people about this product, design the best product possible and make sure we get it right (there’s no room for error in a product like this), we’re never going to be 100% certain that all of the stars have aligned. Whatever we’re working on at the time, whether it be plans to launch our product in a new country or set up a meeting with a big investor, what we do need to do is to get ourselves to a point where we can confidently say that it’s go time, even though we won’t have all of the answers.

One of his blog’s on a similar topic:

When execution gets cheaper, so should planning

If you're going to build a $10 million skyscraper, by all means, plan and prototype and discuss and plan some more.

On the other hand, if the cost of finding out is a phone call, make the call. No need to spend a lot of time planning how to call or when to call or which phone to use when execution is fast and cheap.

The digital revolution has, as in so many other areas, flipped the equation here. The cost of building digital items is plummeting, but our habit is to plan anyway (because failure bothers us, and we focus on the feeling of failure, not the cost).

The goal should be to have the minimum number of meetings and scenarios and documentation necessary to maximize the value of execution. As it gets faster and easier to actually build the thing, go ahead and make sure the planning (or lack of it) keeps pace.

Check out Seth Godin’s blog and also take a look at his TED Talks. His talks are entertaining, insightful, aim to change the status quo and go for about 17 minutes each.