“Garbage in, garbage out.”
It has a nice ring to it. And engineers have long embraced it as a mantra. If you don’t put the right stuff in, don’t expect to get good results.
And so, when we banned leaded gasoline, the car industry complained that they’d never be able to make cars run well again.
And when HP started making printers for consumers, they were eager to point out that you needed to use special paper, and definitely not labels.
And if you’re using the command line on a computer, well, don’t spell anything wrong or whatever happens is your fault.
And if you’re a patient, be sure to take the precise amount of medicine, on time, and follow all the doctor’s instructions.
The thing is, “garbage in, garbage out” is lazy.
It’s lazy because it puts all the onus on the user or the environment. It lets the device off the hook, and puts the focus on the system, which, the device creator points out, is out of his control.
It’s one thing to make a sports car that runs beautifully on smooth roads, perfect tires and premium gas, but it’s a triumph of engineering to make one that runs beautifully all the time.
It’s one thing to organize the DMV so it works well when every person reads all the instructions, fills out the forms perfectly and patiently waits their turn, but it’s a generous act of customer service and organization when the system is resilient enough to work with actual human beings.
The extraordinary teacher adds value to every student, no matter what their home is like. She sees possibility and refuses to settle or blame the inputs. Isn’t that the way we’d like every professional to see the world?
You don’t need to measure the flatness of your bread to use a toaster. And the persistence of the car and printer industries means that the type of gas or the paper we use matters a whole lot less than it used to.
The better mantra is, “garbage in, gorgeous out.”
That’s what we hired you for.
Baseball is not an accurate representation of life.
In baseball, batting average matters because the outcome of the game is directly related to the percentage of times each batter gets on base.
But in life, we’re not keeping track of how many times you get up to bat, or how many times you strike out.
We’re keeping track of the impact you make.
If you’re working on a project that needs just one funder, one publisher, one partner, it doesn’t matter how many other people didn’t like your idea.
And there’s no extra credit (zero) for getting a ‘yes’ from the first person you ask.
Of course, it’s foolish to spam the world, to make yourself a glutton for “no”, to hustle and hassle and learn nothing from all the feedback you’ve gotten. Sooner or later, you’ll use up your welcome and run out of at bats.
But that’s an extreme, and it’s probably not your challenge.
The challenge is to find the resolve to bring your work to someone who will benefit from it. To learn from what doesn’t work and then to do the work again.
For the right project, one in a hundred is as good as Ted Williams.
[Hat tip to medical researcher and scholar Dr. Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein. His work saves lives.]
And a bonus: the best presentation is one you actually give. Don’t hide. Don’t postpone it. We need to hear from you.
A presentation is expensive. It’s many of us, in real time, in sync, all watching you do your thing. If you’re going to do it live, make it worth it. For us and for you.
If an Apple upgrade breaks your phone and you switch to Android, it costs Apple more than $10,000.
If you switch supermarkets because a clerk was snide with you, it removes $50,000 from the store’s ongoing revenue.
If a kid has a lousy first grade teacher or is bullied throughout middle school, it might decrease his productivity for the rest of us by a million dollars.
Torrents are made of drips.
The short-term impact (plus or minus) of our work or our errors is dwarfed by the long-term effects. Compounded over time, little things become big things. [I riff on some of this in the new interview I did with Larry King.]
PS Today is the early decision deadline for fall’s session of the altMBA. It’s a thirty-day workshop that will pay dividends.
Totally off topic, a few condiments most people don’t know about that I’m happy to bring to your attention.
$5 each will buy you a month’s worth of delight. It’s hard to beat.
Here they are with links, but you can find them locally, I hope.
Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisps are numbing and spicy and a simple way to make just about anything taste more zingy than it used to. Tao Huabi, the founder of the company, retired a few years ago, finishing her career as a billionaire–even though she was raised in poverty, without ever going to school.
Al Wadi Pomegranate Molasses has exactly one ingredient, I’ll let you guess what it is. Put it on salad or on ice cream, or rice. Or your finger.
Lime Pickle is a miracle concoction, one that most people who don’t grow up with it will walk on by at the Indian market. I have no idea which brand is the best, they all seem different but equally interesting. How this product could possibly be produced, packaged and brought to your home for so little money is yet another miracle.
Fallot Dijon Mustard is not the mustard that is made by a vast mass marketer. It is the mustard made by someone who truly cares about mustard.
And the last one is the most basic of all. Maldon salt. I don’t know why. I just know it’s way better.
With nothing but these five condiments, I could happily eat beans, kale and rice for the rest of my days.
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