Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Poke The Box

Seth Godin's latest book, "Poke The Box," is pure awesome. One of my favorite sections:

Pick Me! Pick Me!

"The relentless brainwashing of our fading industrial economy has created an expensive misunderstanding. Creative people or those with something to say believe that they have to wait to be chosen.

Authors, for example, wait to be chosen by an agent, and then by a publisher. Then they agitate to be chosen by a media outlet so they can reach readers who will ultimately read their books. Get chosen by Oprah and everything takes care of itself.

Entrepreneurs often find themselves waiting to be chosen by a venture capitalist or investor. They need that selection in order to validate their work and to get started on actually building a business.

Employees wait to be picked for promotion, or to lead a meeting or to speak up at a meeting.

"Pick me, pick me" acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, "pick me, pick me" moves the blame from you to them.

If you don't get picked, it's their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore.

Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself."

Fantastic, short book with long lasting words.

1 comment:

Benji Zimmerman said...

I had meant to order this a while back and actually got it yesterday. Looking forward to reading it soon. Thanks for the review.