Seth Godin - Poke the Box

The initiator

Annie Downs works at the Mocha Club, a nonprofit based in Nashville that raises money for the developing world by working with touring musicians.

Last year, she called her boss and said something she had never said before. Ive got an idea, and Im going to start working on it tomorrow. It wont take a lot of time and it wont cost a lot of money, and I think its going to work.

With those two sentences, Annie changed her life. And she changed her organization and the people it serves.

Youre probably wondering what her idea was. You might even be curious about how she pulled it off.

That is the wrong question.

The change was in her posture. The change was that for the first time in this job, Annie wasnt waiting for instructions, working through a to-do list, or reacting to incoming tasks. She wasnt handed initiative, she took it.

Annie crossed a bridge that day. She became someone who starts something, someone who initiates, someone who is prepared to fail along the way if it helps her make a difference.

Your turn

Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldnt do.

If you lived in that world, what would you do?

Go. Do that.

In China, theres a factory that can make the same widgets your company makesfor a tenth of the price.

Down the street, theres a restaurant busy stealing your menu and your wine list, but charging 20 percent less than you can charge.

The last travel agent has left the room. Magazine publishers gave up all their growth to bloggers. Wikipedia didnt have to grab the reins of authority from the Encyclopedia Britannica; contributors just showed up and did the work. Britannica staffers sat and watched.

The intermediaries and agenda setters and investors are less important than they have ever been before. Last year, sixty-seven Web startups in San Francisco and New York were funded for what it costs Silicon Valley to fund a third of that number.

So, if money and access and organizational might arent the foundation of the connected economy, what is?

Initiative.

This is a manifesto about starting.

Starting a project, making a ruckus, taking what feels like a risk.

Not just Im starting to think about it, or Were going to meet on this, or even I filed a patent application.

No, starting.

Going beyond the point of no return.

Leaping.

Committing.

Making something happen.

The seventh imperative

The first imperative is to be awareaware of the market, of opportunities, of who you are.

The second imperative is to be educated, so you can understand whats around you.

The third imperative is to be connected, so you can be trusted as you engage.

The fourth imperative is to be consistent, so the system knows what to expect.

The fifth imperative is to build an asset, so you have something to sell.

The sixth imperative is to be productive, so you can be well-priced.

But you can do all of these things and still fail. A job is not enough. A factory is not enough. A trade is not enough. It used to be, but no longer.

The world is changing too fast. Without the spark of initiative, you have no choice but to simply react to the world. Without the ability to instigate and experiment, you are stuck, adrift, waiting to be shoved.

I can find a thousand books and a million memos about the first six imperatives. They were drilled into you in countless moments in school, and plenty of graduate schools and bosses are delighted to help you with them. But when it comes to the seventh imperative, it seems as though youre on your own.

The seventh imperative is frightening and thus easy to overlook or ignore. The seventh imperative is to have the guts and the heart and the passion to ship.

The difference of go

The simple thing that separates successful individuals from those who languish is the very thing that separates exciting and growing organizations from those that stagnate and die.

The winners have turned initiative into a passion and a practice. Go ahead, make a list. Make a list of the people and organizations you admire. My guess is the seventh imperative is what sets them apart.

The challenge, it turns out, isnt in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of starting.

Craig Ventner and Dr. Frankenstein

The man who sequenced the human genome has figured out how to use a computer to completely design the genetic code of an organism. He and his team can mess with the genes almost as easily as you can edit an essay in Word.

And yet.

And yet once the strand of code is generated and turned into organic matter in a petri dish, it just lies there. Its not alive.

The motive forcethe spark that brings it to lifeis missing. Ventner still needs to insert some organic tissue, something living, something alive, to transform the project into more than an inert mass of genes.

Surprisingly, thats precisely your opportunity.

Not to buy a petri dish and a bunch of organic materials. No, the opportunity is bigger than thatits to see that all around you are platforms, opportunities, and entire organizations that will come to life once you are driven enough and brave enough to contribute the initiative they are missing.

The buzzer box

When my cousin was born, my uncle (who has a Ph.D. from MIT) built a buzzer box. It was a heavy metal contraption, with a thick black cord that plugged into the wall. It looked like something from a nuclear power plant, not a kids toy, but that didnt dissuade him from tossing it into the crib.

The box had two switches, some lights, and a few other controls on it. Flip one switch and a light goes on. Flip both switches and a buzzer sounds. All terrifying, of course, unless you are a kid.