I have been fascinated by the thinking, writing, and example of Seth Godin for many years now. In fact, at one point I wrote a post called “How To Seth Godin Yourself” which was based on my observations of Seth.
When Seth announced The Domino Project (a new way to think about publishing) a few months ago I was interested to see what he was up to. The first Domino Project book came out this week and it was from Seth. The book is called Poke the Box.
Poke The Box = Start And Finish, Then Repeat
Poke the Box is a manifesto to provoke people off their mental and emotional pause buttons so they’ll hit the “play” button instead. Rather than providing a total review of the book I’m going to highlight seven great quotes from the book. You’ll get a sense of the book from these quotes and they do a better job of representing the quality and perspective you’ll get than anything I can say.
- “I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance.” (page 14)
- “Employees wait to be picked for promotion, or to lead a meeting or to speak up at a meeting. ‘Pick me, pick me’ acknowdeges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone 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. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” (pages 24 & 25)
- “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.” (page 29)
- “It’s hard to imagine Spock and Kirk landing on a planet and just relaxing for a month or two. Just hanging out has nothing to do with boldly going where no one has gone before.” (page 35)
- “Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action.” (page 42)
- “Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance. (page 57)
- “As you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. This increbibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a definsible business asset.” (page 81)
