Poke the Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time? - Couverture souple

Godin, Seth

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 024120903X ISBN 13 : 9780241209035

Editeur : Penguin Books Ltd, 2015

Synopsis

Poke the Box is Seth Godin's spirited call to action for anybody too afraid to try something new, now relaunched and repackaged. If you are happy being just a dreamer, perhaps you don't need this book. If you're enjoying the status quo, don't even consider reading this book. If you are content waiting for success to find you, please put this book down and go find something else to read. Why has Poke the Box become a cult classic? Because it's a book that dares readers to do something they're afraid of. It could be what you need, too. "Like the man who produced it, Poke the Box is inspired and inspiring." (Daniel H. Pink). "A one-two punch! Half kick in the ass, half cheerleading encouragement." (Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art).

A propos du livre

Extrait

Also by Seth Godin

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Poke the Box

Acknowledgments

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. “I’ve got an idea, and I’m going to start working on it tomorrow. It won’t take a lot of time and it won’t cost a lot of money, and I think it’s going to work.”

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

You’re 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 wasn’t waiting for instructions, working through a to-do list, or reacting to incoming tasks. She wasn’t 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 couldn’t do.

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

Go. Do that.

***

In China, there’s a factory that can make the same widgets your company makes—for a tenth of the price.

Down the street, there’s 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 didn’t have to grab the reins of authority from the Encyclopaedia 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. In 2012, sixty-seven Web start-ups in San Francisco and New York were funded for what it often costs Silicon Valley to fund just twenty companies. There’s more money chasing more companies that need less money than ever before.

So, if money and access and organizational might aren’t 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 “I’m starting to think about it,” or “We’re 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 aware—aware of the market, of opportunities, of who you are.
   · The second imperative is to be educated, so you can understand what’s 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 you’re 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, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of starting.

Craig Venter 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. It’s not alive.

The motive force—the spark that brings it to life—is missing. Venter still needs to insert some organic tissue, something living, something alive, to transform the project into more than an inert mass of genes.

Surprisingly, that’s precisely your opportunity.

Not to buy a petri dish and a bunch of organic materials. No, the opportunity is bigger than that—it’s 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 kid’s toy, but that didn’t 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.

A kid sees the buzzer box and starts poking it. If I do this, that happens!

Mathematicians call this a function. Put in one variable, get a result. Call and response.

Life is a buzzer box. Poke it.

The Elements of Production

Here’s what’s needed to make something happen:

   · an idea
   · people to work on it
   · a place to build or organize it
   · raw materials
   · distribution
   · money
   · marketing

Amazon.fr

Book Description: If you're stuck at the starting line, you don't need more time or permission. You don’t need to wait for a boss’s okay or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke.

Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-– in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organizations (and most careers)-– the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”

Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.

Love the ideas in Poke the Box?  Be sure to visit TheDominoProject.com for the latest news and special offers.
A Q&A with Seth Godin

Question: What does it mean to Poke the Box?

Seth Godin: Conformity used to be crucial--fitting in, not standing out. Compliance used to be the heart of every successful organization, every successful career. The reason? We all worked for the system, in the factory, doing what we were told. Now, though, compliance is no longer a competitive advantage.

Poke the Box is about the spark that brings things to life. We need to be nudged away from conformity and toward ingenuity, toward answering unknown questions for ourselves. Even if we fail, as I have done many times in my life, we learn what not to do by experience and doing the new.

This isn’t the same thing as taking a risk. In fact, the riskiest thing we can do right now is nothing.

I’ve had an extraordinary run, creating a dozen nationwide bestsellers, starting Internet companies and giving speeches around the world. The key thing I bring to the projects I take on is not more talent than most (I don’t) or even more hours than most (hardly). My contribution is a willingness to poke, to start, to lean into the project and to get it out the door.

Question: What will I learn from reading Poke the Box?

Seth Godin: Hopefully you will learn lots but do more. Start thinking about when you’ve taken initiative in a way that really meant something to you and your team, your family. When was the last time you did something for the first time? How did it feel?

There are no step-by-step how-to instructions in Poke the Box. Instead, you’ll find a series of layers, a foundation for taking a different approach to your work. Instead of learning to be more compliant, I want to push you to be the one who takes initiative.

Question: Why did you write this book?

Seth Godin: I’ve been fortunate enough to hear from almost a million people over the years, to talk with CEOs and bosses and customers around the world. And they all tell me precisely the same thing: it’s the motive force they demand, the person who will shake things up and move them forward.

Static is not an acceptable state. The status quo is no longer something we want at work or in politics or in any organization we care about.

The market is just waiting for people to step forward. I wrote the book for those people, the ones who’ve been hesitating to take the leap.

Question: Why did you start The Domino Project?

Seth Godin: The Domino Project is my latest attempt at "poking." It’s an independent publishing imprint founded by me and powered by Amazon. This is an opportunity to publish "idea manifestos" committed to readers, rather than being bookstore friendly. It’s named after the domino effect--where one powerful idea spreads down the line, pushing from person to person.

I have two audacious goals: I want to change the people who read (not enough do) and I want to change the way books are published (they’re too hard to find and spread). I honestly believe that a book can change a mind like nothing else, and that’s our focus. To help anyone to do work they’re proud of and to make a difference.

Question: Why Amazon?

Seth Godin: I partnered with Amazon so we could leverage what we both do best--Amazon is the leader in global distribution, multiple format production capabilities, and reaching people in the right way, and I want to spread powerful ideas to the people who want to read them.

For 15 years, Amazon has been building an audience and gaining our trust. Many surveys identify them as the most-trusted new brand in the world. Now that Amazon is interacting with more people more often, they have a chance to bring those customers new ideas in innovative ways. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring ideas worth spreading to a huge and eager audience.

Question: Who is Seth Godin?

Seth Godin: I’m an author, entrepreneur, and a person who starts things.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 024120903X
• ISBN 13: 9780241209035
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 96