Q&A with author Seth Godin on creating an achievement strategy
10/27/2024 23:25
Author Seth Godin drills down on ways to create a strategy for achieving the things you want in life.
When it comes to most things in life, you need a strategy to get there, whether it is building your career, launching a business, or aiming to find ways to make the world better.
That’s the take of the new book "This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans," by New York Times bestselling author Seth Godin.
I am a big fan of Godin’s work, as many of you may be. He’s considered an innovator and leading thinker on, among other topics, marketing and leadership. So his intense drill-down on ways to create a strategy in order to achieve the things you want in life was a must-read.
Here's more of what Godin had to say in a conversation with Yahoo Finance. Edited excerpts:
Kerry Hannon: What is a strategy, and how does it relate to your work and your career?
Godin: A strategy isn't a guaranteed plan. Plans are fine, we need plans, but a strategy is about the future, and the future is unknown.
So your career, whether you're 50 or 15, is a series of choices. It's not just a job, and we've been indoctrinated for it to be just a job. And if you are going to do that, you’re going to be a pawn, a cog at the mercy of whichever system is in charge of you.
But when we find agency, we can have a strategy that says, “I will do this, and this is likely to happen, and then I will do that.” That makes it a strategy.
You have a concept of calling a project a game. Can you elaborate on that?
Games are board games, sure, but most things in our lives are games because there are players and rules and outcomes.
So if you get pulled over for speeding, your interaction with the cop is a game. And if you and that person interact well, it will work out better for both of you. When we call it a game, we have the opportunity to not take ourselves so seriously. Our moves are what's getting judged, not us.
So when you go in to ask for a raise from your boss, which is probably the most profitable 15 minutes anyone will spend, you're playing a game with them. You want something. Your boss wants something. You might not want the same thing. And the moves you make in that game will determine whether you get a raise, not whether you do a good job. That's not why some people get raises and some people don't.
You write about a framework to build a strategy. Can you explain?
It begins with empathy. Other people don't want what you want. They don't see what you see. They don't need what you need, but they have agency too. They need to go along for you to get where you are going. So we need to be aware of who they are and what they want. We need to be cognizant of what's in it for them. And we need to see the systems, the invisible systems that make all of it fit together.
How does money fit into our strategy for our work?
I've spent time with some of the poorest people on the planet. And what's interesting is that people who are making $3, $4, or $5 a day don't seem to worry as much about money as billionaires do.
And that's because billionaires and people who have enough are playing a game. That game involves keeping score of an easily measured metric, a false proxy that "I have a lot of money, therefore I must be creating value. I have a lot of money, therefore I must be doing better." And when someone flashes that proxy in front of us all the time, it's easy to be seduced by it.
You need to make sure you have enough money. And one way to make sure you have enough money is to make sure your expenses are low enough that you have a resilient life. Another way to have enough money is to create value for people who will pay you to solve their problems.
How can I become a strategic thinker?
There are more than 500 questions in the book to ask yourself. The idea is to ask yourself those questions. Or even better, find a partner, have them read the book, and ask each other questions.
Because if you know that every Thursday, you're going to be on a Zoom call answering a couple of questions about what you did this week that was strategic, I promise you that before that call even starts, your mind is going to be in a different place.
If we think about money and credit cards and time, the vast majority of mistakes people make about personal spending happen because they can't wait five minutes.
For five minutes there's an insurmountable pressure to buy that handbag, that pair of shoes, that cigar, and you have a credit card in your hand. So you do it. And now you're going to pay for that for months or years to come because of the interest. But if you can wait five minutes, now you're becoming more strategic.
Because if five minutes from now, you still want that item, we can have a new discussion about that. But most of the time the systems around us have put us under pressure to say yes right now.
Why did you write this book now?
First, the number of people who are between 50 and 75 in the western world is the largest it's ever been. And so there are a lot of important decisions for people at that part of their life cycle to make about how the rest of their life is going to unfold.
On top of that, all of us have more freedom and agency than ever before. You must make decisions. Are you going to be on social media? Are you going to watch the streaming show? Are you going to switch jobs? Are you going to go on Upwork and freelance? You didn't have any of those options previously. And so if you're going to make decisions, why not make them with intent? Why not make them on the path to make things better?
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, including "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in The New World of Work" and "Never Too Old To Get Rich." Follow her on X @kerryhannon.
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