Here are 17 things the most extraordinary people do every day.

 "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit." - you know who said that? This quote is always attributed to Aristotle and yet it was never written by Aristotle. This quote is from Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy. But the point is still a jolly good one. Here are 17 more. 

Taken from "17 things the most extraordinary people do every day" by BILL MURPHY JR. who is a journalist, ghostwriter, and entrepreneur.

1. Examine long-term goals.

If you don't know where you want to go, you'll probably never arrive. So, it's crucial to spend a few minutes each day thinking about where you'd like to be one, five or even 20 years from now. Your goals will change, and that's a good thing. But it's easier to act strategically when you've thought about where you want your dreams to lead.

I have done this with my mentor and coach but it is time to get them on the walls of the office. 

2. Examine daily plans.

Whether you've written it down or not, you have a to-do list. Do the tasks you're accomplishing truly contribute to your long-term goals? Nobody is 100 percent productive, and that's OK. But if you're working your tail off each day to become better at something you don't even want to be doing, that's a sign it's time for a change.

Maybe understanding mobile app analytics in depth really isn't for me - has been on my to do list for 3 months now.  Or maybe I should just...

3. Ask for help.

Nobody does anything worthwhile alone, and asking for help, when done correctly, isn't a sign of weakness--it's a sign of respect. People enjoy being reminded that their knowledge and skills have value to others. Just ask politely, respectfully and on the other person's schedule. If the help leads to a positive outcome for you, make sure you express your gratitude.  

Time to re-engage in the community as a start up and not as a consultant me thinks.

4. Engage in mentorship.

Mentorship has two sides, so on any given day, do two things: Engage with a mentor, and also offer mentorship to someone else. Not every interaction has to be profound; that would be exhausting. However, if you take a few minutes, for example, to reply to someone seeking to enter your field, and later ask a more expert friend to help you refine your start up plan.

I will contact Phil J, Garry P, and Al M and help out a friend who wanted helping. 

5. Give yourself a break.

Extraordinary people recognize that they are just that--people. We're only human, and success (however it's defined) is never an overnight thing. Should you hold yourself to high standards? Sure, but every day, give yourself a pass on a few things you did wrong, and for missing a few items on this list. You're looking for a general, rising slope in all things in life--not an uninterrupted (and unrealistic) sprint to the top. 

Tomorrow is my day off with my daughter (as a Tuesday) so I will turn off my phone and turn on the rest. 

6. Write down what happened.

Life is a journey, so keep a journal. You don't need to be a polished writer or even devote a lot of time to this; even a small effort can pay huge dividends (as we'll see in item No. 7, below). A top military leader who was working 16-hour days in a time of crisis wanted to keep a journal. His solution? Every day he wrote a single haiku poem describing what happened that day and how he felt.

I have blogged about this and then never done it - I am going to create an app which reminds me to write one sentence a day. Should be simple enough. 

7. Build your confidence.

Everybody has crises of confidence; everyone has to learn to overcome fear of failure.

The best ways to win are twofold, and we've already covered the groundwork on this list. First, engage with mentors. People who've been through similar challenges and inspire you and show you the way. Second, remember the challenges you've overcome in the past--say, perhaps, the things you wrote about in your journal. You did it then; you can do it now.

My confidence is low about my body image after being on the TV and seeing how large I have got - see picture -  so it's time for a walk out with my daughter and to find somewhere, where I can do yoga. 

8. Give thanks and compliments.

Just as you sometimes have crises of confidence, so does everyone else around you. So, make it a point to compliment others, and to express your appreciation for what they do. If you end each day having sincerely uttered the words, "thank you" to a colleague, friend, family member and even people you only interact in passing, you'll find this habit pays you back tenfold. 

I will drop everyone a text (including family members) for everyone who 'liked' and / or shared that I was on the BBC over the weekend. As the reaction truly shocked me. 

9. Focus on others.

No matter that you do, you will leave a legacy. The question is whether you'll be remembered for something positive or something negative. So, keep in mind during all interactions, that this might be someone's lasting impression of you. If you want to hear a powerful example of this in action, read this story about actor Robert Downey Jr. I won't ruin it for you; just read it.

Just read it - and if I didn't love Robert Downey Jr. or the characters he plays enough - I do now. 

10. Get some physical exercise.

It doesn't have to be much--just a 20- or 30-minute workout each day can improve your outlook and change your life.

Find me the 20 minutes.... Ok I will make 20 minutes. Christ I blog for more than an hour! 

11. Quit something.

Coming up with a great idea isn't the hard part in life. Instead, it's eliminating 99 out of 100 great ideas, so you can focus on the few that really work. The only way to do that is to be willing to give up on things you've tried but aren't paying off--nevermind the sunk costs.

This is the one that has got to me more than the others combined. 

So I quote from the hyperlink. "It's escalation of commitment,when an entrepreneur has invested resources into a new business, they have difficulty letting go even when things go south or another opportunity arises." Today I quit something, handed my notice in emotionally, and tomorrow I am going to do the same with something else. 

12. Check small things.

Extraordinary people learn to delegate effectively. That can be scary, because it requires trust. You can't possibly check everything you've delegated, but you can check some small things, which in turn creates the possibility you'll check everything.

I don't know what to do about this one - which is probably why I am still blogging so much. Ok I will outsource 75% of the new work I have coming in. 
 

13. Laugh--especially at yourself.

Comedy is the flipside of tragedy. For all the passion with which they pursue their goals, truly extraordinary people keep perspective by recognizing that a well-led life is full of humor. Thus, the most important jokes you'll ever tell are the ones about yourself, even your failures. As H.G. Wells (the writer who gave us War of the Worlds, among many other works) put it, "The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow."

Time to watch some comedy again - perhaps even listen to The Milk Run again - good stuff - a bit dark.

14. Sleep.

Seven to eight hours a night, at least. If not, you're killing your productivity and killing brain cells.

I will nap with Mia around 2 - 4pm - as been up all night blogging away....

15. Continue your education.

Lifelong learning is one of the keys to success. As my colleague Geoffrey James wrote, "[Approach] lifelong learning with a sense of fun that adds pleasure and energy to the tasks at hand. It means expanding your principles and practices so that they serve a greater purpose."

I have signed up for many coding courses.... in an attempt to... 

16. Cultivate outside interests.

All work and no play makes ... well, you know the rest. Let your mind wander every day, and feed it heartily. And, when you've stumbled upon something truly fantastic and worth telling others about...

 Wednesday

17. Share something great.

Did you hear the one about the SEO writer who walked into a bar ["best bars," "taverns" "pubs" "B&B joint," "where should I go tonight?"] (If you laughed, credit this great PR person; if you groaned, blame me.) Seriously, extraordinary people always have something to share, and something truly interesting to talk about--a joke, a story, a bit of good news. Follow their lead.

I share every day - tomorrow I will share some more :)  Perhaps you will share the original of this too?

OK Seth I will. All about taking action after #Fasterclass

#FASTERCLASS

Seth Godin wrote a great blog today and a great one yesterday as well about TIME. Which I referenced at the mid point of my #fasterclass talk sponsored by Justaxi yesterday. 

The #fasterclass event was a great success and the subject of another blog. 

Here I just mention Seth's blog today (as he is virtual marketing mentor of mine) and then at the end - for those of you with TIME - I copy and paste his previous blog. 

This first blog is about "getting rich quick" (well it's a play on this meaning the opposite)  - which is about what James Welch from OVG talked about with his scientific approach to creating a buzz in a city i.e. it takes hard work but if you give more then you create success. 

To reinforce my point and his  - I am going to comment and act on all of the ideas below in reference to Justaxi, Fasterclass, and my own life in marketing. 

Get rich (quick)

Enrich your world by creating value for others.

- I do with my marketing. 

Enrich your health by walking twenty minutes a day.

- I will walk home from the tram everyday rather than getting a taxi from the office (sorry justaxi.)  

Enrich your community by contributing to someone, without keeping score.

- I will do #fasterclass again - even though it was really, hard work. 

Enrich your relationships by saying what needs to be said.

- I will tell our partners what we will do better next time as a group. 

Enrich your standing by trusting someone else.

- I will trust our partners to take what I say on-board.

- I know Chris Marsh will - pictured right...  

Enrich your organization by doing more than you're asked.

- I think I do this already with Justaxi but I can do more. 

Enrich your skills by learning something new, something scary.

- It is time to learn about networking and data science. To become a bit more James. 

Enrich your productivity by rejecting false shortcuts.

- I will put in the time needed to learn deeper mobile analytics from today. 

Enrich your peace of mind by being trusted.

- OK I will take your word for it Seth - and do some more Calm time as well. 

The connection economy pays dividends in ways that the industrial one rarely did. 

Which is exactly what Chris Marsh was talking about at #Fasterclass. 

Seth's second blog is about TIME - which is what I was talking about. 

"I didn't have time"

This actually means, "it wasn't important enough." It wasn't a high priority, fun, distracting, profitable or urgent enough to make it to the top of the list.

Every few days, Twitter and Facebook soak up a billion hours of 'spare' time. Where did that time come from? What did we do before social media was here? Weren't we busy five years ago?

Running out of time is mostly a euphemism, and the smart analyst realizes that it's a message about something else. Time is finite, but, unlike money, time is also replenished every second.

The solution has nothing to do with giving people more time (you can't) and everything to do with creating more urgency, more of an itch, more desire.

Which is a lovely point - nicely mixing with my talk last night for #fasterclass all about speed of marketing - and marketing for the moment. 

A big thanks to Justaxi Manchester best priced taxi app, for sponsoring last night and allowing me to speak there. 

For UKFast for being the venue with some great food. 

And all the companies involved, and especially the speakers who made the event possible - that's Sabine from Apadmi, James from OVG, Chris from UKFast and Dan (that's me) Sodergren from Great Marketing Works. 

Extra special bonus mark for Sabine who got the first blog up there with her notes from the event - all about the role of mobile 

Which is nice as we are a mobile taxi app :) 

Justaxi is Manchester's taxi farecomparison and mobile bookings app - no need to call a taxi - the app gets you the best prices for taxis in Manchester instantly.

No need for taxi numbers or remembering your local Manchester taxi services website - our app find the best taxi prices for you depending on where you are. 

With our app you can book your taxi in Manchester, even by credit card and paypal. It's easy with Justaxi – Manchester’s taxi booking app.

And... if you are really lucky, like the Online Venture Group (picture here) is you can use a promo code and get your mini bus for free. 

It's 15 questions to change your life and more...

This is something I haven't done in a while. It's a version of what I have got 100's of start ups founders to do. It's 15 questions to change your life. 

This  version is from http://thinksimplenow.com/ 

And... an extra idea from Seth Godin to - if I can find it... which when it came out almost 5 years ago - no one really tweeted it much ;) 

Simple Instructions:

• Take out a few sheets of loose paper and a pen.
• Find a place where you will not be interrupted. Turn off your mobile.
• Write the answers to each question down. Write the first thing that pops into your head. Write without editing. Use point form. It’s important to write out your answers rather than just thinking about them.
• Write quickly. Give yourself less than 30 seconds per question. Apart from Q 10 and 11....
• Be honest. Nobody will read it. It’s important to write without editing.
• Enjoy the moment and smile as you write.

15 Questions:

1. What makes you smile? (Activities, people, events, hobbies, projects, etc.)

2. What are your favorite things to do in the past? What about now?

3. What activities make you lose track of time?

4. What makes you feel great about yourself?

5. Who inspires you most? (Anyone you know or do not know. Family, friends, authors, artists, leaders, etc.) Which qualities inspire you, in each person?

6. What are you naturally good at? (Skills, abilities, gifts etc.)

7. What do people typically ask you for help in?

8. If you had to teach something, what would you teach?

9. What would you regret not fully doing, being or having in your life?

10. You are now 90 years old, sitting on a rocking chair outside your porch; you can feel the spring breeze gently brushing against your face. You are blissful and happy, and are pleased with the wonderful life you've been blessed with. 

Looking back at your life and all that you’ve achieved and acquired, all the relationships you’ve developed; what matters to you most? List them out.

11. What are your deepest values? Select 3 to 6 (See list of words - thanks to Think Simple to help you) and prioritize the words in order of importance to you.

12. What were some challenges, difficulties and hardships you’ve overcome or are in the process of overcoming? How did you do it?

13. What causes do you strongly believe in? Connect with?

14. If you could get a message across to a large group of people. Who would those people be? What would your message be?

15. Given your talents, passions and values. How could you use these resources to serve, to help, to contribute? ( to people, beings, causes, organization, environment, planet, etc.)

Your Personal Mission Statement

“Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behaviour with your beliefs”
~Stephen Covey, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’
A personal mission consists of 3 parts:

• What do I want to do?
• Who do I want to help?
• What is the result? What value will I create?

And from Seth Godin... 8 questions and a why

Who are you trying to please?

What are you promising?

How much money are you trying to make?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?

Which people?

Do we care about you?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

And one final thought...a quote from RWE.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” 

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spring springs - but have I sprung too far? A blog on working too hard... and hard working too.

May ALWAYS creeps up on me. I don't know about you. Spring springs and sometimes I don't even notice it has done - so deep is my winter mental slumber. 

However, a lovely day out yesterday at the local park and farm, with my wife, Leanne and my daughter Mia snapped me out of it. 

Whilst running to get ice cream, pulling branches to create flower showers, and stroking baby lambs I realised a few things. 

These 'things' had been introduced to my mind a few hours previously whilst waiting for the bath to run - when I got a chance to literally flick through Re-work. A classic book by 37 Signals. 

2 pages literally jumped out at me.  One on Workaholism which I fear I might be slipping into again under the guise of 'start up zeal' and the other is something I think the whole team I am working with needs to ask itself - why do we do what we do? 

Both are BIG thoughts for now 9.00am on a Monday morning. I hope they inspire you to act before spring has gone.... :) 

Workaholism

Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.

Has there ever been a time when you’ve felt wildly overworked? I’m pretty sure everyone will answer in the affirmative to that question. Now let me ask you this:since you are your own boss, why do you choose to work yourself like a slavedriver?

While you could probably give me any number of reasons to validate your workaholism, the simple fact is that overworking is not necessary. There is always a better way — a more efficient way — to get things done. You just need to figure out what that way is and apply it to your business.

I grew up with a father who was obsessed with his work. He dedicated more to his business than he would now say was healthy. I am determined to avoid the same mistake he made — I am passionate about leading a balanced life that involves work and play in equal measures. I am sure you feel the same, and yet so many of us still overwork ourselves.

Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. The pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honour to kill yourself over a project. No amount of work is too much.

How many times have you come across someone who acts as if their ridiculously long working hours are something to be proud of? Can you actually recognize times when you have acted in that way yourself? It’s utterly absurd when you stop to consider it — why should working too hard be something you’re proud of? Wouldn't building a successful business while working reasonable hours be more impressive?

You may say it’s all very well and good to say that one should work less, but how do you actually go about doing it? Well, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I think Rework offers some quite compelling statements for you to consider carefully:

• Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve.
• [Overworking] isn’t sustainable over time. When the burnout crash comes — and it will — it’ll hit that much harder.
• [Workaholics] try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force.
• No one makes sharp decisions when tired.
• Workaholics aren’t heroes…The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.

I like that last one especially. Give it some thought.

Reasons to Quit

It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

No one likes giving up. It can be relieving to do so but it’s rarely a good feeling. After all, we live in a culture that directly associates giving up with failure. If you stop trying to do something, you have failed in your endeavor.

That may be the case, but I’d rather fail than carry on regardless. Surely applying yourself to something that will eventually fail is far more of a failure than recognizing the futility of your efforts and calling it a day ahead of time?

If you ever feel like you are going down the wrong path or that the work you are doing is not necessarily in your business’ best interests, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the motivation behind what you are doing?
• Who benefits from what you are doing?
• What problem are you solving?
• Is what you are doing useful?
• Are you adding value?
• Is there an easier way?
• What could you be doing instead?
• Is it worth the time/cost/stress?

These are great questions for anyone working in the start up to ask themselves, or any business for that matter. Is there an easier way? Who really benefits from what you are doing? All BIG questions for our team meeting today. Time to get "springing" into action at Justaxi in Manchester. 

Mistaken Identity, HeartBleed, Happiness, Advertising and a Vow to do something different.

I watched Mistaken Identity last night with my lovely lady. The film is really not that funny and a bit sad really, in ways, I think, the creators probably hadn't thought.

But anyways - it contains a few nuggets of wisdom.

One about identity and passwords and things that we should protect. Which means this morning I updated most (if not all) of my passwords. With fear of what heartbleed is doing. 

The other point I but here for my daughter Mia to read later on in life.

It's that money simply does NOT buy you happiness. 

The lady in the film steals people's identities and then their money.

But for me it's more about the lack of happiness this brings her and the fact that she only buys things to interact with the very shop assistants selling her things.

Anyhoo this is what someone MUCH wiser than me has to say about it all...as Mr Chopra has pointed about about modern life...

"This is where a very bad idea enters the picture. It holds that money buys happiness, and the more money you have, the happier you will be. In a sense, capitalism runs on this idea, but I'm not writing to outline the flaws in capitalism. Every economic system generates its own myths and is blind to its own defects if you believe in the system. The real problem with "money buys happiness" is twofold.

First, it's not true beyond a very limited point. Having enough money to be comfortable produces more happiness than living with the stress of poverty and want. Beyond this fairly modest state of financial security (not so modest if you were born into a poor country or have an impoverished background in a rich one) money brings more stress than it's worth.

Positive psychologists seem pretty sure about this finding, looking at a broad range of subjects, although of course there are exceptions - rich people who seem exceedingly happy and poor people who seem the same. Even so, if you really care about your happiness more than your bank account, you shouldn't devote your life to the pursuit of wealth, no matter how much our society glorifies being rich and mythologizes the wealthy as if they live in a paradise on earth.

The second reason that "money buys happiness" is such a bad idea is subtler. The pursuit of money prevents you from finding happiness another way. I hold the minority position about happiness, the one that says lasting happiness depends on our state of awareness, and to find the highest state of happiness, you must reach a higher state of consciousness.

The same view has been held for centuries by all the world's wisdom traditions, and ironically, now is the best time to test it out. In the past, the average person was helpless in the face of poverty, war, and disease. That's no longer true for millions of people who have enough control over their destiny to pursue happiness rather than simply try to survive.

It would be a shame to waste this golden opportunity by thoughtlessly adhering to such a bad idea as "money buys happiness." From the seed of this idea grows offspring, such as the idea that poverty means that you are an inferior person, a loser, or the idea that winning is everything, since winning implies monetary rewards.

Then there's the idea that you can use your money to buy so many glittery toys and distractions that these will constitute happiness, and so on. The truth is that happiness is an inner pursuit that is very different from the pursuit of pleasure or the amassment of a fortune. No one should accept this as a given; it needs to be tested out personally.

In the end, the message of the world's wisdom traditions is a call to find out the truth for yourself.

 It just helps to clear away the underbrush of untruths, and "money buys happiness" is just that.


Deepak Chopra, MD, Founder of The Chopra Foundation, Co-Founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, coauthor of Super Brain with Rudolph Tanzi and for more information visit The Universe Within. Come to the Chopra Foundation Sages and Scientists Symposium 2014."

To end I leave you Mia (and others that might read this) with a lovely advertisement from a country far away. 

Which proves for me two things: 

1. Advertising CAN do something positive.

2. Far away places are somehow much better than ours.

The advert is on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZGghmwUcbQ

The other reason is that at 14.04 today I am going to vow (whilst outside) to re start my own business.

Doing something outside of my time with  Justaxi - Manchester's taxi comparison app

Why 14.04pm you wonder? No reasons apart from it being 14.04 and 14.04.14.

I hope 4's are powerful. 1024 seems to be doing well with them :)

As the idea is in mobile gaming - perhaps it is something I can do with Justaxi as well?

The right moment

Again a wonderful blog by Seth Godin

You might be waiting for things to settle down. 

For the kids to be old enough, for work to calm down, for the economy to recover, for the weather to cooperate, for your bad back to let up just a little...

The thing is, people who make a difference never wait for just the right time. They know that it will never arrive.

Instead, they make their ruckus when they are short of sleep, out of money, hungry, in the middle of a domestic mess and during a blizzard. Whenever.

As long as whenever is now.

-------------

Amazing how Seth does this again and again - about 80% of the above it ME - right now. 

And so I but this here to remind me and hopefully to look back on the day that I decided 

at 14.04 on the 14.04.14 

to do something about it and start my own mobile games company - with a new game all about 4's. 

Oh wait that's 1024. 

I think I had best think of something else in the 4 hours I have left :) 

What people really want is for you to hear them and to do the right thing.

On the dawn of one of the most important focus group's of my life with my client JusTaxi - Manchester's taxi fare comparison app. 

And my birthday being tomorrow as well, Seth Godin's blog below is a wonderful piece to reflect upon.

"Most of the time, people don't want a refund or a bonus. What they really want is for you to hear them and to do the right thing. What if every manager and every customer contact in your organization bought into that?

Here are some things you can do that don't cost any money (but they certainly require effort):

Treat your employees with care and respect

Be consistent in your actions

Keep your promises

Grant others their dignity

Give credit

Take responsibility

When wrong, offer a heartfelt apology

Don't be a jerk

Take the time to actually listen to people

Volunteer to handle the issue

Care"

We do a lot of these at Justaxi - Manchester taxi fare comparison app - but perhaps at Great Marketing Works - Dan Sodergren - doesn't do enough of them. 

Tonight I will do this - a simple action list.

Taken from a blog of someone who has a book coming out which I think I will buy if on Kindle. 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

Distinguishing the “trivial many” from the “vital few” can be applied to every kind of human endeavor and has been done so persuasively by Richard Koch, author of several books on how to apply the Pareto Principle to everyday life. Indeed, the examples are everywhere.

Think of Sir Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, who discovered that just 700 words make up two-thirds of our language (further validated by Zipf's Law).

Think of Warren Buffett’s philosophy, quoted by Mary Buffett and David Clark in The Tao of Warren Buffett, “You only have to do a few things right in your life, so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” 

The authors continue, “Warren decided early in his career it would be impossible for him to make hundreds of right investment decisions, so he decided that he would invest only in the business that he was absolutely sure of, and then bet heavily on them. He owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

Now that IS a book I have read. And took to heart. 

The advice in there is similar to what can happen with software and mobile apps - two things I love - as often you can have an app that tries to do too many things and therefore does nothing well. The same can be said for software and even computer games. Often simple is best. 

Which is something we are finding out at JusTaxi - Manchester's taxi fare comparison app - as under my (and others) thinking we removed half of the screens and at least two features / functions. This resulted in a 200% increase in numbers of people booking the best taxi prices in Manchester on our app.  

On a different but similar vein, about not being overwhelmed, Greg McKeown who wrote this article says - he recommends a simple action list.

1. Before you leave the office today, write down your top six priorities for tomorrow on a Post-it note.

2. Cross off the bottom five.

3. Write down your priority on a Post-it note and put it on your computer.

4. Schedule a 90-minute window to work on your top priority — preferably the first thing of the day.

5. Every time you are about to check email, Facebook, Twitter etc., write down what you are about to do.

Let's see how this goes. 

Two books that each tech start up (or any start up needs to read)

This is a great blog by a chap called Geoffrey Moore. 

It is very relevant for us here at JusTaxi - Manchester's first taxi comparison app as it explains a lot about two key books for us. 

After these two books I would like to add a third - as I believe it completes the set and gives readers a real chance of making a difference. 

As Geoffrey puts it: "To the degree that Crossing the Chasm could have been called the go-to book for entrepreneurs in the 1990s, one could argue the same role for Eric Ries’s The Lean Start-Upfor the first decade of this century. Both books describe an emerging market dynamic and prescribe a very specific approach to capitalizing on it. Of course, that is all history. The really interesting question is, what is the book for the current decade?

Actually, I’d like to argue it is the combination of these two books, a one-two punch if you will. Here’s how I see it playing out.

The Lean Start-Up is all about compressing the early stages of an innovation cycle by engaging the target customer right from the start. A key ingredient in Ries’s prescription is theminimum viable product, something to put in the hands of early adopters for immediate feedback to help direct the next stage of an iterative, agile development process. Every chapter in the book vibrates with the energy of this kind of acceleration, whether to outpace a next generation of competition or to escape from the clutches of a past paradigm’s conventional wisdom.

For consumer products, particularly those that are digital end to end, this playbook can take you straight into the tornado—no chasms, no bowling alleys, just Zappos and you are there! More generally, for the user-facing portion of any enterprise system, this lean approach is excellent for keeping your development effort on a path to value. What it is not suited for, on the other hand, is doing the heavy lifting required to displace or engage with legacy infrastructure. That is where Crossing the Chasm comes in.

A key concept that structures that book might be called the minimum viable whole product.This refers to that set of products and services needed to fulfill a specific target market segment’s compelling reason to buy. In an enterprise crossing-the-chasm context, this means an end-to-end solution to a heretofore intractable problem that is becoming increasingly impossible to ignore, a solution that integrates appropriately with the customer’s surrounding legacy systems.

Such whole product solutions inevitably entail collaboration with other parties in the marketplace who provide complementary products and services, integration support, change management consulting, and the like. 

Securing this collaboration is only possible when the entrepreneurial vendor can provide ready access to an untapped market opportunity that promises material gains to the partners involved. This requires target market focus, specific domain expertise, and sustained effort, not to mention a target customer who is deeply motivated to stay the course. It is not for the flighty or faint of heart.

(This is one of the reason that we here at Justaxi - are doing more and more focus groups and are asking our customers, more and more questions about what we can do to excel their expectations - click here for my blog post of creating Manchester's taxi fare comparison app.) 

In short, the cadences and style of these two prescriptions are very different, so different one might ask why would you ever want to pair them? The answer is, because the world needs us to. 

For the foreseeable future (the rest of this decade and probably much of the following one), enterprises across the globe will be spending the bulk of their budgets deploying systems of engagement to digitize their business models. 

These systems must both delight their end users and integrate securely and reliably with legacy systems of record. That’s a lot of work, as in trillions of dollars, not billions. The front end needs The Lean Start-Up. The back end needs Crossing the Chasm."

Amen to that. 

For startups like Justaxi - a taxi fare comparison app based in Manchester -  I would add in another great resource and book - The Start up Owner's Manual  which I think compliments the above brilliantly. Not only that but the author Steve Blank - is a bit of a legend.