Your product isn’t perfect, and that’s probably ok. In most cases, the perfect product doesn’t exist, so you just need to have the best available option.

Your product doesn’t need to be perfect

If the perfect option existed, they’d buy it. Since there’s no such thing as the perfect offering, people are happy to settle for the Next Best Alternative.

If you need a new phone, you probably have an idea of what the perfect phone would be. It doesn’t exist, and so your “next best alternative” is likely going to be something like the iPhone 13 or the Pixel 6. They’re both imperfect, but one of them might be what you consider to be the best choice available.Your product or service offering is the same. It’s not perfect, and people shouldn’t expect it to be. In fact, if you aren’t ashamed of those shortcomings, it can help your customer better appreciate what you have to offer. It’s not unlike<a href="https://www.mickmel.com/if-you-dont-say-no-your-yes-is-meaningless/"> saying “no” to help give your “yes” more power</a>.

The Next Best

Take any product that is considered to be best in class, and you can quickly find some issues with it. The iPhone doesn’t offer some of the flexibility of Android. A Tesla doesn’t have the same range as gas-powered cars. Gmail is missing some features that other alternatives provide.

Your product isn't perfect, and that's probably ok. In most cases, the perfect product doesn't exist, so you just need to have the best available option. Take any product that is considered to be best in class, and you can quickly find some issues with it. The iPhone doesn't offer…

business

Business

startup

Startups

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Your product doesn't need to be perfect - Mickey Mellen

The concept of “modal bias” is simply the thought that our idea or approach is best. We all think that, but it can become much more troublesome when a <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/dont-let-the-hippo-have-the-final-say/">HiPPO</a> (the highest paid person in a meeting) falls into that trap and we all need to follow it.Once a HiPPO thinks they have the right answer, the only way to fight back is with data.

Data beats Modal Bias

It’s critically important to support business proposals and decisions with data. In the absence of data, you’ll ultimately be forced to do things the boss’s way. Modal Bias ensures that the bosses think that their way is best, unless you can prove otherwise. In a battle of opinions, the HiPPO always wins.

“In God we trust… all others bring data.”

If you can bring data to support your points, your boss should pay attention to that. If your boss repeatedly refuses to see the data, that’s another problem entirely. If you find yourself as the HiPPO in a situation, try to stay open to other ideas and data that may refute what your initial thoughts were.

The concept of "modal bias" is simply the thought that our idea or approach is best. We all think that, but it can become much more troublesome when a HiPPO (the highest paid person in a meeting) falls into that trap and we all need to follow it. Once a…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

teamwork

Teamwork

Data beats Modal Bias - Mickey Mellen

We’re coming to that point in the year when many January 1st goals are beginning to fade. In some cases that can be kind of a bad thing (“no more eating healthy!”), but in a lot of cases it’s because your plans have merely shifted, and that’s often a great result.

Plans never work perfectly, but they’re essential

No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one… Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

When we’re building a large website, it’s often a 4-6 month process that involves many hundreds of little steps (<a href="https://www.greenmellenmedia.com/services/web-design-and-development/full-website-build/">inside of five big steps</a>) along the way. As things progress, there are always some tweaks to be made to keep things going toward the goal that was set, and this “battle” never goes precisely according to plan.

Little steps

Let your plans be flexible, but don’t think they can be ignored completely.

We're coming to that point in the year when many January 1st goals are beginning to fade. In some cases that can be kind of a bad thing ("no more eating healthy!"), but in a lot of cases it's because your plans have merely shifted, and that's often a great…

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

timemanagement

Time Management

Plans never work perfectly, but they're essential - Mickey Mellen

Our agency is a big believer in data. We track website metrics, social media metrics, email marketing metrics, and pull in great <a href="https://www.greenmellenmedia.com/heat-maps-what-value-do-they-provide/">tools like heatmaps</a> to take things even further. However, a problem that can quickly arise is having too much data. It’s easy to build a giant report that shows everything, but the result of that is often that the key metrics get buried.

More data = less value

The biggest offenders tend to be digital marketing agencies and SEO agencies that send 100-page reports to their clients. It’s always a big red flag. Usually means it was outsourced by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.Experts know how to make things easy to understand, not harder.

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter

Our dashboards work well, but really any method that you use to take lots of data and break it down is an excellent way to provide more value to those you serve.

Our agency is a big believer in data. We track website metrics, social media metrics, email marketing metrics, and pull in great tools like heatmaps to take things even further. However, a problem that can quickly arise is having too much data. It's easy to build a giant report that…

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

There are two main ways you can approach the internet:<ol><li>You can be patient and giving, contribute to the discourse, and leave it better than you found it.</li><li>Work to squeeze every bit of value out of it and not worry about what’s left when you’re done.</li></ol>Individuals likely have some granular levels between those, but businesses are often much more black and white.

Leave it better than you found it

For example, I got an unsolicited message on a LinkedIn a few days ago that said the following:"Our team has launched (redacted), sales & prospecting automation software for Linkedin that allows you to not only automate connection requests and messages you send, but also create campaigns and build sales funnels on Linkedin."

The Message

Automation can be a good thing. If you find a tool that helps you streamline your workflow, go for it! Computers and the internet can make many aspects of our life much easier, and that should be celebrated.However, if the primary use of a tool is to reach more people, that’s just called spam. Even if it doesn’t make you look dumb (<a href="https://www.mickmel.com/marketing-automation-gone-bad/">like Mountain View Ford</a>), you’re still contributing to make the internet a worse experience for everyone.

Automation can be good

When you go hiking or camping, you’re encouraged to leave things better than when you found them. We should strive to do the same online.

There are two main ways you can approach the internet: You can be patient and giving, contribute to the discourse, and leave it better than you found it.Work to squeeze every bit of value out of it and not worry about what's left when you're done. Individuals likely have some…

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

A key to understanding how well you know a subject is how easily you’re able to explain it to others. As I shared last year in “<a href="https://www.mickmel.com/explain-it-to-me-like-im-five/">Explain it to me like I’m five</a>“, being able to distill a complex subject down is a great skill to develop.

If you can’t describe it, you don’t know it well enough

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.”

<ol><li>It helps you to better understand what you’re actually doing. Taking the time to write out a process is often very beneficial for the one doing it.</li><li>Long-term, it makes it easier for others to help with your work. At the time of this writing, our project manager at GreenMellen is out on maternity leave, but the processes that we have in place for her work allow us to continue on relatively seamlessly (though we’re very excited to have her back soon!).</li></ol>

The two benefits of a solid process

Having a solid understanding of what you do, including analogies and processes, will help make your work easier for others to understand, and the output of it more valuable for others to consume.

A key to understanding how well you know a subject is how easily you're able to explain it to others. As I shared last year in "Explain it to me like I'm five", being able to distill a complex subject down is a great skill to develop. In the case…

career

Career

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

If you can't describe it, you don't know it well enough

Time-shifting can be a wonderful thing. I talked last year about <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/time-shifting-and-clubhouse/">how time-shifting is so helpful for entertainment and communication</a>, which is why I suspected Clubhouse might have trouble staying relevant.There’s another angle to be considered, and that’s time-shifting your effort.

Time-shifting your effort

Part of this is pretty obvious, when you schedule your work around various other priorities and focus when it’s time to focus. If you have an information-oriented job, it’s often pretty easy to slide around your workload to fit your schedule.However, looking ahead can help a bit more and I’ve seen this come up in two ways.

Effort

The first is the weekly preview. My routines can vary a little bit, but <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/weekly-previews-are-intentionally-inefficient/">I haven’t missed a weekly preview in a few years now</a>. Some are more in-depth and some are rushed, but they always get done.The beauty of these are to identify issues well in advance, because solving them the day they arise can be way more difficult. For example, if my wife and I both have a meeting at 3:00 one afternoon, neither of us can pick up our daughter from school. If we discover the overlap a week early, we can adjust schedules or find a friend to help. If we discover the issue at 2:55 that day, it’s a big problem.

Weekly

The second is just looking at the day ahead. A few days ago, I knew I’d have a busy Saturday morning running some errands, and I wasn’t sure the best route to get from one to the next. Complicating things further is that they weren’t easy things to just look up the address for (one was a weekly vegetable pickup, the other was an emissions test I needed at a place I didn’t know the name of).In this case, I looked them up the night before and put the events (and addresses!) in my calendar. When I hopped in the car, Android Auto knew where I needed to be next and it was one tap from stop to stop.

Daily

In both cases, I time-shifted my effort back to an earlier time in order to help future me have an easier time with things. I’m not always good about seeing those issues in advance, but the weekly preview really helps expose a lot of them, and then being wise enough to take the time then to solve them is something I never regret. 

Time-shifting can be a wonderful thing. I talked last year about how time-shifting is so helpful for entertainment and communication, which is why I suspected Clubhouse might have trouble staying relevant. There's another angle to be considered, and that's time-shifting your effort. Effort Part of this is pretty obvious, when…

productivity

Productivity

Absence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can’t observe. It seems pretty obvious — if we can’t observe something, of course we’ll be blind to it. That shouldn’t always be the case, though, and absence Blindness can lead to two problems.

Absence Blindness rewards drama

First is the lack of ability to “do nothing”, even if that’s the right move. I <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/we-have-to-do-something-about-it/">shared last year</a> about a number of situations where the urge to “do something” was absolutely not the right move.

Do Nothing

Second is the problem of efficient workers often being overlooked. Suppose you have two employees doing the same job:<ul><li>One of them is quiet, doesn’t say much, and gets their job done.</li><li>The other is more chaotic, causes a variety of problems, but then works hard to fix the problems they’ve created.</li></ul>In most cases, the second one will be more noticed and more likely to be promoted.

Being Overlooked

Great management is boring—and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become an issue. Some of the best managers in the world look like they’re not doing much, but everything gets done on time and under budget.

Some of the best people I’ve ever worked with have been quiet, unassuming, and simply get things done. They’re fantastic! I work hard to make sure people like that don’t slip under the radar, and I hope others can do the same for them as well.

Absence Blindness is a cognitive bias that prevents us from identifying what we can't observe. It seems pretty obvious -- if we can't observe something, of course we'll be blind to it. That shouldn't always be the case, though, and absence Blindness can lead to two problems. First is the…

remotework

Remote Work

If you run auditing tools on your website, they’ll often find “toxic” links (from spammy sites) that link to yours, and advise you to work to get rid of those links. While those links won’t do you any good, they’re not worth worrying about.Generally speaking, your best course of action when you find those links is to just ignore them. I know it feels like <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/we-have-to-do-something-about-it/">you have to do something about them</a>, but you really don’t. As Google’s John Mueller clarified, you’re welcome to disavow them using a tool like <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/first-steps-google-search-console/">Google Search Console</a>, but you don’t need to.

Toxic Links

(in response to a list of toxic links from a tool)"You should just ignore that. Some tools make assumptions about Google that just aren’t correct."

We don’t have a notion of “toxic” links.

Google is pretty smart. They know who the spammers are, and they just don’t count those links for anything. You can use <a href="https://search.google.com/search-console/disavow-links">their Disavow tool</a> if you want, but you run the risk of making things worse, and you’re best to leave well enough alone.

If you have toxic links pointing to your website, just ignore them

As with many things in life, you might feel like you need to do something to help, but just leaving it alone and moving on to better things is the way to go.

If you run auditing tools on your website, they'll often find "toxic" links (from spammy sites) that link to yours, and advise you to work to get rid of those links. While those links won't do you any good, they're not worth worrying about. Generally speaking, your best course of…

parenting

Parenting

Branding has been a hot word in marketing for many years, and for good reason — a strong brand can help make sales that a weaker brand wouldn’t be able to make.

Your brand is simply your reputation

Somewhat related are your Google search results. When people search for you, the items that come up matter – a lot. The <a href="https://www.mickmel.com/google-search-results-big-part-brand/">more you can control them, the better you’ll appear</a>. You can’t directly control reviews and conversations, but you can do a lot of work to help ensure that those show positive sentiment toward your company.

Google

When business professionals say they want to “enhance their brand” or “build brand equity,” they almost always mean “improve their reputation.”

Word hard to treat people right and keep a strong reputation, and your brand will make people feel the way you always hoped it would.

Branding has been a hot word in marketing for many years, and for good reason -- a strong brand can help make sales that a weaker brand wouldn't be able to make. What is your brand, though? While building a solid visual identity and messaging framework is vitally important to…