Close the Distance

The best Spider-Man movie hands down is Into the Spiderverse. I say that because it's the most thought-provoking. It delivers the most of what we'd want in a Spider-Man movie and extracts the least. That's the concept I'm sharing for the day:

Close the Distance

During the pandemic, food delivery boomed as restaurants were closed down. We learned rather quickly which delivery apps worked better than others, which websites were easier to order from, and more often than not, which restaurants were dragged kicking and screaming into the modern day. In all cases, what a buyer needs is to close the distance between "I would like THIS, please" and "Okay, here's your thing." That's the beginning and end of consumer business at this point: How fast can I get the thing I asked for?

Sometimes, it's technology that gets in the way. Something might not be digitized and ready to go. Other times, it's our own methods that mess something up. Let's talk about presenting information of any kind.

A LOT of people waste time giving people a whole lot of backstory and history when what they really should do is just present the specific point being made, or ask for the decision they're hoping to reach. That's why Into the Spiderverse works. You don't need the backstory. They'll give you a few sentences tops and then move to the action.

Cut the Edges

I'm an investor in a piece of software that makes meetings better. I've been pitching this idea of how cool it would be that when we open the meeting space, it's already tuned into a new configuration to match the purpose of the meeting. For instance, a Status meeting might show a timeline chart and we'd all have little sticky notes we could add to the timeline. A knowledge transfer meeting might have more drawing and editing tools. A networking meeting after an event would show not only our video headshot, but also give links to our CV and other background info. Things like that.

The idea is that imaging launching something like Zoom and you're already more than halfway to popping up the kind of meeting tools you need for your specific meeting.

What if your car's dashboard had only the buttons you needed when driving or navigating or whatever few features you wanted to access?

Communicate with Speed

In coaching today, I helped a colleague with what to say for an upcoming meeting. "I'd like to talk with you about (__ this role __) and show you my thoughts for if I ran the project." In that one sentence, we summed up the entire purpose for the meeting so that this person's boss could prepare for what was going to be covered in the meeting. If I wanted to cut this even further, I'd propose a specific time for a 20 minute appointment.

That's the goal. Close the distance, cut the edges off, and communicate with speed.

What do you think? Does this make sense to you?

Chris...