Stop Exceeding Expectations, Suck Less First.

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Companies set inspiring goals. They tend to want to constantly exceed the (often less-than-optimally informed) expectations of Wall Street Analysts. They tend to invite motivational speakers to get the employees to think differently, push through to new frontiers, CHANGE THE WORLD!!!!

I completely understand this pattern. Who does not want to shoot for the moon or massively exceed their mom's expectations?

I've come to learn that this desire to overachieve also comes at a very heavy cost—it drives sub-optimal behavior. 

Instead, I recommend this as the #1 goal for your company: Suck less, every day.

Whatever you do today, consciously suck less at it.

Take your product, and make it suck a little less today. 

Make the packaging a little easier to open. Fix the small bugs that annoy 20% of your users, even if it won’t get you the Engineer of the Year award. Why can't I tweet with a full-sized image using my mobile browser, but I can using the desktop browser? Make the spokes on your bicycles last 10% longer.

Most of your life is spent in meetings; do something to make them suck less. 

No status update meetings. Adapt them to introverts. End them 10 mins early. Come with a plan, leave with AIs. Have 5 chargers in every conference room for company laptops and phones. Book a two-hour meeting on Friday afternoon for a lot of people, then cancel it so that they can go home early.

Go to your company website, and please, please, please, make it suck less. 

The Starwood WiFi login page at this hotel only works in Edge! The Hyatt site wants my login and password AND last name?! Why can't your site give me accurate shipping info? For Krishna’s sake, why don't you have Chat support in 2018? Realize auto-playing videos during page load is evil. Have a crystal clear return policy—don't hide it, either.

Take your employee performance review process, and make it suck less. 

Don't reject promotions because you value the Why over the What—the omelette of progress requires breaking some eggs called inertia. Ensure that there is no systematic gender or racial bias. Don't surprise people with their ratings. Be publicly explicit about how you make decisions.

Bust bureaucracy. 

Twice a year, let everyone on the ground submit bureaucracy busters, and fix every single one that takes less than 30 days. Look at your PO process; eliminate one signature. Increase the limits on when an employees need to submit a receipt—I suggest $75. Democratize power.

Once you start sucking less, you start seeing opportunities everywhere...

• Consider your retail store layout. Imagine a stressed parent walking in—now change two small things that make her/his life better.
• Empower your Customer Support team to spend a certain amount of money to fix a customer's problem, no questions asked.
• Your emails are too pimpy, and too frequent! What would you do differently if you personally received them every day? That, do that.
•  Print out your banner ads with less than 1% click-thru rate, burn them in a bonfire, and have the marketers dance around the fire. After this cathartic experience, stop running all those ads and start anew with fresh imagination.
• Kill 50% of your automated reports. No one will miss them. A month later, delay the other 50% by a week. Now you'll know the 5 reports out of 80 that people actually find valuable.
• Automatically refund shipping when the customer receives their order more than 48 hours late—and tell them. Oh, and fix the problem!
• There is a sign at Avis LAX: If you prepay for fuel at Avis here, it is $3.34/gallon. In the middle of this massive city, if you return the car with less than full gas, it is $9.94/gallon. #suckless Oh, and if you drive "short distances" (52 miles in my case) they'll still go ahead and charge you $14.99 Fuel Service - though I returned the fuel tank full. If your company's name evokes the word "scumbags!" - though you have lots of great employees - it is time to urgently suck less.

Bottom line: A certain amount of attention needs to be paid to radical innovation, because companies need that to last for a very long time. However, that can't be your all-consuming focus. That radical innovation can't be your main slogan. If you adopt the suck less, everyday mantra, all the small things will add up to a whole lot.

It might not be sexy, but sucking less is a valid path to radical peace + radical profits.

Carpe diem!

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