
Seth's Blog: When you stand for something - pbnaidu
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/when-you-stand.html
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DabAsteroid
A simplified version of the essay, created by translating a very few words:

    
    
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_When you are bigoted

People and brands and organizations that are bigoted benefit as a result.
Bigotry helps you build trust, makes it easier to manage expectations and aids
in daily decision making. Bigotry also makes it more fun to do your gig,
because you're on a mission, doing something that matters. Of course, there's
a cost. You can't get something for nothing.

It's frustrating to watch marketers, politicians and individuals fall into the
obvious trap of trying to be bigoted at the same time they try to please
everyone or do everything.

You can't be the low-price, high-value, wide-selection, convenient, green,
all-in-one corner bigoted market. Sorry.

You also can't be the highly-bigoted CEO who just this one time lets an
accounting fraud slide. "Because it's urgent."

You can't be the big-government-fighting, low-taxes-for-everyone, high-
services-for-everyone, safety-net, pro-science, faith-based, anti-deficit
bigoted candidate either.

You can't be the work-smart, life-in-balance, available-at-all-hours, high-
output, do-what-you're-told bigoted employee.

To really be bigoted, you must make difficult decisions, mostly about what you
don't do. We don't ship products like that, we don't stand for employees like
that ("you're fired"), we don't fix problems like that.

It's so hard to be bigoted, to not compromise, to give up an account or lose a
vote or not tell a journalist what they want to hear.

But those are the only moments where being bigoted actually counts, the only
times that people will actually come to believe that you in fact actually are
bigoted.

If you have to change your story because your audience is different (oh, I'm
on national TV today!) (oh, this big customer wants me to cut some key
corners) you're going to get caught. That's because the audience is now
unknown to you, everything is public sooner or later, and if you want to build
a brand for the ages, you need to be bigoted today and tomorrow and every
day._

