Many of us (myself included) love Steve Jobs, but that’s the problem – we can’t imagine Apple without him.

Today I’m reminded of Seth Godin’s comments during the launch of his Tribes book (in response to a question from the floor at 1hr 23m):

“Apple’s stock going down every time after time someone thinks Steve Job is sick? That’s a huge ego play for Steve – he shouldn’t do that. Steve should have a bench of eight people who are leading the tribe in eight really useful different directions so it won’t matter – he’s going to retire one day and you have to plan for that.”

The Telegraph says that Apple needs to act fast on Steve Jobs succession plan, but that would make it a reaction rather than a plan, right? A succession plan is something that you organise before the CEO gets sick, avoiding a drop of 8% in the company’s share price.

I think everyone should have a succession plan, including employees. For a few years now I’ve had the attitude of making myself redundant in any role I find myself in – if my employer or client still needs me after a long period of time, I can’t have done my job properly.

If in two years I’m the only one who can do my role, I’ve failed to share information and train others. If I’m the only champion for an idea after six months then I’ve failed to either create a valuable idea or to spread it. Instead of attempting to cling to my current role, I should be looking to outgrow it, ready for the next challenge. And as I do this I’ll add more value to my employer/client by sharing my knowledge and skills with other employees. In turn this makes more valuable to this client and my next – it’s a virtuous cycle.

Of course, I’ve never succeeded in making myself redundant, but I’m slowly getting better at it. Maybe one day you and I can make the share price of company go up on the day we leave, rather than down.

Get well, Steve.

“The lyric is pure torment. One of the things that was happening at the time was the collision in my own mind between being faithful to your art or faithful to your lover. What if the two are at odds? Your gift versus your domestic responsibility? […] I remember thinking: ‘Is the life of an artist? Am I going to have kids and settle down and betray my gift or am I going to betray my marriage?'”

“I thought these tensions were going to destroy me but actually, in truth, it is me. The tension, it turns out, is what makes me an artist. Right in the centre of a contradiction, that’s the place to be. […] If I had cut loose, what would have become of me? I remember looking at [artists who had] acted with abandon, and had lost marriages, bands, friendships, all in pursuit of the muse. But the muse is taciturn and can abandon you, leaving you with nothing. My muse has different demands. If I’d gone that route, many of my best songs would have gone unwritten. Or if I’d taken the other road, which is straightforward, given myself over to the domestic side of life, the songs would have been lost. It’s the tension between the two that keeps me sharp. You don’t have to resolve them, just don’t go too far either way.”

Recently my brother and I visited a high street, high-end audio equipment retailer. In the hushed tones of faux luxury we browsed under the gaze of a self-important salesman. My brother didn’t need him – he knew all the models, the specs, comparison prices and that some of these very expensive hi-fi units were already superceded. We walked out without conversation or purchase.

The concept of a middleman as a gatekeeper – someone you must go through to purchase – died several years ago. The only way to survive as a middleman now is to add value that a customer needs and can’t obtain on their own. Be an advisor, simplifier, connector, risk carrier, troubleshooter … whatever your prospective customers need.

Near my office is a cafe that has practically no foot traffic, is almost always empty and changes hands every year or so. For each new owner the temptation is obvious – a fully fitted kitchen & cafe with low rent. There’s also a conceit – ‘I can run this business better than the last guy’.

Sadly each of the three owners I’ve met ran the cafe in exactly the same way – as a completely conventional cafe inviting passers-by to drop in for a coffee or light snack. It’s a business model that requires plentiful prospective customers and a scarcity of competition. Funnily enough, that kind of location doesn’t come with low rent.

“Build it and they will come” doesn’t apply for any business – you need to give people a good reason to visit. A reason worth stopping what they were doing, traveling at their cost to your business and giving you their hard-earned cash. If you don’t know what that reason is, your prospective customers certainly don’t.

I was talking with a shop assistant recently – her job was not secure and her mother was worried that “at nineteen you’ll lose the only job you’ve ever had”.

Why would someone cling to a job where they sit alone in an empty store? If it appears foolish it’s because we can see possibilities for her that she can’t. But from her perspective she’s safe inside her small world – the outside world offers only fear.

The key is to realize that we’re all in the same situation – no matter how large our world, it’s all we know. You’ll never know what possibilities lie outside it unless you step out and take a look.

Perhaps the Men in Black say it best:

I grew up on Sanitarium Weet-Bix for breakfast – my folks bought it because it was healthy with only 3.3% in sugars. Moreover, Sanitarium took the high moral ground in the 80s and 90s, waging war with Kellog’s Nutrigrain and others by pointing out that their high sugars content (33% for Nutrigrain) was not at all nutritious.

Since then Sanitarium have presumably decided that making money is more important than health, and have released two Weet-Bix Crunch products – Honey and Cocoa – in which the sugars content is 29.4% and 28.7% respectively. Ultimately that doesn’t bother me – it’s their brand and they can dilute it if they want to.

What does bother me, however, is that having set the brand expectation of low sugar products over many decades of commitment to that brand promise, the packaging for the 28.7% sugar Weet-Bix Crunch Cocoa tells me only how good it is:

I used to be able to trust Sanitarium to tell me what was healthy for me – I could buy any of their products without reference to the nutritional panel. Now I can’t. Now I must interpret what they say about their products, and compare the nutrional content of their products to those of other brands. And as soon as I’m forced to do that, I have no brand preference for any of the entire Sanitarium product range.

The dumbest part of this is that we’ll all find out anyway, so it can be stated upfront. Find a way to prominently state that it’s got a higher sugar content than we expect and we might buy it as a treat for our kids anyway.

Trust needs no interpretation or comparison.