Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK.
There are problems with this.
Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana marketing folks don’t have to worry about uniformity.
But the monoculture is fragile. When the virus that kills this species spreads, they’ll all disappear.
And there’s little room for innovation, for positioning or to be anything more than a commodity provider. It’s hard to tell a story about a better banana when bananas are all so obviously the same.
My best advice is to avoid being a banana farmer.
December 25, 2025
They seem like they’ll spread to everyone and stick around forever.
This almost never happens.
In order to spread to everyone, they need to move beyond the people who are looking for a new idea. And that happens when existing users have a powerful reason to tell their friends.
Not only that, but the idea has to solve a real problem for people who weren’t sure that there even was a solution to that problem.
And in order to stick around forever, there needs to be a generous lock-in, a reason to not only keep using it, but to not switch to the next thing.
The network effect plus stickiness almost never happens after the idea is launched. It’s about marketing (in the powerful, design sense) not promotion.
December 24, 2025
Under each post on my blog there’s a button that says RANDOM.
I’ll confess that reading posts I wrote ten or twenty years ago is often a surprise. I wrote each one, but I have no recollection of doing so.
We can no longer expect that others will experience an introduction to us and our work in the order we would like. Instead, we present a mosaic to the world, persistent tiles that add up to a whole.
The first difficult task is to consistently and persistently create one tile after another. Showing up to earn trust, attention and a voice.
And the second is to make sure it all rhymes.
December 23, 2025
Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Some people, hoping to avoid responsibility, insist that they don’t have great power.
That’s a choice, but it might undermine what we’re capable of.
[Also worth a thought: with great responsibility often comes great power.]
December 22, 2025
If it takes three to five years for a project to gain traction, it probably doesn’t pay to start a project that the world knows it needs right now.
The challenge is picking something the world will need then. And the hard part is patiently and persistently sticking with it despite the fact that it’s not on everyone’s agenda (yet).
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is tomorrow.
December 21, 2025
Extraordinary organizations have this as their employee handbook. Resilient ones. Human ones that can thrive in the face of automation and AI. Organizations that are built on customer service, hospitality and flexibility.
Of course, this means you’ll need to treat your team with respect and offer them training and dignity. It means you won’t be able to simply write down every single step in the manual, or work as fast as you can to replace people with uncaring software.
The partner of UYBJ is “why?”
If someone asks a team member why they’re doing something, it’s not useful to train them to repeat the policy. The puppetry of “I’m just doing my job” is the opposite of UYBJ. And that means, “because I said so,” while convenient, might not be the best management style.
When a customer asks, “why is it like this?” the professional can answer honestly and with conviction. That’s what it means to use your best judgment.
If you have a job where UYBJ doesn’t apply, it’s worth recognizing that every day you spend there is one where you’ve wasted a chance to learn something new and to take responsibility for what’s next.
Upskilling is the path forward.
December 20, 2025
Some pits are infinitely deep. Problems that, once addressed, always get worse. N +1. For some folks, the acquisition of money or power are like this. A little leads to a desire for more.
Other problems have known solutions. The tank only holds 8 gallons and then you can move on to filling the next one. A third ice cream cone isn’t as good as the first one. Effort leads to satisfaction.
It pays to decide which sort of hole we’re trying to fill.
December 19, 2025
What do you do regularly?
Where do you show up, what do you publish? Who do you ask, and what do you answer to? What gets better because you persist?
Are there systems you support or work to change?
What do you do when you don’t feel like it? Especially then.
The ocean is made of drops. And our practice turns those drops into something of significance.
It’s a practice if we show up even if it’s not working (yet). And it’s a practice if we understand how to make it better.
Our actions become our habits, and our habits attract others. That becomes our community, and our community builds systems. Those systems feel awkward until they become normal, and then, once normal, they become the status quo.
Bolts of lightning rarely change the world, but erosion does. Streams turn into rivers, and rivers persist.
December 18, 2025
In a typical tournament, you don’t score any extra points for winning with the fewest number of moves. Quickly isn’t the point.
December 17, 2025
We don’t use the same language or ideas with an in-law that we do with our bar buddies.
When the internet was young, people often chose to filter themselves online. We didn’t know who was on the other end of the pipe, and we knew it would be there forever. And typing feels more permanent and official than speaking…
Over time, the algorithms rewarded people who were guttural, hurtful, profane and, to use an overused and inefficient word, “authentic.” And so it flipped.
Now, social media is filled with amped-up rants that pretend to be unfiltered, and the standard for discourse is quickly eroding. There’s plenty of data to confirm that we’re spewing words and ideas that would never be tolerated in person, with friends.
Why should our standard for public behavior be lower than it is for the people we know?
Unfiltered doesn’t mean real. Because it’s our filters that make us who we are.
December 16, 2025