It's the Little Things
That make Big Gains
Have you ever been to Radio City to see the Rockettes perform?
It’s a group of beautiful girls who still have the mobility to kick, smile, and have looks to hypnotize men.
But they are all just a commodity, one is as good as the other, right? You can’t remember anything except the feeling and entertainment they gave you.
When I had a nice Saturday lunch with one of them with my girlfriend at the time, it added a little color and depth to the conversation.
The problem I have is that I have a lot of questions and most of them she heard before and I don’t like to be superficial. So if you want to know anything, I didn’t get much.
Except knees.
She’s got to watch them.
It’s painful.
Every kick you admire comes at a cost.
And it can be her last.
The Kicker Nobody Remembers (Until They Do)
Kickers in the NFL are just lowly paid grunts. Sometimes a few are greater than the view that this is just a throwaway part of the game. There is an art in it and we saw it last night with Seahawks kicker Jason Myers.
Maybe the position is not MVP material yet, but the amount of confidence and form you need for that position is ridiculous.
Like a tennis or golf player.
My gym teacher in middle school was a professional kicker but couldn’t make it in the NFL. Everything was by the book with him.
But we learned the most essential sports needs for a man:
dart throwing and Frisbee
how to make a football spiral and cornhole throwing
“Believe me you’ll thank me later.”
The difference between the Rockettes and Jason Myers?
The Rockettes are engineered for uniformity which is the whole point. You’re not supposed to remember any individual dancer. They succeed because they’re interchangeable. But that lunch conversation revealed what the spectacle hides: the knees, the pain, the human cost behind every synchronized kick.
Myers is the opposite.
Last night, in the moment that mattered, all that talent on both teams, all those millions in salary, compressed down to one man’s form, nerve, and execution.
Did he even earn a mil?
My gym teacher had the technique, but not whatever intangible separates a professional from a professional.
So What Does This Have to Do With AI?
With AI, the large corporations are treating both employees and its customers as just products.
I feel that currently, as it is being approached.
The big corporations are lumping it in as just ways to fire people and have bad support, since they are monopolies. My recent encounters with T-Mobile and American Express confirm it.
How many times does it take to enter your “personal information,” then a dude comes on to talk with you and ASK YOU AGAIN the info that you just gave?
How many #s, questions, verifications are required before the automated voice will patch you to the right department?
I don’t want a pre-recorded voice.
This is good because if they do indeed have crappy service, it means they have a MOAT and don’t care about your feelings.
On the other hand, when I see a competitor that can deliver the goods, they are going to collapse.
The question you need to ask: Is the AI being built as a Rockette or a Jason Myers?
Example
What if you treated a dancer individually
And value her talents?
In Living Color the famous 90s sketch comedy that spawned many greats most memorably Jim Carrey also gave
Jennifer Lopez her start as a background dancer that was known collectively as the Fly Girls.
Notice how the creator of Living Color gave each of the dancers value
Look for the patterns
My gym teacher taught us dart throwing and Frisbee because we weren’t going to be pros but we were most definitely going to be in social situations that these can help establish status.
Not chess.
The Seahawks had a great kicker because it’s the little things.
The companies treating everything as a commodity that they can outsource just as they did to China are going to have a wake-up call eventually.
If your competitive advantage comes from your customers having no alternative, you don’t have a competitive advantage. You have a countdown timer.
The AI that matters won’t be the one that makes customer service 20% cheaper while making it 40% worse.
It’ll be the one that, like Myers in that kick, can do something nobody else can do in that moment.
The Rockettes are trained to be identical.
Myers trained to be singular.
Choose accordingly.
The clues were there:
