JERK Report #19: What do Transformer toys, Pickaxes and Improv have in common?

Do you remember the transformer toys?

A motorcycle became a plane became a Godzilla-sized robot. All three rearranging the bits to make something new.

Lately it feels like product strategies have to become like that now. Not all, but many.

A builder and I were joking this morning about wanting to sell pickaxes, not mine for gold. We agreed on how you used to be able to work in a field for a bit to be able to identify the product or service to offer, set it up, and let it run.

That off-ramp is gone. The product you sharpen keeps going dull as the market moves under it. I find myself, and the people I collaborate with in AI are improvising, reading, adjusting, changing shape, admitting we are learning as we go. Any pickaxes we try to build quickly prove to be transformer tools to be adjusted.

Right now that reading and improvising is an edge, because most don’t do it. I don’t think we can assume it will stay that way; I think it may become tablestakes.  People will start building their products to adapt and learn over time automatically. Our strategies too will have to be more agile.

So where do you look, in a market that will not sit still? Take AEO, answer engine optimization.

Position

Decrease in business leads; AEO is changing the game. Again.

Velocity

Suddenly every agency sells AEO. Three tools became thirty. Bloody competition where it was once blue ocean.

Acceleration

The tools themselves are mutating. What was a whole AEO company last year is a checkbox or feature inside a bigger suite this year. A start up whose whole model went away with an LLM update.

Jerk, pointing down.

The incumbents have stopped competing and started buying. HubSpot absorbed XFunnel, that is not more crowding. It is the open field starting to close.  The thing that looks most alive is already decelerating; this is negative jerk.

So if the product keeps changing shape, what lasts?

Not the product. For a while I thought it was the improvising. The agility.

That is the start, not the end. Soon most learn to improvise.

What you’re aiming for now is the agility, what lasts is what the agility leads to. Read a signal right, adapt before the crowd, and you gain two hard to emulate things: Trust, with the people who watched you get it right and Context, hard-won, about how this market really moves.

The improv keeps you alive today. The Trust and Context are what endure.

So start now, while it is rare. 

5-minute practice

So if reading and improvising are the edge, here is five minutes to practice it.

Writing this convinced me I need to take an improv class already. In the meantime, here is the shortcut prompt.

Use Claudine Ullman's TEDxJohannesburg talk, "The Six Golden Rules of Improvisation" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po1qBqJicuw), six rules for staying in a scene you cannot script as also six rules for staying in a market you cannot script too.   

1. Say “Yes, and…”. Accept each other's offers, then add to them. A market change is an offer. Build on what comes to you.

2. Play. Be silly, be weird, be creative. Stay in the present moment.

3. Learn to fail, by listening hard enough that the failure becomes the next offer.

4. Trust your first impulses, and trust the people around you.

5. Be a team player.

6. Live an improv life. Apply the rules off the stage too.

I run [your business].

One change I am seeing in my market right now is [name it].

How might I improvise well and potentially collaboratively on this market change?

Then take the offer the market is making, and say “Yes, and…”

Best wishes,
Rose