161–170 of 499 posts
Expecting leaders to be perfect 100% of the time will only result in leaders that are good at appearing perfect.
This situation sounds like more of an indictment of the media and sensationalist journalism more than the entrepreneur himself. People make mistakes and say stupid things sometimes, after all, they’re human. Expecting leaders to be perfect 100% of the time will only result in leaders that are good at appearing perfect.
This is really applicable to any products that are valued based on their marketing efforts instead of intrinsic value or utility. Costume jewellery, designer clothes, some kinds of art, all derive their value from the story the creators tell. The most expensive art seems to be that which has the most thoroughly verified, or at least the most believable story. I like to think I’d prefer Apple products over the competi…
Price, value and practical utility are not really correlated. A Rolex and a Timex will both tell you the time. An iPhone and a $129 Android will do mostly similar things. A Toyota Camry and a Porsche will both get you to work. But practical utility and value aren't necessarily the most important thing. Apple intuitively understood this, at a time when other computer companies didn't. Lots of people look at a Macbook…
I was shopping for a dev laptop about a year or two ago, and it was more like double the price rather than just a few hundred dollars more.
This is really applicable to any products that are valued based on their marketing efforts instead of intrinsic value or utility. Costume jewellery, designer clothes, some kinds of art, all derive their value from the story the creators tell. The most expensive art seems to be that which has the most thoroughly verified, or at least the most believable story. I like to think I’d prefer Apple products over the competi…
Price, value and practical utility are not really correlated. A Rolex and a Timex will both tell you the time. An iPhone and a $129 Android will do mostly similar things. A Toyota Camry and a Porsche will both get you to work. But practical utility and value aren't necessarily the most important thing. Apple intuitively understood this, at a time when other computer companies didn't. Lots of people look at a Macbook…
There are reasons for owning a watch other than "tell the time," which could include "tell the time accurately without ever needing to change batteries," or "tell the time and date," or "tell the time while scuba diving."
Rolex may be overkill but different watches serve different roles, and it's not just brand name alone that makes Rolex cost orders of magnitude more - in many ways, it really is just that much better of a product. Same for Camry vs Porsche.
An Apple product, particularly a Macbook, on the other hand, not so much. It's a nice aluminum chassis over crappy, cheap internals that break so often people throw around words like "class action" to describe the keyboards. It's like cramming a knock-off Timex movement into a Rolex case.
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Of course, everyone who bought it already knew it was crap. It's the same thing for buying $15K engagement rings. Everyone knows it's a stupid use of money and that the rings have no value. Same goes for clothing, cars, and many other things. These types of products succeed because of a shared delusion. Take fashion for instance. Everyone believes some clothes are more fashionable than others. The way you dress says…
That's a far leap from engagement ring cost being the result of society sharing a delusion and believing there is a delusion with some clothes being more fashionable than others. Psychology has a definition named the halo effect and it's very real. A person definitely gains advantages in society when they appear more attractive than less attractive. Naturally people associate good health with attractiveness and it's…
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Actually, the best "public shaming" talk I've seen are the ones given by Monica Lewinsky. When you consider that Monica Lewinsky was 22 years old during the time of the scandal, a lot of the stuff going on was simply outside of her control. Seeing things from her perspective is pretty interesting, to say the least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq7Eh6JTKIg John Oliver starts the discussion, but there is a Lewinsky…
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/john-olive... I loved John Oliver on the Daily Show, but I find Last Week Tonight formulaic and dull. It's the identical shtick every week with a different topic to be outraged over.
It blows my mind that comedians now have the moral and factual authority, forfeited by the nominal news and pundit people.
Further, it again shows that anything taken to its logical extreme becomes the opposite. Roger Ailes (and others) had the keen insight of treating news as entertainment. John Oliver (and others) have taken that notion full circle, restoring the "inform the audience" role.
This situation sounds like more of an indictment of the media and sensationalist journalism more than the entrepreneur himself. People make mistakes and say stupid things sometimes, after all, they’re human. Expecting leaders to be perfect 100% of the time will only result in leaders that are good at appearing perfect.
I think you can expect a CEO of a company not to call their own products "crap".
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I agree. Fellow "cheapskates" who just want to get from Dublin to Edinburgh on a cheap flight probably admire his thrift.
Such cheap flights are possible because the airlines aren’t paying the externalities they cause. Ryanair don’t fly to London btw. Or Brussels.
Michael O'Leary being incredibly rude is a key part of Ryanair's branding. If you're paying £19 for a two hour flight, you'll always have the sneaking suspicion that the airline is skimping on maintenance. O'Leary makes it absolutely clear that they save money by treating their passengers like cattle. He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an…
He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash. That image will keep them going right up until they have a fatal crash, at which point the press, the government, and victims’ attorneys will use every word he has ever said about being cheap to crucify him and the company. Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistical…
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He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash. That image will keep them going right up until they have a fatal crash, at which point the press, the government, and victims’ attorneys will use every word he has ever said about being cheap to crucify him and the company. Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistical…
They've never had a major crash in almost 35 years. Other budget airlines with few customer perks like southwest have survived crashes with a less stellar safety record.
True, but Southwest does not have a CEO that openly flaunts their being cheap either.
They've never had a major crash in almost 35 years.
I once won 15 hands of blackjack in a row, but then I lost a hand. Even the most expensive airlines eventually have fatal incidents, and it would be statistically improbable for Ryanair to not eventually have one as well. They may have an amazing safety record and stellar maintenance program, but the nature of flight is such that it is likely to eventually happen (perhaps through no fault of their own) if they are in business long enough. Whether “cheapness” will actually be a factor in that incident or not, people will take his prior statements and run with them.
All I was saying is that making such statements in a high-risk industry is not a fantastic idea, as those words may come back to bite him.