Godin: When “Don’t Worry Be Crappy” Doesn’t Cut It
I love this latest salvo in Seth’s neverending campaign against mediocrity. Seth might be ignoring the lawsuit, by the author, that might ensue on a publisher’s issuing a book with a blank cover. But his idea is spot on…
…in certain situations.
But hey, what about “Don’t Worry, Be Crappy”? (It was a chapter title in Guy Kawasaki’s Rules for Revolutionaries.) If crappy is okay, isn’t mediocre even more okay?
No, it’s not.
Rule number 1 about rules is that you have to know when they apply. “Don’t worry be crappy” applies when the following are true:
- A product is upgradeable, i.e. the crappiness can be worked out in new releases for which users won’t have to wait too long.
- The product has functionality whose value outweighs whatever crappiness exists in the initial execution.
- The crappiness is not such that it will insult the user outright.
- (optional but very helpful) The product has such hooks that the user will love it even if it’s ugly, or will be compelled to keep using it (like Microsoft Office) even if they can’t love it.
In the case of a book, yes, there can be subsequent editions, but there’s a danger in making the cover of a second edition radically different from that of the first. A book may or may not have functionality of the kind that will override a mediocre cover—it depends on the book. It’s hard to insult a book reader through mediocrity. Mediocrity is seldom outlandish enough to truly insult anyone. Usually a cover bad enough to be insulting is one that somebody in the publishing process thought was a work of genius. (Here’s one of my favorite examples. Just here, in case you wondered, is the distinction between crappy and mediocre. This is far too ghastly to be mediocre—somebody had to have thought it was art.) And finally, books seldom have hooks of the kind software has.
All in all, then, a book is not a good candidate for “Don’t Worry, Be Crappy.” This also means a book is not a good candidate for sending out with a blank cover.
Still, I’m with Seth on the general concept. If management insists and consistently acts upon the conviction that mediocrity is failure, and refuses to let it go out the door dressed as something else, mediocrity will vanish.