Everything is just N? No. You Need to Understand Your Problem

Everything is just… sales.

Everything is just… marketing.

Everything can be resolved by… empathy.

Hustle. Emotional intelligence. Branding. Discipline. Attention to detail. Leadership. Community. Productivity. Quality. Design thinking. Rigor. Learning from failure. Continuous learning. Planning. Team building.

It seems like “everything” can be distilled down to quite a few things. Might as well say “42” and move on. As my uncles like to say, “If you have a hammer, everything around you starts looking like a nail.”

That’s not to say hammers are bad. Hammers are great for lots of things, even when they are not nails. Hammers are awesome for pulling up floor boards. Or smashing things. Or getting into places where a crowbar just won’t work. A hammer once got us out of a big jam when a pothole bent our rims and gave us a flat. A few whacks and the rim was back in shape. Hammers are great and they solve a lot of problems.

Then there was this time when I thought a hammer would work. My oven door handle was not closing properly. I thought a hammer could give me just that little bit of extra force to make things work. I knew it was risky — but I would be careful. I heard a little “crick.” “That’s okay,” I thought. “Just one more hit and I will stop.”

Well, one more hit was one hit too many. The glass from the oven door shattered all over the place. Replacing the door would cost as much as replacing the oven itself. That hammer cost me about $800 I suppose.

So no. “Everything” is not just sales or marketing. Sales and marketing principles help you solve certain kinds of problems (usually profit ones), but not everything. And sometimes you have to admit that marketing has some problems of its own, like the spread of misinformation, internet trolls and charlatan politicians.

Instead, people need to spend a little bit of time thinking about what the problem is and how sales might help. You may also realize that maybe a bit of programming could help you. Or some yoga. Sometimes we need to decide that the status quo is perfectly fine. Or, in the case of sales and marketing, consider trying not to treat every situation as leading to some form of transaction.

It works in other ways as well. For example, I have been in groups who emphasize collaboration when what they really need is a profit, however small, to keep the electricity on. The world is too complicated to come down to one solution.

Let’s not fetishize our skills and instead simply focus on getting the job done.