Action under uncertainty — Kelford Labs Daily
Always changing, always ready.
“Without action, there is no strategy.
Without action, there is no getting what we want.
...
Once the efficient actions we decided upon actually enter the real world, our strategy will need to adapt and change.
It will never be perfect, but it can always get better.
But only if we act.”
— Kelford Labs Daily: Strategy means act
The pursuit of perfection is pernicious.
It wears away at our resolve, it chisels at our confidence.
It keeps us from acting until everything is perfect which means it keeps us from acting, full stop.
What we want instead is the pursuit of preparation. We want a constant, ever-evolving, always-adaptive approach to our marketing.
We want to assume initial failure, and prepare for a series of attempts.
We want to reserve resources to allow for improvement and iteration.
And we want to remind ourselves that, as Claude C. Hopkins wrote way back in the 1920s, “None of us can afford to rely on judgement or experience. We must feel our way. New problems require new experience.”
Marketing when the market is uncertain is not about knowing what’s going to happen next, or knowing for certain that what we’re attempting will work.
No, it’s all about knowing for certain that we can’t know anything for certain, so we prepare for everything that’s likely.
So that when circumstances change, we’re not paralyzed with indecision because we never stopped moving. We’ve kept ourselves flexible, limber, and agile.
Ready to respond, ready to invest.
And ready to change, because we’re always changing.
Which means we’re always ready.
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