Be Spontaneous at the Right Time
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Over the weekend, I watched the very powerful special on Martin Luther King, Jr. In telling the story of Dr. King’s life and his early civil rights work, the special described Rosa Parks‘ historic decision on December 1, 1955, to refuse to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This decision was a pivotal spark in the civil rights movement.
One of the people recounting the Rosa Parks story was Juanita Abernathy, wife of Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a prominent activist who worked with Dr. King throughout his life, including partnering with him to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Mrs. Abernathy made two comments that I found particularly relevant in understanding the “spark” that can inspire huge groups of people to take action and change their behavior. The first had to do with authenticity.
“Had we planned it, it wouldn’t have worked. It was spontaneous.”
People have an instinctual sense of what is real and what is staged, and can’t help but be uninspired by contrived situations. On the contrary, authentic, impulsive, passionate action can be incredibly inspiring. At a time when such actions can now be shared, broadcasted, announced, and discussed by millions in real-time, the power of spontaneous authenticity has never been greater.
Her second comment—perhaps a more important one—had to do with timing.
“The community was worn out.”
She described that the community of people who rallied around Rosa Parks’ brave act was ready. December 1, 1955, certainly wasn’t the first time someone had refused to give up her seat, so what made that act on that day so special? All the other smaller things that primmed the community to be yearning for something to rally around.
Jackson recently argued that a community is grown, not built. I might argue that it needs to be found first. For your message to get out, catch on, and have lasting power, you need to start with a great message, then deliver it at the right time to a community that’s ready to be inspired.
It’s definitely all about timing. Traditionally, people have talked about being first to market, thinking that being first out of the gate was best. But Google, Facebook, Flickr, Palm, etc. are all success stories that started out way after someone else had already launched (and failed or stagnated) with same idea.
Definitely agree. If there’s not a need there, it’s not going anywhere. This need also takes shape as factors B and C in Paul Graham’s Six Principles essay. Graham says you should be developing solutions for b) overlooked problems that c) actually need to be solved. If the time isn’t right, or the audience isn’t there, you’re failing somewhere around those two principles.
@Kevin: First to market is key when you’re putting out a great product. However, if the first to market is a marginal product or doesn’t really solve the problem, there’s a big opportunity to not only do a better job, but to take advantage of the fact that a potentially large audience was exposed to the concept by Company A and is now looking for something better. In those cases, and in your examples, being best to market beats first to market.
@Jackson: Great products can still be ahead of their time. Video sites out now are only possible because connection speeds have become fast enough. Blogs can be successful now because readers have become accustomed to the format (Digg, RSS & other factors help too). If you tried to put out the same content as Techcrunch in 1999 on a blog, you would have had no readers. People weren’t reading blogs yet.
@Kevin: Totally agree, and your point is probably more germane to the issue raised by Brian than mine :)
@Kevin & @Jackson: Couldn’t agree more with you regarding timing. Sometimes I wonder if a company like Google would be so dominant if they were the first to hit the scene and didn’t have others paving their way. Of course, they’re arguably better than everyone else; but if the exact same Google launched in the days of lycos.com, would it still be the Google machine we know today? What say the gentleman?
@Brian: The quotes you posted could suggest without spontaneity you will fail. So, my question is this: Do you have to stumble upon your community in order to achieve success? Or can you intentionally look for them? If the latter, does actively searching kill the spontaneity thus killing the success?
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