Evidence

As you know, I play pickleball. Lots of pickleball. I also coach pickleball in our club (we have more than 1,700 players in our club). Heck, as we speak, I'm watching pro pickleball on Pickleball.tv (on Amazon Prime) ... a player in our club (he also runs my bible study group) is the referee! So yeah, maybe I have a problem/addiction.

Anyway, the coaching part of pickleball is fun because it directly relates to e-commerce. There is a playing style in pickleball, a "best practice" if you will ... based on a style of pickleball played prior to COVID. Drop Shots that lead to dinking rallies. However, when you watch the better players and pros play, you see the opposite. You see speed, drives, attacks. It's a blistering, athletic pace.

In other words, the game evolved and changed post-COVID.

Now imagine how you'd view the world if the game evolved and changed and you did not evolve, you did not change.

I've charted a lot of points, following the difference in style. I've tried to implement the change in style into my game. Guess what? My team scores more points when I play the new style. My team scores fewer points when I play the pre-COVID style. I have the evidence. And yet, when I share the evidence, the old-school crowd digs their heels in. They do not want to change. When they communicate about their old-school style, they don't talk about winning points, the wax poetic about the beauty of the old-school style. They can't talk about winning points, obviously, because they'd have to face the reality they win fewer points. So they focus on the fables, the stories, the nostalgia.

I face the same challenges with clients. I have print-centric clients who are very willing to move into the future ... they are like the pickleball players who adopt the faster-paced attacking-style modern version of pickleball. Then there are the Lemonheads who look to the paper/printing community for guidance. They get nostalgia and fairy tales.

• Example #1 (click here).
• Example #2 (click here).

You can generally tell when you are reading propaganda by evaluating the evidence presented.

• Are examples of sales increases provided?
• Does the author ever talk about profit?
• Does the author cite multiple instances of brands generating increased profit?
• Does the author cite evidence of increases in the size and quality of the twelve-month buyer file?

The Lemonhead loves articles written by thought leaders, and for good reason ... the Lemonhead lacks the strategic thinking and adaptive tactics required to lead his/her company into the future. The Lemonhead is easily seduced.

Fortunately, you are not a Lemonhead.