Great Circle

An older post from Seth Godin reads like this:

Where are the tweakers?

If I want my car to go a bit faster, there’s a garage in town that will tweak it for me.

If I want my stereo to sound a little better, there’s a guy who will install cables and such and upgrade it.

There are more than a billion websites. Where are the tweakers? Where are the talented individuals and small firms that want … not to completely redesign a site that’s working, not to do any coding, but just to mess with (it) a bit.

To take their learning from many clients and figure out that this works better than that. To change the look and the feel but not the bones… plastic surgery for websites. Not a lot of meetings, not a lot of belief required. Instead, take the new one, take the old one, do a split test and see which one converts better.

I’m really taken with this concept of Tweakers. But my weird brain takes it in a number of different directions, such as:

• Want to start a new church? You’ve heard of Quakers; how about the Church of the Tweakers?

But the idea that has seriously embedded itself in my head is that – although Seth meant tweaking in a technological context – perhaps tweaking is also a great metaphor for personal and workplace coaching.

Essentially what a lifecoach does is to “have a look under the hood” of someone’s life, someone’s self, then tweak – finetune what’s already there…

… well, maybe not to this degree, but you get the point …