Dummy’s Guide to Conversation #7: Flog Your Gnostic
Let Your Newbies Speak Prior to Corporate Brainwashing
Step into a marketing meeting in any medical device firm in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and be assaulted by a barrage of acronyms. Those uttering the abbreviations assume everyone present knows what they mean—or not. Some climbing their ladder speak precisely to show they know way more than others sitting around the room. For those, language is less about communication and more about one-upsmanship. Certain words signal a superior knowledge, a sort of Gnostic approach to the workplace that demands allegiance and, frankly, a bit of awe for all listening. When the exceptional words are spoken, a hush falls. And not just because most people don’t have a clue what was just said. But also because the words hint at some brave new insight (often just as obscure). Much of which is counter-productive to getting work done as others scramble to decode the awesome insider lingo.
Then again, what is “work”? Is work the climb up through the corporate-playground jungle bars to reach the top where the cool kids hang? Or is work about serving some need or group not immediately at hand? For most of us, work is a mix of the two. Usually we hire on because of the mission only to get embroiled in the politics. Part and parcel.
Good work begins by flogging the Gnostic. Flogging the Gnostic means slowing the flow of incomprehension with questions that penetrate to the sinew of a larger idea (or at least a benefit). Exposing the Gnostic is all about cutting to the bone of language that your true, final audience will understand. All the better if you can dissect to a simple, sticky, credible, believable idea anyone could understand.
For better or worse, flogging the Gnostic usually begins with your own inner Gnostic. Certainly you’ve felt the magnetic pull to parrot the word your boss/client just said, that magic word-of-the-moment that instantly captured attention. Better to aim right at the final audience, right through the BS, right through the acronym salad, straight to the folks you are trying to serve.
As a consultant my role is often to shun the insider language and play dumb (an easy task for me). This is the only way to build toward an actionable, sticky idea that communicates, no matter what it looks like to those playing the insider game.
Resolved: this week I will flog the Gnostic.
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Photo Credit: August Sander via thisisnthappiness
Best Buy and Brian Dunn’s Blog: Kudos for Leaving Comments Open
Minnesota Public Radio’s Martin Moylan reported Wednesday on Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn’s use of his blog to respond to media coverage of Best Buy’s business model. Moylan cited a recent critical commentary in Forbes magazine which received 2.3 million page views. In his blog Dunn responded to the critics but also tempted fate by leaving his blog open for comments.
Well done.
A quick glance through the comments shows all manner of agreement, disagreement, and vehement disagreement. Just like real people talking. It’s a messy mess of messages that point every direction all at the same time. And everyone can read it.
This, friends, is the future of conversation at an institutional level. Once people are given their voices back, they speak what they feel and sometimes what they know. But the act of listening is a huge hurdle and Mr. Dunn and his team did the commendable, credible thing by leaving it out in public for all to see.
We have a long, venerable history of jumping on market leaders, big notable institutions and authorities. There is something exhilarating about finding fault with those who seem to run the world, whether it’s Best Buy, Comcast, AT&T, Microsoft. Or the city council or the board of elders at church. Or elderly mom and dad. Or God. Sometimes they deserve it. Sometimes not. But the conversation is useful for lots of different purposes, including hinting at what is going on inside us.
Brian Dunn: thank you for your courage in letting people talk back. My estimation of Best Buy rose as I read the comments.
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Image Credit: Artists’ Book Not Artists’ Book via this isn’t happiness
Year in Chesed—Day 11: What if we cultivated radical availability?
One thing that happens in a conversation is that we become available to each other. It’s a function of simply talking. But what if our talk was all bound up with the baggage of our intent? We want to be seen as a certain person. Wise. Funny. Clever. So we use pre-fab phrases and clichés and stories heard elsewhere. Nothing wrong with that, but at some point we need to drop the modular phrases and really tell who we are. This is part of being present.
I’m a fan of the writer/theologian/activist/martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His clear writing never fails to pull me in. And I love how he raises my eyes to see what a people could look like who love God together. In Life Together he wrote that brotherhood (or “fellowship” a word desperately in need of rehab) is not some ideal we strive toward or some pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, if only we could get our ducks in a row, shape up, and all that “I’ve got to do better” stuff. Instead brotherhood is a “…reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.” (Life Together, 30) Bonhoeffer suggested that in this reality, it is not the man or woman “furnished with exceptional powers, experience, and magical, suggestive capacities” (32) who has the ability to bind others to her or himself. Instead, the real power is what God says. The Wikipedia entry on Life Together is thought-provoking:
Bonhoeffer felt strongly that there is an empirical experience that results from meeting with others to become intimate before Christ. He suggests that Christians should confess their sins to one another. He states, “The church community, not some philosophical or theological system of thought, is God’s final revelation of the divine self as Christ existing in community”. In other words, Christians should not wait for a revelation from God before they do something, but because they are continuously and prayerfully considering what is right, it is possible that God has already revealed His will to them and they need to summon up the courage to take the appropriate actions.
Yesterday’s postcard from chesed talked about the ways of the Eternal One with the wicked and the righteous. For the wicked: separation. For the righteous: presence. Except that’s not the image painted on the card. The image had two parts: one was like a desert with scorching winds, smelling of sulfur and raining coals. One part was a face. God’s face.
I cannot claim any righteousness, except in agreement with Bonhoeffer about what the Christ did. I mostly live my life on the other end of the spectrum. And yet the picture of radical availability gives me a bit more courage to hide less and pursue being available.
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Image Credit: Bad Postcards
happy new year from conversation is an engine
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Image: Quint Buchholz (museumsyndicate.com) via 2headedsnake
The Interwebs Have Gone Too Far: Fun at the Expense of the Stoughton Norwegian Dancers
Is nothing sacred?
Wait--where's the flask of Schnapps? I know it's there somewhere.
These were the coolest kids in Stoughton High School! And now look at them: Exhibit I on the list of bad postcards.
Oy. My brain hurts from the cognitive dissonance.
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Via Bad Postcards
Occupy…billboards: “This Space Available”
“I feel it is wrong to be treated as a consumer every place you go.” Gwenaëlle Gobé
Dummy’s Guide to Conversation #6: Listen to Other People’s Stuff
please say more
Sometimes we have stuff to say and so we pack our conversation full of it. Maybe we’re deeply affected by an event in our lives: we failed a test (or aced a test), had an accident, got engaged. Got divorced. Stuff happens and we want to say it. Aloud.
So we do. At a family dinner we launch our stuff into the conversation. But someone else throws in their own bad test/good test/accident/engagement/divorce story. You and your stuff sought sympathy, would have settled for empathy, but instead your moment was hijacked by someone else’s stuff. And now you feel a raw edge to your emotion—after all, you did venture out on a limb to tell your story. Plus, you are disappointed because you hoped encouraging words would ascend from the sympathy/empathy to caress your forehead. Didn’t happen.
Disappointment is common to the human experience. Growth is the result. The key is not to wrest the conversation back so you and your stuff are in focus. Instead, let the conversation progress. Perhaps you can offer comfort to the conversation hijacker—this is the way of grace. Often our own hurt is a key ingredient we offer someone else to help them heal. Which is not to say we don’t need to be heard.
Over the Christmas holiday our family got talking about how rare it is to find people who truly listen. People who don’t rush to hijack the conversation, but instead probe and query. And ask. And pray. As we talked, we counted ourselves blessed with a great number of these people and agreed we are quite fortunate.
But to be that listening person—maybe that is worth a New Year’s resolution.
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Image Credit: kelly reemtsen/indiesart.com Via 2headedsnake
How Can I Accelerate Adoption of New Ideas? PBS Arts Off Book
Aesthetics or style isn’t what drives me. What drives me is the core idea, and then I apply a design sense to that core idea. (2:08)
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Via: The Casual Optimist
Remarkable Moments in Conversation–Putin’s Russia: “We Exist”
Leader’s sometimes resist conversation as long as they can. The dictator’s monologues that preceded the Arab Spring seemed to end abruptly—at least to those of us watching casually from suburban homes. The Occupy movement keeps facing us with truths about the financial classes who have tilted the playing field to reward themselves at the expense of many.
Now it’s Putin’s turn. You gotta love a people that show up with the slogan “We exist!” It’s not even a demand except in the deep, heart-felt recognition that the party of thieves and liars has been talking past them for too many decades. That is a basic, human response.
“We exist.” Great starting place for moving from monologue to dialogue.
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Image: Dmitry Lovetsky via Startribune
