Corina’s Concerns Be lowly wise, think only what concerns thee and thy being.– John Milton, Paradise Lost

Definition: Conversational blindness is a phenomenon whereby listeners fail to notice when speakers respond to a different question than the one they are asked.

So why is this important? Because as spokespeople for an organization, as well as private individuals, we are incessantly faced with questions that we do not want to answer, and would much rather avoid. In such situations, we can use what authors Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School (whose paper I am quoting above), call the “artful sidestep”, i.e. answering the wrong question so compellingly that we cause the listener to forget we have not, in fact, responded to the original question.

The fascinating finding is that the majority of people prefer an authoritative answer to the wrong question, rather than a poorly phrased one to the right question.

How to be successful at it? Here’s what I inferred from the research:

- Answer a question that is similar in tenor to the one actually asked

- Phrase your answer well, and deliver it convincingly (poor answers, even to the right question are, as I said, ill-received)

- Make sure these answers to the wrong questions are positioned in the middle of teh conversation, and not before breaks or lulls (the more time people have to process your answer before the next remark, the easier it is to realize you’re off the mark)

- Do answer some questions well and forthrightly, otherwise the lack of substance of your other responses will not be adequately concealed.

- Beware of TVs that use the crawl or display to highlight the question being answered: this heightens people’s awareness of the actual question, and diminishes conversational blindness.

- Read the research paper.

Posted under PRealities, Reading Pack

Try this Yahoo! take on 10 advertising words to avoid next year, if you’re missing your profession this holiday season (I sure ain’t). My favorite: synergy. I’ve hated it for a long time, and I’m glad to see others are of a like mind.

Posted under Reading Pack

I’m hoping to be hiring a marketer soon (the powers that be willing) and I found this post by Seth Godin regarding the marketer’s attitude very timely and relevant.

There is a worldwide trend to hire for attitude, or use attitude as a differentiator when the skill sets are comparable, especially as companies learned that many people they hired for their outstanding skills ended up being fired because of their attitude. So here’s what Godin sees as a good marketing hire (my interpretation):

- can-doer
- gutsy
- leader
- finalizer
- story-teller
- charismatic
- engaging
- self-motivated
- curious
- analytical
- caring

He makes valuable points, that should be inspiring for everyone who wants to hire a good marketer. However, many of the recruitment ads I’ve seen for marketers seem to seek the opposite:

- formulaic skill sets (strategic planning, supplier management)
- prolonged industry experience (safe, but likely to limit ability to think outside the box and innovate)
- technical abilities (writing, editorial, media relations, budgetary)

Perhaps the ad is just a screening tool and subsequent filters identify the right attitudes. I certainly hope so, but I fear not.

Posted under Reading Pack

After a week of struggling to find and keep my rhythm (focus, creativity, efficiency) between various phone calls and real and pseudo emergencies, it was illuminating to find a Forbes article explaining why it’s so hard to pay attention.

In brief, the reasons are:

- medical: ADHD
- sleep deprivation
- TV and other outside distractions, while we are working
- sedentarism (lack of physical activity/exercise)
- clutter in the workspace
- interruptions
- inborn: the survival instinct is making us react to new information automatically, as a means to avoid danger
- formative: as children, we can develop the ability to engage deeply, but if we are not given the chance (e.g. interruptions etc.) our capacity to focus is diminished

I’d add another: our mistaken perception that multitasking is possible, although scientists have proved that the human brain needs many seconds to reset when moving from one task to another, making multitasking merely a socially approved form of interruption.

Posted under Reading Pack

This morning, I discovered this article in the New York Times dealing with digital intimacy, or otherwise put, the effect of all the social networking tools upon interpersonal relations. A couple of interesting ideas:

- when people of sites like Facebook experienced the constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what their “friends” were doing, they became hooked, although initially they though that they didn’t need or wouldn’t be interested in such updates. In fact, they were developing “ambient awareness”. To quote:

“Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.”

- people become more gregarious online

- Thde question of whether people who use FB, and Twitter and similar tools increase their Dunbar number (i.e the maximum number of social connections – currently estimated to tail off at around 150 people), and the corresponding answer that the strength of these online networks is in “weak ties” loose acquaintances who were lost in pre-internet days.

I think the article is a must read. And, irony of ironies, I found it on Facebook. Through a link posted by a friend.

Posted under Reading Pack