If you like entertainment, drama and excitement, the current political circus is for you. I’d like to say we’ve seen everything, but every time I think that, something even more outlandish pops up. I’m still pretty confident about one thing, though: if you’re a professional salesperson, DO NOT try this at work!
Let’s look at it from the outside-in: Imagine you were a buyer dealing with a potential vendor for an important decision, one that would determine the direction of your company for the next four years, and possibly the next four after that. What would you think about a salesperson who:
- Clearly overpromises by making grandiose claims about what the product will do for you,
- Refuses to provide detailed product literature when you ask for it,
- Disparages the competition constantly,
- Talks about himself all the time,
- Has no experience providing the solutions you’re looking for?
You would have to be very unhappy with your current provider to even let that person in your door, let alone keep yourself from throwing him out of your office within two minutes!
P.S. While I obviously I have one particular candidate in mind when I write this, the sad truth is that they all seem to be doing some or all of these.
This is personally a very painful post to write, but I have to go where the evidence leads, and the evidence seems to show that apparently, the truth is for suckers. If you want to get ahead in business or politics today, lying seems to be a very useful tool. That’s the sad conclusion I have to reach after observing what’s going on in our society, our business, and our world.
There was an article in Sunday’s New York Times that states, that “the truth is starting to look deeply out of fashion.” It details the –shall we say—inaccuracies contained in many of the presidential candidates’ statements and stories, including those Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (If I left out other names, it’s not necessarily because honest, or an indication of my personal preference—there’s only so much room in this blog.)
The point is not that people are lying more today; there’s no evidence for comparison, and one can find plenty of instances of politicians lying in the past. I’m reminded of Churchill’s quote: “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
What does seem to be different, though, is that the risk/reward calculation has changed significantly. Lying has always been risky, but the consequences of being caught seem to have decreased significantly, if not disappeared entirely. Indeed, being caught in lies can even be a positive—witness the fact that Ben Carson raised over $3 million in the week after questions came out about stories he has told about his past.
When Gary Hart and Joe Biden were caught in lies during their campaigns, they could not figure out how to keep their campaigns going. Nowadays, candidates seem to have a variety of effective strategies at their disposal:
They can lie about lying. When Trump was confronted over things he said about Marco Rubio, he denied that he had said it, even though the statement was prominently on his web site.
They can attack the attacker. That’s Carson’s approach, but in total partisan fairness, Hillary Clinton has excelled at this for years, blaming the vast right-wing conspiracy.
They can totally ignore the accusation. This appears to be Fiorina’s strategy, and it can work because the relentless news cycle and the sheer prevalence of dishonesty virtually guarantee that people will forget about it when a bigger lie comes out from someone else..
They can issue a disclaimer up front. Jack Shafer explains how Barack Obama did this in his autobiography: “For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known, and some events appear out of precise chronology.” In other words, some of what you read is not true, so govern yourself accordingly.
But this blog is not about politics, so why even bring it up? Because dishonesty seems to be running rampant in the business world as well. The recent revelations about Volkswagen are only the most egregious example. But at least VW is paying a high price for having been caught lying; the same is probably not true for most companies and executives. Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his new book Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time
And it applies at lower levels too—here are some statistics he cites:
- 44% of 2.6 million job applicants lied about their work histories
- People lie on average 1.65 times a day, according to a 2011 study
- 45% of sales managers have heard their reps lying about delivery times
Why do they get away with it? Carson is well-loved by evangelicals, who would presumably be the most likely to take offense at the violation of one of the Ten Commandments. But they don’t seem to be fazed by it; maybe the fact that it’s #9 on the list means that it’s not really that bad.
I would blame it on cognitive dissonance. When our beliefs clash with evidence, it’s much easier to ignore, rationalize or even attack the evidence than it is to reexamine our beliefs. We would much rather fool ourselves than admit someone else is fooling us; like the subjects of the emperor who had no clothes, we become willing participants in the lie. Remember what Richard Feynman said, “The first rule is never to fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Pinocchio was undone by the fact that his nose grew longer every time he lied, but if he were around today, his long nose would probably be an asset. He would probably lead the polls in either party, or make a great CEO.
From the ethical standpoint, there is no gray area. Lying is wrong, period. From a practical standpoint, well…
With apologies to my alma mater, it’s not all about the U (especially the way their football team has been playing lately)[1]. In lean communication, it’s all about the YOU. Value begins and ends with the YOU.
The purpose of lean communication is to add value while minimizing waste. Since waste is defined as anything that does not contribute to value, the definition of value is absolutely central to successful lean communication. If you don’t get it right, nothing works, and if you do get it right, you will always have an excellent chance to succeed.
In lean manufacturing, the customer defines value, because value is defined as anything the customer is willing to pay for. It’s the same in lean communication, where your listener defines value. That means that when I communicate with YOU, I don’t get to define value; it’s not what I think is important; it’s not about my reasons for deciding or acting; it’s not about the language that I understand. If YOU are my audience, it’s about what YOU think is important, about what YOU value, and about what YOU care about. I can only get what I want by helping YOU get what YOU want and need.
Although there are 9 keys to Lean Communication, the master key is outside-in thinking, which is the ability to put yourself into the listener’s perspective and build your communication so that it resonates with that point of view.
Cognitive empathy
Most people think about empathy as being about emotion, but there’s also a form of it called cognitive empathy, which is thinking what the other person is thinking. Because lean communication is directed at business communication, it focuses primarily on cognitive empathy. While it might help to feel your boss’s emotions when you’re making a big presentation to the executive committee, you’re going to need a huge dose of cognitive empathy to succeed, and that’s what outside-in thinking is about.
Although it’s not a business example, General U.S. Grant knew how to get into the heads of his opponents. When he attacked Fort Donelson in 1862, he knew that an aggressive approach would work against General Floyd. Floyd bugged out before the fort fell and left General Simon Bolivar Buckner to surrender. Buckner, who had served with Grant in California, told him that if he had been in command Grant would not have gotten up close to Donelson as easily as he did. As Grant later said in his memoirs: “I told him that if he had been in command I should not have tried in the way I did.”
Individual YOU and collective YOU
The interesting thing about the pronoun YOU is that it can be singular or plural, and when you’re presenting something to a group, you need to appeal to both. If there are five people in the room, you have to answer two questions. The first that is on most people’s minds is WIFM, or “What’s In It for Me?” Each stakeholder will evaluate the idea in terms of their own self-interest. As the old saying goes, “where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.”
But if you appeal only to a collection of individual YOUs, there’s a high likelihood of failure, because everyone in that room has their own conception of WIFM, so the quest for agreement may generate a lowest common denominator that tries to satisfy everyone, which is why committees turn out camels when horses are needed.
When you’re trying to produce a horse instead of a camel, you also have to appeal to WIFU, which is “What’s In It for Us? That’s the collective YOU, and it must address what’s important to the group as a whole. [2] It could be the organization they all work for, or the larger purpose that drives them. When you can master the mix of singular and plural YOU, you can create more value for more people than by simply focusing on individuals, because everyone gets part of what they want and all of what the group needs.
So, if you want to be a true lean communicator, make it a habit always to make it about the YOU. To paraphrase Sun Tzu: “Know yourself and your audience, and you will not be imperiled in a hundred presentations.”
[1] For my readers unfamiliar with American college football, the University of Miami’s team has adopted “It’s all about the U” as its unofficial motto. Although just about every team has “university” in its name, somehow everyone knows who they’re talking about.
[2] Credit goes to The Challenger Customer, by Dixon, Toman, et. al. for this concept.
In the past two days, I’ve received emails out of the blue from three people I have not communicated with in several years. They all have two things in common.
First, I haven’t communicated with them for one simple reason: some years past I was the one trying to get in touch with them to talk about training opportunities. These were not cold calls; I had established relationships with all of them and had done good work for them in the past. In at least one of the cases, they had initiated the conversation. Yet all three went dark on me, not even bothering to tell me that they were not interested—they simply stopped replying.
The second thing they all have in common is that now they are asking for my help. Two of them are looking for jobs and want to tap into my contacts, and the third is now selling financial services and wants me for a client.
In each case, there are three possible ways I’ve thought of to respond:
- Ignore them entirely
- Try to help them, but remind them how they’ve acted towards me in the past
- Shut up and try to help
I admit that the first two are what I want to do, but the third option is what I will do. Actually, that’s not totally true. I’m going to try to help them, but if they read this post, then I guess I’ve accomplished number 2. So, Mike, Joe and Pat—and those are their real names—I’ve got one piece of advice for you: as Harvey McKay says: dig your well before you’re thirsty.
Back to the third option: Why should I help someone who has refused to help me—and been rude about it? I don’t really know. Maybe I’m just a nice guy—no, I’m sure that’s not it.
Do I think there’s a small chance that helping them will help me down the road? Yes, but a very remote chance, because they have shown themselves to be the kind of people who only think of others when they need them. That’s not to say they’re bad people—it’s actually quite normal behavior that most of us practice most of the time.
The real reason I’ve decided to help them is that I would like to believe there is such a thing as karma, and what goes around really does come around. I personally haven’t seen enough evidence that it’s true, but why take a chance?
But I’m not superstitious, so I’m going to refer to it as referral capital. If you ever want referrals or help in the future, you need to start building capital now. When you least need help from others is when you’re most able to pay into the help bank. Then, when you ever do need it, the check you draw on won’t come back marked, “insufficient funds”.
