Archive for June, 2008
Monday, June 30th, 2008
I’ve seen every Shakespeare production produced by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater since 1990. Over the years, as they choose plays from the repertory, I’ve had the treat of seeing new interpretations of plays I’ve attended at Chicago Shakespeare before. Last night, I saw the third version of Comedy of Errors they’ve done. It was a very creative, interesting production, setting the play on a 1940 British movie set, where a team is making a film of Comedy of Errors while the Nazis are dropping bombs. It really worked; click to read a Chicago Tribune review. (I think the review sells the play short)
Comedy of Errors, like Twelfth Night, starts out with a shipwreck that separates siblings and leads to cases of mistaken identity. In Comedy of Errors, two sets of identical twins are separated as infants. Shakespeare sets the stage for farce by giving identical brothers the same names: Antipholus of Ephesus grows up with his servant Dromio, and Antipholus of Syracuse grows up with his servant Dromio. When, as adults, the pair from Ephesus end up in Syracuse, chaos ensues. People think they are having conversations with the Antipholus they know or the Dromio they know, but they are not speaking with the person they think they are. Wife confuses husband, merchant confuses customer, master confuses servant, lover confuses beloved, etc.
The heart of the comedy in Comedy of Errors is that people often think they are having successful communication with another person, when, in fact, the other person is understanding the conversation in a completely different way. As the audience, we can see both sides of the misunderstanding, but each of the characters in the conversation can only hear the part of the conversation they are prepared to hear. As the audience we laugh. But what happens when we return to daily life?
Work life, especially the part that includes interactions with customers, is filled with misinterpreted conversations. We live a daily comedy of errors where sales claims and elevator pitches are misconstrued, where technical explanations are misunderstood, and where nods of understanding are really signals of disinterest. And, as in Comedy of Errors, when we advertise we really never know who we’re talking to. We may think we know, but we really don’t. And we certainly don’t know how we’ll they’ve understood us.
Communication isn’t about saying what you want to say. It’s about being understood. As Harold Bloom wrote, Shakespeare invents characters that are more human than real people. Even in a farce like Comedy of Errors, first performed 416 years ago, Shakespeare’s multiple Antipholuses and Dromios can teach us lessons about communicating in our modern work life. When you converse with a customer, don’t just assume you are understood, make sure you are. And, believe it or not, make sure you really understand who it is you are communicating with. It may be a different character.
Posted in Conversation, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Just finished a wonderful book, Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book focuses on how Abraham Lincoln built his cabinet. Instead of choosing cronies and old pals, Lincoln’s choices included three of his major rivals for the 1860 presidential nomination, William Seward, Edward Bates and Salmon Chase. None of these men thought Lincoln was presidential material, and, in fact, he was considered a light-weight who was not prepared for the job.
Lincoln won them over – especially Seward – by genuinely and methodically building his relationships with them. In fact, relationship-building encounters were a key to Lincoln’s success, whether it was at the highest political echelons or meeting the troops at the front. (Chase was the toughest relationship in the cabinet for Lincoln, but that was due more to Chase’s awkwardness with personal relationships than it was to anything Lincoln did.)
What’s especially interesting is that Lincoln was very successful at building relationships from afar, through letters and telegrams. I’m often asked, in speeches and workshops, if the proliferation of electronic communications – text messages, emails, instant messages, etc. – are making it harder for us to have human encounters. The truth is that it’s now easier to connect with people who aren’t nearby. Sure, electronic communication can be a crutch, but people can respond immediately to text messages, and you can instantly be in a dialogue with someone a continent away just by dialing their cell phone. And, of course, air travel makes it possible for us to include more in-person encounters in our relationships than was possible mid-nineteenth century.
We can learn from Mr. Lincoln. Every interaction can be a relationship-building encounter, if we genuinely believe that relationship building is at the center of what we need and want to do.
Posted in Customer Encounters, We relationships | No Comments »
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Last week, in a workshop, an attendee said that his company is ‘reactive.’ The word didn’t sound right, so I asked him to explain. I quickly realized that he meant that his company is ‘responsive,’ not ‘reactive.’
I forgot about this exchange until last night, while I was having dinner with my friend Gene Hensley in Seattle, as Gene coincidentally mentioned the contrast between the meanings of these two words. “‘React’ is to re-act,” Gene said, “meaning that you act in a way you have acted before in the past. ‘Respond’ is to act in a way that is based on what’s going on right now, in this 60 seconds.”
Imagine that you complain about the way your meal is cooked in a restaurant. A server who ‘reacts’ to your complaint will pull a canned rejoinder from his inventory of past experiences, treating your situation in a routine, recycled way. A server who ‘responds’ to your complaint will not base his response on past customer interactions, but will respond directly to what is happening to you at this moment.
I don’t think this is a subtle distinction. Your customers can easily tell if someone in your company ‘reacts’ to their situation, treating them in a routine, rehashed way. They can also tell if someone in your company ‘responds’ to their situation, treating them in a genuine, personalized, unique way.
What is better for your business, reactions or responses?
Posted in Customer Encounters | 4 Comments »
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
Sit in most business meetings, and you will hear opinions flying left, right, up, down and sideways. Corporate conversations are so frequently battles of opinion, and these opinions are often confused with the truth.
In reality, truth is elusive, and is always harder to find when obscured by opinions. It’s not that truth can’t be found, it’s just that we often confuse someone’s opinion for the underlying truth.
There is a Buddhist saying, “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.”
Be careful not to confuse someone’s description of an issue with the essence of the underlying issue. See the moon, not the finger pointing at it.
Posted in Observations | 2 Comments »
