Tag: values

I choose the journey

Fabrizio8 Comments

What’s more important, the journey or the destination? Or better, where should you put your focus and efforts?

No doubts, both journey and destination are important. You need to know where you are going and the way you get there can be transformative.

Yet, I choose the journey.

The fact is, the destination is a dream, something you want to achieve, something you might or might not be able to get to. If all you care is that, if you place it at the center of your thoughts, you end up living a possibility. And you might chose to cut corners, hurt people, lose yourself. Anything to make it real!

The journey is now. It is reality, it is the work you put in, the daily waking up and doing, the pleasure and the pain. It is a more dynamic concept, so much that in the end you might find yourself in a totally unexpected place, another destination than the one you initially planned for. The journey ends up shaping the destination and how you feel about it in so many ways that it is almost impossible to leave it in the background.

The journey is who you are, really, and you should open your eyes to it, nurture it, keep it close.

Be the one who moves and turns

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Had an interesting conversation with a colleague today, that quickly turned into a topic that I consider very important nowadays. For our personal life, for our professional life, for our life as human beings walking on the World.

I feel the public discourse is flattening to a very dangerous extent.

It’s not only a matter of polarization, it’s mainly a continuous repetition of the flaws of the other side. It might seem, on the surface, that there is a desire to change the other’s opinion or behaviour. But what I find appalling is that actually there is more of a desire to just repeat what was said yesterday, in an endless loop that leaves everybody in the same place they where before. There is no progress. Because the target of what is said is increasingly the people that have our own same opinion.

We have stopped trying to understand what led us here. We are just repeating mantras (“fake news” vs “racist”, “America first” vs “globalism”, “tremendous economy” vs “devastating inequalities”) that resonate with the people that are already on our side. Be it because we need to sell more, because we need to keep the votes, or because we need to constantly re-affirm our self and group identity.

So, the question is: do we care?

If we don’t, that’s fine, we are on the right path.

If we do, I have an idea to share. It’s not mine, I believe it is a Buddhist idea, and I have heard it narrated by Pema Chödrön.

She tells the story of two people that meet, and start talking. They talk about what they see, the World they know. One is facing the ocean, and tells about the greatness of it, the beauty of its blue, the smell of the water. One is facing a forest, and tells of how dense it is, how tall the trees are, how incredible it would be to venture there. They soon end up arguing, as they cannot find a common perspective. Until the one facing the ocean moves to the side of the other and turns. And then, they start describing the forest together.

If you do care. If you seek change. If you want to move past the terrible impasse that is sucking up our future. Be the one who moves and turns. Find the other’s perspective.

P.S.: I am sorry I could not find the exact quote and link from Pema Chodron. I might have changed the characterization a bit, but I am confident the one I shared has the same underlying meaning. Should I find it, I will make sure to update this post.

 

 

Perspectives

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In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is known as the American War.

We can spend time trying to explain others that our worldview is correct and theirs is wrong. Perhaps eventually, exhausted, they will agree. And yet, that will not change the way they view things.

What we can more efficiently invest resources on, instead, is understanding that our appreciation of the World is very narrow, as is everybody’s. The more different and diverse ideas we are exposed to, the less narrow it will become. The wiser we will grow. The nearer to each other we will feel.

Why not starting today?

Back to the basics

Fabrizio2 Comments

A couple of old frameworks to help think about communication, at a moment when communication is everything and is greatly misunderstood.

First, the maxims of Grice.

Quality – Make your contribution one that is true.
Quantity – Make your contribution as informative as is required (no more).
Relevance – Make your contribution relevant, pertinent to the discussion.
Manner – Make your contribution clear, brief, orderly, avoid obscurity and ambiguity.

Then, the Buddhist four gates of speech.

Is what I have to say true?
Is what I have to say necessary?
Is what I am saying kind?
Is it the right time?

Writing, speaking, in general communicating without having these in mind generates weak and unaffecting communication.

Ads wars

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If you create something that has a controversial reception, you have two choices.

You can try to explain what your aim was, that you were coming from a good place, that actually what you meant is not what the public understood, that it’s not your fault and that your original idea was actually to support the feelings of the very same people that are now involved in the controversy.

Or you can apologise.

Take this Dove ad from last year.

It does not matter that Dove wanted to represent female beauty in all its shades, nor that the bit under scrutiny was only a short part of a longer ad in which (among other things) a westerner-looking woman was turning asian. It does not matter what the female Nigerian actress thought she was achieving while recording the ad, and honestly after the controversy sparked, the ad itself and its aesthetic stopped mattering as well.

Dove did not fall into the trap, it understood that all that matters in these circumstances is the public and its sensitivities. As marketers (and as creators), we need to be aware that what we do today can reach a much bigger audience than in the past, but at the same time it gets subjected to unprecedented scrutiny.

There are two things that can help stay clear from this kind of publicity.

First, make sure what you do is in line with a consistent brand that you are continuosly building. This gives credibility in the eyes of the audience, and it raises the odds that what you mean is what will be understood (take the recent Gillette ad as an example).

Then, surround yourself with people that are the most diverse possible, in every achievable way. And carefully weigh in every one of the concern they might raise on your job.