Substance Shines Through
Doing It Right the First Time
While getting my nails done today I flipped through Seth Godin’s book Small is the New Big to an essay about the Hersey theme park in Hershey, PA (of chocolate producing fame). Godin talks about how painful it was to observe the signs around the park, because the mishmash of colors and fonts were visually grating. He laments the fact that the park had to pay for the wood and ink to make the signs anyway, but couldn’t be bothered to it right the first time.
Sending an Implicit Message
How should I feel about the maintenance of the roller coasters, or the cleanliness of the food? What am I most likely to remark on to my friends and family after I visit? Could this lack of attention to detail could be symptomatic of some deeper issue within the company? What if the executives running the park are only focused on selling lots of tickets and and hitting their numbers. What if they’re busy measuring success incorrectly (this makes me think of Goldratt’s book The Goal) and missing the bigger picture around how their brand is being perceived?
Why We Care So Much
Have you ever found yourself thinking that it seems shallow for people to guard their reputations so carefully, or a waste of time and effort for them to so adamantly explain and defend their opinions in an online forum or in the comments of a blog post? I admit to thinking this a few times (and sometimes using it to talk myself of having hurt feelings), but I think there is something very legitimate to managing your reputation and personal brand.
I’m not pyschologist, but from my own experience as an extrovert I can say that I get an intellectual high from social interactions that “click”. A poor social interaction, where I feel like I just couldn’t connect or (worse) was misunderstood, leaves me grasping to understand why, as well as what I could have done differently. Often first impressions get in the way, and its becoming increasingly frequent for those impressions to come from online content long before you meet someone.
An example that comes to mind (and I wince to remember it) was when I accidentally met a prominent writer who I admire, but confused her with someone else because her avatar on Twitter that looks nothing like her day-to-day appearance. A painfully confusing ten minute conversation ensued, and we couldn’t completely recover from the awkwardness when it was all sorted out. I’m sure we’ll meet again and I’ll do much better, but wow did I feel stupid (can I blame Twitter, please? or maybe Vista?).
Authenticity Is the Key
What kind of message are you sending about yourself through everything you produce and share with the world, both personally and professionally? Are you being consistent in showing the world the true you (some people call this authenticity) or are people missing the substance of your message because of something that’s creating cognitive dissonance (like the packaging)? If you knew what that annoyance was, and could fix it without violating any of your principles, would you?
“Are you being consistent in showing the world the true you (some people call this authenticity) or are people missing the substance of your message because of something that’s creating cognitive dissonance (like the packaging)?”
Ah, but! The “true you” and the “substance of your message” are two completely different things, and clever use of cognitive dissonance can be used as a tool to mask the former with the latter. It is used to draw attention, to override logical reasoning. Politics as we know it is painfully dependent on this tactic. Visual artists also have to strike balance between photo-realism and subjective “likeness”, which are not always compatible. I’ve seen discussed in a few places the notion that dissonance isn’t simply a quirky malfunction in our mental processing, but rather an integral part of its machinery. The upshot being that it’s less about whether there is dissonance in your message, than about whether it’s being properly harnessed. Yes/no?
I could go on about this at much greater length, but I’ll cut the rant here.