Who is listening to you? You might be surprised
That takes some effort to listen and be aware of what the opportunities actually are but if you ignore them you do so at at your own peril. Throughout my career as a professional communicator I come across clients who are absolutely sure they know who their audience is. Invariably they are wrong.Let me give you an example. Many years ago I counseled a semiconductor company that had a great business selling components to Apple for the iPod. They sold almost 30 percent of all their product to Apple. They knew that Apple was never going away. In our research into the effectiveness of their content we found what seemed to be a discrepancy. We knew that there were multiple product groups that the client’s technology would fit, but they were focused only on the iPod team. We told them they needed to start a focus on development teams. They responded, “We know who to talk to, you just concentrate on putting out press releases.” Six months later, at a trade show, two Apple team managers came ...
"In talking about science, whether to the public or to students, we scientists often assume that they share with us a common idea of science. In my experience that is often not the case. To oversimplify, scientists think of science both as a process for discovering properties of nature and as the resulting body of knowledge, whereas most people seem to think of science, or perhaps scientists, as an authority that provides some information -- just one more story among the many that they use to help make sense of their world." -- Helen Quinn, theoretical particle physicist, SLAC
ReplyDelete(In other words, most humans are post-modernist. They can't grasp logical deduction or induction from assembly of facts, and only understand the mythological adoption of stories and narratives from voices of authority. Who could have guessed the attendee at a tea party could be a po-mo in disguise?)