Put down that bullhorn!

I heard a fascinating metaphor that related to marketing and customer relations the other day.
In all its simplicity: "You would not take a bullhorn for speeddating, right?"
Meaning: that you should not start a relationship with a customer flooding her with loud one-liner messages about buying all sorts of stuff. You must carefully show the potential customers what you are able to do for them - and then let them decide that it would be a good idea to start a customer relationship.
And then I related it to my idea that all people basically are parts of customer relationships with one another - it may very well happen that there is no money involved, but we basically form relationships with people because we find that we are able to enrich each other's life.
So, in the same way, it's a bad idea if we bullhorn market ourselves to other people and begin to exploit the way in which they can enrich our own lives. No - we must start out showing what we bring to the common table; only if we can provide something useful to other people, we can expect to be part of a meaningful relationship.
(Translated from Lad så den megafon ligge!)

On the topic of forgetting history

It cannot come as a surprise to people who have read just a bit of what is said in this blog that I am quite excited about books and literature, and appreciate reading in general. But on very rare occasions, something strangely uncomfortable happens - it always starts when I hear about some book, after which I come to the conclusion that I should own that particular book, and that I hope that I will never ever need to read it.
Such a book I became aware of when I read an article about it in a Danish newspaper. It was not because the book itself was new - it actually appeared for the first time in German already in the nineties - but here, I read about a Danish translation. It was the Israeli historian Gideon Greif, who wrote the book "We Wept Without Tears", in which he tells us how he has sought the surviving Jewish members from the so-called Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, where they were tasked with participating in mass extinction of Jews in the camp.
I felt bad by simply reading the newspaper article, and I do not want to read the book at all. But I see it almost as a necessity to have it standing on the shelf - for one reason, if I or anyone around me begin to forget or question the history, it's time to take the book down from the shelf and make the effort to read in it. Not that I will hope it ever comes so far. A little like the fact that you have smoke detectors installed in your home that you hope you will never need - but if it really becomes necessary, you wouldn't want to do without it.
(Translated from Noget om at værne sig mod historieløshed, originally published October 5th, 2010)

Silence without loneliness

At some point, I wrote a couple of posts about the choreographer Twyla Tharp and her book "The Creative Habit" - a book that I recently found from my heaps of books in search of the title of a headline.
The headline is about one of Tharp's exercises in the book: "Build up your tolerance for solitude" - to build an ability of tolerance towards being alone. You simply have to sit alone in a room and let your mind fly. Initially for one minute; later on you can expand to ten minutes after which you can begin to focus on whether an idea or goal is formed in your thoughts - otherwise you have to icrease the time used. The exercise is called "ciúnas gan uaigneas" - it is Gaelic for "silence without loneliness" - without loneliness, because the idea you breed will be your companion. As Tharp states, this is the exact opposite of meditation - you should not try to empty your mind, on the contrary, you should attempt to lure thoughts from the subconscious in order to befriend them and stay with them.
I have never really been able to understand the concept of meditation - so I was very happy when I found ciúnas gan uaigneas. I should set aside more time for this purpose...
(Translated from Stilhed uden ensomhed, originally published January 16, 2013)

On the topic of lack of truth

Lies are problematic for me. Probably, it's only a few of those who read these posts, who may be in doubt - I am a great supporter of the truth and very aware of - yes, to a certain extent even fascinated by - how there may exist multiple sides to the same matter; Sides, which, with a certain degree of fairness, seen from different angles, can be regarded as true. Yes, maybe even The Truth.
But, actually, I'm having a hard time with lies in a different way. I have problems with the word "lie" itself - because, when someone uses the word "lie", this is much stronger than just saying that someone does not tell the truth. For the truth is subjective. It is conceivable that the person who tells something actually says what she pure-heartedly believes to be true. Even though my perception of truth and reality is inconsistent with hers. Lying, on the other hand, relates to the situation where you have deliberately failed to convey what you find is the truth, or perhaps even put something that you knew was untrue, in the place of truth.
At home, for the same reason, we have always been careful about using phrases like "it's a lie" or "X tells a lie". In several situations we have had the opportunity to emphasize the sensibility of moderating this into "I'm not sure that is a fact" or "I do not agree with X". It may well happen that some will think that this makes their language vague far beyond what's reasonable. But on the other hand, it ends people up in a situation from which conversation is actually possible.
This is because hereby, we open up for other people to have their interpretation of the truth, I'm not at all sure that it will be a truth that agrees with my version. But by acknowledging that my conversation partner does not necessarily have bad intentions just because her version of the truth is not consistent with mine, I fail to dig trenches that might otherwise make all further communication impossible.
(Translated from Noget om mangel på sandhed)

Well - in which camp do I belong?

Once again, Rebecca Elvy has made me do some introspection. In her weekly newsletter, she asks her readers, which of the following three camps they're in:

• For some people, the racket is too much. They settle in for a non-eventful life, rich in routine and devoid of impact.
• Others lean toward this quiet life, because it seems like less effort… but deep down they wonder what else they could achieve…
• And a third group desperately want to achieve sometime massive, to make that personal leadership contribution, but they’re not sure where to start or in what domain their efforts should be spent.

Which made me wonder: where do I belong in that picture? And after some contemplation, I found myself to be somewhere between the ones who wonder what else they could achieve, and the ones who desperately want to achieve sometime massive - right now you could say that I am in some sort of hibernation state, where I am perfectly content with being doctor Watson to other people's Sherlock Holmes - the person who does not really do anything out of the ordinary to the table himself, but tries to faithfully bounce the brilliant balls back with a slight twist, when you throw them in my direction; hopefully with the symbiotic result that both of us get inspired.
At least, I have in multiple situations found myself to be inspired by all the brilliant people that I am so fortunate to interact with.
And the good thing - which indicates to me that for now, I am in the exactly right spot: each and every time someone says that I have been able to inspire, it feels like the only thing I really want to do...
(Translated from Ja, hvilken lejr tilhører jeg?)

On the topic of (un)natural kindness

Sometimes, discussions continue in directions that are difficult to predict from the beginning. For example, what started in the reflections on whether creators are selfish and continued into more on whether consumers are generous, thereafter continued into considerations on whether kindness is natural to humans.
There might be some truth to the observation that another one of my dear Twitter friends, Garima Patet, put forward in relation to this:

"Often, the higher one climbs in the social context, the greater becomes the danger of demonstrating unkind behaviour. There maybe may be exceptions to this statement. But showing kindness is unnatural to human beings."

On the other hand, I think such an observation on a negative trait in general human character just underlines that we need to insist on kindness and common courtesy - and the higher we climb in a social context, the more people we have climbed above, the kinder we should be - as we should always be as least as kind and courteous towards those we have climbed above, as we should be towards those who have climbed above us.
(Translated from "Noget on (u)naturlig venlighed")

If you find a problem...

Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to a lecture given by the Danish management consultant Christian Ørsted about what he calls "Lethal leadership" - a great pleasure, because there were many interesting takeaways.
It was not necessarily things that was unaware of - but there were points that are not necessarily consistent with how people usually act, and hence, it can be really good to put words on them.
One of the most outstanding examples was how to handle people, when they report problems.
Often (if the old-fashioned method of "killing the messenger" isn't applied), it is implicitly expected that if someone reports a problem, the same someone should also be able to come up with a solution.
An expectation which often has as its only outcome that if someone sees a problem, she keeps her mouth shut unless she is so lucky as to know how to solve it. Something which far from always happens to be the case.
Therefore, it is important to say that if someone finds a problem, then you expect that person to tell about it. Then, together, you can assess the problem and put an effort into solving the problem using the best best means available - rather than frightening people into silence by setting up unrealistic expectations.
(Translated from Hvis du finder et problem..., originally published October 13th, 2017)

More on the topic of selfishness, generosity and symbiosis

The other day I looked at the view point that content consumers can be said to be generous, whereas those who produce the content on the opposite can be regarded as selfish, and I did this very much with my focus on the selfish creators.
But it is at least as interesting to look at the generous consumers - because is it true: are the consumers always so generous?
In a sense, yes. All people who consume the content that I have created, I have to at least acknowledge that they generously spend their time on me. That's why I like to return to the story of Adam Grant and Daniel Pink in the backyard: in this world, where time is often considered our most precious resource, we waste people's resources if anything we have created makes them spend time that they could have used better elsewhere. (And if I let people's resources go to waste in that way, I have to consider any wish I have that they read my creations to be selfish).
But of course there are more or less generous consumers. As soon as the consumer begins to relate to the content and provide feedback, the level of generosity increases. I agree that the generosity of the keyboard warriors (who just use the creators' posts as a starting point to bring forward their own more or less off-topic conspiratory assumptions) is of such a limited extend that we would be better off without it. But the closer to the subject the given feedback is - and the more constructive inspiration, the creator can get out of it - the more generously the consumer acts towards the creator. This is perfectly obvious in situations where sequences of comments develop into mutually inspiring conversations, but even a single click on a Like-button can be seen as generosity - as the consumer hereby gives an expression of the type "more of the same kind, please".
For the same reason, I prefer five dedicated readers than 5000 that I hardly notice are there - because I, along with the five dedicated ones, can share much more symbiotic generosity in our common interest.
(Translated from Mere om egoisme, generøsitet og symbiose)

On the topic of common courtesy

The other day, in a discussion about politeness, I was lead to say something, which initially made me happy, but ended up frightening me.
It began with the finding that even though all people seem to have less time these days, this is no excuse for rude behaviour - hereafter, the recognition that because common courtesy does not cost any money and does not take much extra time - well, there is no reason why not all people are polite. All in all quite well. Thus the happiness.
But then I came to think: since there are actually rude people who do not observe common courtesy, there can only be one of two scary reasons for it: either they are not brought up to treat other people with kindness, or they actively make a choice to be rude.
I do not know which one is most scary. But I know that if you are treated politely and with kindness, it tends to rub off. So, hereby a call to all of us to exhibit kindness and common courtesy towards other people at all times.
Not to say that we can not disagree. But let's do it respectfully.
(Translated from Noget om almindelig høflighed)

On the topic of selfishness, generosity and symbiosis

Once again, my dear friend Rebecca Elvy made me think - this time by putting forward the observation that "consuming content is at least as much an act of generosity as creating it. In fact, creating content is somewhat selfish. But it can't be completely selfish, because you share it..."
 After giving it some thought, I guess you could call those who create content selfish, as most creators do it because they live with some inner force that drives them to create the content; they simply have to create it, regardless of whether it is of interest to others or not, in order to satisfy this inner force. But in other ways it is selfless - because creators put their creations out there for us consumers to consume it (sometimes with a price tag, but the consumers accept that the content is much more valuable than what the creator demands to get for it).
But I think the most fruitful way point of view us to creators and consumers as being parts in a symbiotic relationship - at it's best, creators might create their content without having an audience in mind, but still most creators thrive on the feedback from the consumers; the consumers, on the other hand thrive on the content of the creators and offer their feedback in return - thereby creating a feedback loop which makes both creators and consumers better than they would be on their own - for which reason both the creators and the consumers are happy that the other part exists and spends time and energy on keeping the circuit alive. It is mutual inspiration at its best - and both creators and consumers see the other part as being generous, because both parts bring something to their common good. And either part consider herself the selfish one, because she benefits from her counterpart's generosity.
The trick is to seek these fruitful relations - because I recognise that there are other, less fruitful creator-consumer relationships out there, where each part tries to benefit as much as possible from the other part's generosity. The trick is to replace the "what's in it for me"-mindset with that of "I'm in it for you".
(Translated from Noget om egoisme, generøsitet og symbiose)

The wolf we feed

They say that inside all of us, we carry with us two wolves who fight each other. One represents negative things such as anger, envy, sorrow, regret, arrogance, self pity, guilt, hatred, lies, doubt and egoism, whereas the other represents positive things such as faith, hope, love, peach, humility, friendliness, empathy, generosity and truth.
And the question, which wolf will win the fight, is quite easily answered - so easily that it requires no further explanation. The wolf you feed will win.
So let this be a call to action for all of us. Let's feed our positive wolf. Make room for and nurture faith, hope, love, peach, humility, friendliness, empathy, generosity and truth.
Because all of us benefit from other people feeding their positive wolf.
And because we to our surroundings are a part of all of those, who should feed the positive wolf for other people to benefit from it.
(Translated from Den ulv, vi fodrer, originally published May 31st, 2017)