Business Fiction
Toby Hecht taught me that businesses don’t exist. He was speaking about this from the standpoint of trying to talk to IBM. Toby says, “Try it sometime. Call and ask to talk to IBM.” While I recognized this as profound at the time, it took me a while to figure out where I was going to apply this insight. Where could I have this thinking show up more powerfully for me?
Ultimately something occurred to me. I noticed people were speaking to me about situations they were in or situations that they were trying to produce (such as getting an appointment for a sales call) and they would say, “I had a sales call at IBM today” or “IBM isn’t interested in our product right now” (I’m just using IBM as an example). And I realized how ineffective this speaking can be. It’s not very rigorous nor professional because–as Mr. Hecht had pointed out–IBM doesn’t exist!
I would have to ask, who did you meet with at IBM? Who isn’t interested in our product right now? If we began talking about the people involved, focusing on them, our conversations would be a lot more effective. From this insight I resolved never to speak like that except when doing so thoughtfully. Similarly, I’m going to encourage the people that I’m working with to do the same.
Now that you’ve read this post you may begin to notice people speaking about interacting with things that don’t exist. Most importantly, you may find yourself speaking this way. Depending on how you want to show up in business you may want to catch yourself and correct it. We can’t sell to, coordinate, cooperate, communicate, partner, team or do anything with something that doesn’t exist. We do these things with people.
