Bernard Gauthier

Funny how the ideas for a posting can from so many different sources. For example, last week I watched a great news feature about a young guitarist who bought a guitar that had originally been owned by legendary guitar-maker Normand Boucher (maker of Norman guitars). The feature pointed out that 1970’s fok-rock band Harmonium had used Norman guitars, which got me thinking about one of my favourite songs (Un musicien parmi tant d’autres) by this amazing band and the memorable lyrics:

Où est allé tout ce monde qui avait quelque chose à raconter?
On a mit quelqu’un au monde on devrait peut-être l’écouterWhich loosely translates to:

Where did all the people go with a story to tell?
We put a child on this earth, we should perhaps listen to him/her

Even though these lyrics had lived in my brain for 20 or more years, they suddenly seemed fresh and more relevant than ever. I’m not sure why but the notion of a society that doesn’t listen to its own people hit a nerve with me.

More recently, I opened a bottle of 2004 Cote de Beaune-Villages (a nice red from Joseph Drouhin) that had sadly turned into something smelling like paint thinner mixed with vinegar and tasting, I imagine, about the same. So I brought it back to my local LCBO (a government-run chain of liquor and wine stores in Ontario). To their credit they happily took the opened bottle back and replaced it with a wine that was in much better shape. Before I could go home to drink, finally, this wine, the helpful clerk proceeded to ask me what was wrong with the wine. The trick is, my answer had to fit into one of the prescribed categories in the official wine-returning-report database. So we tried to fit the round peg of my answer into one of the square holes from which he could choose.

At that moment, I thought again of those lyrics because it struck me that the organization was almost listening but not quite. They were listening to fill out a form and feed a database but not listening to learn, understand and connect. They didn’t ask how I felt, whether they should do something a little extra to account for the wasted time and horrible smell and taste I endured (my life is so hard, I know). They didn’t ask how I felt about the clerk’s performance, the winery in question, the wines I like and don’t like. They asked a simple question that might likely generate a response to fit into the square holes provided.

They I remembered the telephone fundraiser who asked ”How are you doing tonight… (pauses to re-read script) Bernie?” and how he launched into his pitch before I could answer. I remembered the survey my telephone company asked me to complete, which included about a half dozen questions on how frustrated I must be with the slow speed on my internet connection. I remembered the long list of waiters and waitresses who came around and asked “How is everything?” and kept on moving while we chewed, swallowed and prepared our answers and requests.

My point here is simply that, as a society, we have all but lost the ability and the desire to listen. We shout. We ask. We sell. We rush. We put people on this earth and forget to ever really listen to them. Businesses, as my list of examples suggest, are among the worst listeners but they are hardly alone. It’s not surprising, really, when you consider that listening (really listening) takes time, it takes people who are articulate and intelligent, and it takes reflection. Hardly the kind of investments that most large organizations like to make. So they outsource the people, squeeze the answers into databases or pretend to be listening.

What’s lost in all of this, of course, is insight and relationship. Organizations don’t learn, mistakes get repeated, fortunes are lost, elections are lost, and customers/donors/voters look elsewhere. Is it any wonder so many new products fail (75% to 90%) or that participation rates in elections are so low?

I’ll end on an optimistic note: the web has created an entirely new window through which organizations of all kinds can listen. They can “listen” to the boxes people check but also to the words people write, the podcasts people record or the videos they submit. They won’t necessarily, but the mere presence of so many new in-bound channels leaves me optimistic. My optimism was even greater after watching the CNN/You Tube debate for the Democratic contenders. The nervous contenders had no choice but to listen that night. The result was a fascinating and revealing debate and, with any luck, a powerful experience for the contenders.

Some organizations will continue to get better and better at listening. Watch for them to dominate their competitors in the future.