But at the end of the day, doesn't it all come down to COMMUNICATION? In all of your experiences, weren't the best relationships and partnerships the ones where you felt you could be yourself? Where you could speak to a partner or client or customer as if they were a real person? Not as if they were idiots, or money bags, or entities to be exploited, or the thing you fear most. No. They were conversations that were professional and truthful, without trying to "get one over." They were open and collaborative, not patronizing or belittling. Sometimes, they were even fun and interesting.Do you remember those moments? I'm guessing they were the exception and not the rule, but you remember them clearly.
Some say that what separates us from other animal species is our ability to speak. Yet somewhere in our work evolution, we forgot how to COMMUNICATE. We filled our vocabularies with jargon that just serves to hide our true intentions and built standards that make us feel smarter when we use MBA terminology. But in that flurry of impressive terms and acronyms, we lost true meaning. And we end up building processes for customer satisfaction and relationship management that send our partners, clients, and customers the right information at the right time so they feel we're attentive and caring. But at the end of day, all they really want - all any of us really want - is someone to talk to us like we're human beings. At least that's my 2 cents.
