Talk
Interconnectivity in Business: Why It Matters Right Now
SmartSpeech 2
There are two rooms in every company, finance and workforce, and they have stopped hearing each other. This talk is about what each room actually believes, and how to build mountains instead of flagpoles.
Every business runs on two rooms. In one, the numbers. In the other, the people. Both are convinced the other does not understand them, and both are partly right.
The talk opens with the psychology of why we affect each other whether we intend to or not - emotional contagion, mirror neurons - and then puts the two rooms side by side to compare what each perceives with what is actually true.
What the talk covers
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Become a two-way communicator
Find out what it is really like in both rooms. The workforce is not work-shy; it is the most purpose-driven generation in history. Finance is not evil; its responsibility to grow profit is what makes the workforce viable. Each room is arguing with a caricature of the other.
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Build mountains, not flagpoles
The old American dream was a flagpole: go as high as you can, alone. A mountain grows outward as it grows up, and it can hold other people. The inner message changes from "I do not need anyone" to "grow out while growing up".
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Keep remembering we are in this together
David Foster Wallace opened his 2005 Kenyon College address with two young fish who do not know what water is. The culture you work inside is the water. Naming it is most of the work.
Figures cited
- Cambridge University and University College London: roughly one in four workers in real estate are experiencing mental health problems.
- On emotional contagion: Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo and Richard L. Rapson. On mirror neurons: Giacomo Rizzolatti and colleagues.