It Ain't Hard

We chatted at the Starbucks cafe tucked into the San Jose airport as old friends would. Quickly, my dis-ease vanished. I had come close to nixing the meeting because I was in a shitty (best descriptor I can come up with!) mood.  I was still despairing because I hadn't come up with a compelling story for a project. But it was bigger even than marketing. 

"I feel like I'm pushing a river upstream," I revealed on the onset.

Tom handed me his new book, A Clear Eye for Branding, as we parted. I had no intention of reading it anytime soon. I'm swamped. And rugs were being pulled from under the table all week. "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight." [1] I not only commiserate with Sisyphus, I'm staring right into the mirror.

I read the book in one sitting.

Here's much of the introduction:

In the [psychological] study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of the dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slidee,  they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, "Healthy" or "Sick," at which point one of two lamps, labeled "Right" or "Wrong," would light up.

Person A received true feedback, meaning that his "Right" lamp would light up when he was correct and his "Wrong" lamp would light up when he was incorrect. These people - the A's - learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy. Person B's situation was quite different. His right or wrong lamps lit up based not on his own guesses but on Person A's guesses. He didn't know it, but he was searching  for an order where none could possibly exist.

A and B were then asked to work together to establish the rules for determining healthy vs. sick cells. The A's told the B's what they had learned and what simple characteristics they had looked for to tell the difference. B's explanations, by necessity, were subtle and quite complex - and completely bogus.

Here's the amazing part. After the collaboration, all B's and nearly all A's came to believe that the delusional B had a much better understanding of healthy vs. sick cells. In fact, A's were impressed with B's sophisticated brilliance, and felt inferior because of the pedestrian simplicity of their assumptions. In a follow-up test, the B's showed almost no improvement, but the A's scores dropped because the A's had incorporated some B's completely baseless ideas.

This study teaches us two important aspects with regards to branding or, for that matter, any business concept. [Or for that matter anything, says Evelyn.] First, once an explanation for something has taken hold in our minds, information that should refute that explanation may produce not an appropriate change of mind but rather an elaboration of the flawed explanation. It also teaches us to beware (be aware) of abstuse ideas, no matter how convincing the presentation or how brilliant the so-called expert. - Tom Asacker, A Clear Eye for Branding

If you skim-read, you may want to back up, re-read and let this sink in.

The fog in my mind lifting as I read further, I recall that if it's hard and difficult and complex, that it's a sure sign I've gone astray. I've read and absorbed so many gurus and pundits dazzling "brilliance" of late that my own simple, "pedestrian" intuition had nearly flushed away. Once in a while, you can actually read a book that reminds you of your own (simple) truth. Thank you, Tom.

The only way to suspend disbelief, cut through skepticism and create trust is to act as a real human being and get to the naked truth. As the sages say: 'Words that come from the heart can enter the heart.'" - "Oscar Wilde on Lies," Tom Asacker

The book's gist is that marketing is mostly about strengthening the emotional bond between people - people like customers and employees. Duh, is the proper response to a profound book.

In sustaining a mature relationship - a friendship say - it's not about lobbing clever stories over the net into their court. Or a million of myriad other explanations of how the mysterious black art of marketing "works."

What do I already know?

• Marketing is about people, period.
• People respond to love, period. What of fear, you ask? Fear being of the Ego is totally unpredictable. You are on your own terra incognita there. (Try this experiment: Go on a business book and biz magazine fast for two weeks. Rather focus on paying attention to an important but perhaps slightly strained relationship in your life - your partner, your boss, your daughter, or your college buddy that ticked you off last month. You'll learn more about marketing than anything you can read about, I'll guarantee you.)
• Authenticity is about being yourself - who you are, period.
• Enlightenment is simply resting in Perfect Wisdom - rather than a future-oriented goal of attaining Perfect Wisdom, period.

Yet, why do I try to make this so damn convoluted?

I once read that humans are the only animals that second-guess their own instincts. Sometimes the B's are all in our own heads. Ken Wilber's statement is indelibly etched into memory as the truth is wont to do. Wilber says: Ego is an effort.

I'm not advocating for laziness. However, if what you're doing smacks of effortfulness and struggle and complexity, that might be a sign. Stop and reconsider: What would an A say? What would your internal A say?

When the solution is simple, God is answering. - Albert Einstein

I'm so used to the Sisyphus role that it's second nature. Before we know it, that granite boulder seems to be an integral part of our identity. It takes courage to walk away from the boulder. But second nature is still secondary. It's not our nature. Authenticity is simple, it's natural. It cares not about whether we're in a small or big company - that's totally irrelevant.

We must continue to open in the face of great opposition. No one is encouraging us to open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart. - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

This opposition are the heavy layers upon layers of brilliantly sophisticated constructs that have buried the simple core, our inner A. Thomas Merton said that texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospels, "teach us to live in awareness of an inner truth. In obedience to that inner truth we are at last free." I don't even believe one needs "teaching" per se (I think of Buddhist's "teachingless teachings"). That inner truth is ever present, always accessible.

A friend sends me to this article on the book, Authentic - How To Make A Living By Being Yourself. The writer, Hugh Mason, wonders aloud if this book will lead his friend, the book's author, to hang out a shingle as an authenticity guru. He cinches it in the close:

I don't think looking for a guru will help anyone lead an authentic life... For me the positive potential of 'authenticity' is the call it makes to individuals to look inwards rather than outwards. - Hugh Mason, "Living the Authentic Life", Authentic Business

Hmmm, and that quote comes from an avowed atheist. If a guru or teacher still appeals, consider this sage advice of locating one:

A traveler in quest of the divine asked the Master how to distinguish a true teacher from a false one when he got back to his own land.

Said the Master, “A good teacher offers practice; a bad one offers theories.”

But how shall I know good practice from bad?”

“In the same way that the farmer knows good cultivation from bad.” – Anthony De Mello, One Minute Wisdom

My most "successful" endeavors and decisions were simple, off-the-cuff, "of course"-intuitive, and never angst-ridden flip-flopping rationalizations although I tend towards that style of contorted strategizing. I just "know" that I've hit on "it" without a second thought. Trust that you know the answer. There is often a natural lightness, a liberating sense of ease, a breath of relief for the elegance of a simple solution.

It gets simpler. In relationships (as in marketing), you need only sincerely believe you are authentic. The intent is what matters. Even when you sense you've got a long road to hoe (you don't; it's as close as the nose on your face) in terms of unburying your absolute genuine self - that's perfectly ok.

HBS professor Jerry Zaltman says: "Confidence contrived does not work." He cites a study about dental patients who received a placebo painkiller during a typically painful dental procedure [source from Brand Hijack, by Alex Wipperfurth].

The patients experienced a lack of discomfort only if the dentist also believed that the treatment they administered was an authentic painkiller. Unconscious behavior emanating from these dentists reinforced their patients' belief in the placebo. However, when the dentists knew that the treatment was not authentic and merely pretended it was, patients experienced considerable discomfort.

The study results make more of an impact if you consider what psychologist Lorne Ladner writes in The Lost Art of Compassion: "Our bodies [via limbic system] are like antennae or satellite dishes pointed to each other, picking up on subtle emotions that the conscious mind is not likely to see." I believe our human antenna are pretty simple: It picks up on variations of fear, and it picks up on variations of love.

Simply really: Fear or Love.

I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple. - Albert Einstein

Comments

[Lei/Cottontimer]

I'm a firm believer in following my gut instincts. Years ago I got married right out of college to my friends' disbelief and will be married 11 years next week. The week after getting married, my husband and I started a 4 year long-distance, intercontinental marriage because I knew I had to get my graduate degree. After finishing my PhD, I left the U.S. once again to my friends' and colleagues' disbelief and came to Asia. When I dropped out of science to freelance and be a mom, most people couldn't believe that I was the same person. But I'm happier and more fulfilled thatn I have ever been.

Not that I didn't think or agonize over my choices but in the end, I knew what was right for me at that time and place. There is no better way to live an authentic life than to be true to yourself no matter what anyone else tells you.

[davidcoe...]

K.I.S.S

xxxxx

[bengalic]

Very interesting post. Finding an authentic life is what I try at least for 7 years now. And I'm not even close to it...

At least I can say that the opposite way doesn't work. I used to re-think my decision over and over and almost always had poor or average results.

I'm fascinated by "effort-less" achievements and truly belive that's the way we're supposed to live, but putting that into practice is what I'm stuggling with. I guess, I have to learn more to trust.

Anyway, I came across your blog recently and, although I really try hard to limit blog-reading, keep visiting it. Good work, keep it up :)

[Marilyn]

re fear OR love...or as Jerry Jampolsky said so many years ago, "Love is letting go of fear." It might seem a cheesy '70's sentiment, but it still fits if you think about it.

My personal belief is that gurus don't hold the answers for any of us. If we have an aha! moment hearing someone speak or reading their words, etc. it's usually because it simply reminds us of what we already know...but may have forgotten. Some sculptors have an image in mind when they set out to work...some let the sculpture reveal itself as they work. I'm one of the latter in my quest to carve out my authentic self. I know it's there...I just have to strip away all the guck it's buried under. And, for me, the most exciting part of that quest is that I have no preconceived notions of what she will look like when I finally reach her...because that opens the doors to all sorts of possibilities...

[Barry Ritholtz]

One of my favorite books int his area is Thomas Gilovich's "How We Know What Isn't So"

Its a terrific look at many of the foibles you mentioned from pre-eminent researcher.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Hi all, Thanks for insightful commentary - especially reflections on your own lives. I'll try to comment in more depth soon. I'm actually enroute to Laguardia all day today (yep, ALL DAY) on my way to the South Asian Journalists Assn conference (www.saja.org).

[davidcoe...]

er...

I'm trying to forget the words dudes...

[Hal O'Brien]

I'll tell you the truth. Not unlike the way I read "Cluetrain Manifesto" and thought of it as a book about politics and public life (rather than "only" business as such)... I read the story of the As and Bs, and think that would explain a lot about our politics of late.

Regardless of where one stands ideologically, I point out:

* Our rationale for being in Iraq is complicated (and changing).

* Our rationale for not being able to find Osama bin Laden is complicated (and changing).

* Our rationale for the existence of Guantanamo is complicated.

Etc., etc., etc.

It's possible that these are complicated stories, and they're being told as simply as possible.

It's also possible they're not.

Here are some more ideas, and think about how complicated the answers tend to be:

* Why doesn't our press report more on substantive issues, rather than, "If it bleeds, it leads"?

* Why don't people care more about the deterioration of public life?

* Why do developers continue to build primarily suburbs ("primarily" by acres developed), even though multiuse downtowns provide much higher returns per square foot of property?

* Why are Americans so scared, when so many indicators show we have less and less to be frightened of?

Again... Those types of questions tend to have conventional wisdom stories for their answers. How complicated are they? How much do they sound like Bs rationalizing to As?

[fake oakleys]

ひとりじめ ひとりでに ひなまつり ひにち ひにひに ひのまる びふう ひましに ひま ひまん ひやくてき ひゃくパーセント ひやす ひゃっかじてん ひゃっかてん ひゃっぱつひゃくちゅう ひややか ひゆ ひゆてき ひょう びょういん びよういん ひょうが びょうき ひょうご ひょうこう びょうきにかかる ひょうざん ひょうじ びょうしつ ひょうじゅん ひょうばん ひょうめい びょうめい ひょうろん ひよく ひらがな ひらく ひらたい ひる ひるね ひるやすみ ひれい ひろい ひろいだす ひろがる ひろさ ひろしま ひろば ひろびろ ひろまる ひをおこす ひん ひんしゅ びんそく ひんぱん びんぼう ふ ふうう ふうせん ふうとう ふうふげんか ふうぶつ ふうみ ふえつづける ふえる ぶか ふかけつ ふかのう ふかめ ふきあげる ふききよめる ふきげん ふきそく ふきだす ふきつける ふきまくる ぶきみ ふきょう ふきよう ふくおか ふくごうご ふくざつ ふくさよう ふくしょく ふくすう ふくそう ふくむ ふくろ ふけい ふけつ ふさい ぶし ぶじ ふしあな ふしぎ ふじさん ふしぜん ふしまつ ぶしゅ