Carey Giudici

Business communication has never been as easy. Or as problematic.

It was different just twenty years ago.

The industrial age was about technique and process: it focused on what we needed to do, or to know, to finish our task.

Managers could motivate employees by walking around, occasionally asking a question and making personal comments:

“You did that job well, Joe.” “How can we do that better?” “Let me see that widget again, Mary.”

Employees identified completely with their jobs, and cared more about what managers thought.

But change was in the air.

In 1996, Richard Farson’s very readable little book Management of the Absurd noticed that “The More We Communicate, The Less We Communicate.”

“Increasingly, we seem to believe that everybody should be in on everything,” he wrote.

“Many supposed communication problems are actually...

With our almost unlimited choices in social media and search engines, we always have at least two decent answers to every search, question or opinion.

With so many choices, marketers (including idea merchants and politicians) try to give us compelling reasons to choose their product or service.

These choices are connected by a common category, yet separated by the benefits or features that make them different from each other.

We decide what makes two similar products or services different in just a few seconds. The more effective a marketing message, the more likely we are to choose A over B.

So “on the other hand” isn’t a phrase only for economists now. It’s become part of the process we use to differentiate between our options.

The more subtle the gap between A and B, and the less time we have to compare, the more familiar we become with paradoxes.

Because a paradox is defined as something that combines...

Post-war American industrialists loved efficiency experts: men with stopwatches and clipboards, paid to find ways for a company to shave seconds–even minutes–off the time it took workers to complete every task.

This rational, numbers-driven strategy was supposed to help management control an emotion-driven workplace.

Today, SEO experts promise us easy money from manipulating consumers to buy something, or visit our site.

But this is no time to suspend your disbelief, just because their technique is technology-based.

Behavior isn’t rational. Never has been. Any brand-new marketer or sales pro learns this fact within a few hours of meeting his or her first prospect. If buying decisions are emotional and irrational, why waste money and time on techniques that pretend we act rationally and are so herdable?

It’s because these snap-on techniques encourage us to believe–irrationally–that people are willing to be...

1. You’re a leader because you offer everyone more value; snake oil salesmen think they know how to manipulate others.
2. You accept responsibility; they avoid it with lies, damned lies and statistics.
3. You compete against yourself daily; they always sell the same tired two-dimensional idea.
4. You always make yourself useful; they seek only short-term personal gain.
5. You respect creative people; creativity confuses and scares them.
6. A problem intrigues you; they hope it will go away if they ignore it.
7. You encourage humor in yourself and others; they promote only drama and trivialities.
8. You welcome synergy and diversity; they want everyone to line up behind them.
9. Numbers are a tool for you; the same numbers serve as their “invisibility cloak.”
10. You enjoy ideas and new perspectives; they tend to feel threatened and afraid about anything different.
11. You...