Self-portraits.

By Andrew Cross, Ph.D, with significant input and suggestions from Steve Bowie. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and not of their employers.

Our Personal Brand.

In today's frenzied and hyper-connected world, whether to snag our dream job or to make a lasting impression on a first date, we strive to show the world the most impressive and polished version of ourselves; that perfect version that exists in our minds. We pour our hearts and souls into constructing that perfect image, not just to wow others, but also to feel validated and appreciated. This unyielding pursuit to hone our communication skills and present ourselves in the most favorable light stems from an inherent and profound need to be heard and valued. We recognize that our ability to forge connections and convey our message is often the deciding factor in our achieving professional, personal, and yes, even our romantic aspirations. Our unwavering fixation on how we are perceived is something that is built into all of us and seems to form a huge part of who we are.

During our school years, we dedicated an endless amount of time and energy to sharpening our writing skills, constructing persuasive arguments, and fine-tuning the delivery of our presentations to ensure that we could present our polished ideas with perfection. Why did we invest so much of our energy in these pursuits? To be honest, our motivation was likely self-centered. It was not necessarily about world peace or saving the dolphins or even proving that the debate proposition was true or false. No, our primary goal was to make a favorable impression that would earn us that grade; in turn, this would increase our chances of admission to an elite college and the job opportunities that might follow.

We approach other important moments in our lives with the same intensity and attention to detail. Before a first date, we meticulously plan our outfits, hairstyle, and conversation topics to make a lasting impression. When preparing for a job interview, we scour the internet for tips and tricks to impress the interviewer. In the workplace, we devote countless hours to perfecting presentations and materials that effectively communicate our message and brand. Similarly, television and film producers often dedicate their lives to crafting the stories that captivate audiences, while marketing professionals work tirelessly to showcase products in a way that leaves a lasting impression on consumers' minds. Some companies spend more than 10% of their total revenue on marketing alone to ensure that they are perceived exactly as they want to be.

As someone who works in product development, I, too, spend a lot of my time thinking about how to communicate product stories successfully. There is however something that has started to nag me about this and the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether things I have always taken for granted might be entirely wrong.

Alone on the stage.

Imagine the pressure and excitement of being invited to deliver a keynote address to a large audience of industry professionals, probably half of whom are people you have worked with for years. You'll be sharing important lessons from five years of your work, making it a deeply personal presentation. Your entire life's work will come under scrutiny in just one speech. The stakes are high: The success or failure of this presentation might impact your entire career.

You will begin by building a slide deck that will undergo endless iterations to review and polish. (If you’re even a half-decent presenter, your slides will be the outline you expand on, breathing life into the bullet points rather than reciting them verbatim to an audience who, after all, can read for themselves!) You practice in front of the mirror; you might even test the limits of friendship, asking friends or colleagues to view and critique it. Far too quickly, the big day arrives and, if you're like me, you spend the hour before your presentation pacing in the corridor while rehearsing the lines in your head. Finally, you’re on stage. And, to your immense relief, everything goes very well. Your presentation fits in perfectly. You deliver your main points with conviction and clarity, and your slides look great. The subsequent applause signals that the audience is satisfied, and your hosts congratulate you. You leave the stage and the next presenter comes up. Mission accomplished. 

Now, please consider an alternative reality. As you pace the corridor, you feel confident that you have your lines and slides memorized. But as you step onto the stage, disaster strikes. You trip on the top step, tumbling to the ground with a loud thud that echoes through the room. The room falls silent, and every eye is on you as you sheepishly dust off your knees and make your way to the lectern. Although you somehow regain your composure, you really can't shake the embarrassment of the fall; it haunts you throughout the entire presentation. You go through your slides without incident, but you know you were somewhat distracted, reliving the fall over and over in your subconscious. As you leave the stage, you feel a sense of disappointment and missed opportunity. In your mind, all the hard work and effort you put into the past five years have become nothing but a joke due to one cruel misstep of fate. It's unfair, and you can't help but feel shaken by the experience.

There is an unexpected side-effect of your misstep, though. The audience will remember the guy who tripped long after they’ve forgotten those who walked onstage without incident. If your presentation was remotely coherent, out of all the presentations given that day, yours would be the one people remember – and with warmth and sympathy. If you went down to the hotel bar later, you’d find people stopping to slap you on the back, maybe even buy you a drink. Many would confess to something even more embarrassing that happened to them. Amazingly, some number would stay to discuss your presentation, the key points of which are embedded in their minds not despite your little faux pas but because of it!

You were so certain that a polished presentation was critical, that endless preparation in front of the mirror and the pre-stage pacing was key to success – and yet ... what just happened? How can your presentation, which began with exactly the kind of incident we all dread, be the one that is remembered (and fondly so) while others that seemed flawless by comparison are soon forgotten? And if this is true about my hypothetical conference presentation, is it also true about first dates, the essays we write, and those important job interviews? If it is, then have we overlooked some truly fundamental aspect of everything we spend so much of our life doing?

Imperfection.

To some degree, the confusion flows from misplaced emphasis: We focus so much on what we want to say that we forget to consider how those same things are heard.

When we trip on the last step before our big presentation, we may briefly imagine the audience reveling in our misfortune, certain that they are thinking “This is hilarious, this presentation is going to be fun.” Wrong. Most people are empathetic. I guarantee you that every last one of them has stumbled at some point in their career too and most are feeling sympathetic, not scornful. Ironically, your unfortunate mistake accomplished the one thing that is almost impossible to put into a PowerPoint slide: The audience is now emotionally connected to you, and this dramatically transforms the way they see you and how they hear your message. They are human – and now, so are you!

When we ask our friends to show us their favorite photo of someone they love, we might expect a polished portrait with perfect lighting, framing, and a professionally-done hairstyle and makeup. But more often than not, we're shown a candid snapshot taken in a natural setting, with the subject's hair blown by the wind or wearing a silly hat, and the background slightly blurry. Despite all of these imperfections, the photo captures the essence of the person. The genuine emotion conveyed in the image is what truly matters. 

If that empathy and connection with the audience was your goal, why on earth did you spend months working on a presentation, painting a huge chrome veneer on top of your work just to make it what you thought your audience might want? 

If your hair is a disaster on your big first date (though you tried to tame it), surely the honest admission that you are “having a bad hair day” makes you far more real. More importantly, in retrospect, the fact that you cared enough to feel bad will be remembered more than a little misplaced hair. Would the perfectly manicured-and-hair-gelled version of yourself make a better impression?

Let’s think about what this realization means in a business context. I have spent my life working on products. I am painfully aware of the huge amount of time and effort inevitably spent making pretty documents that talk about what the product does, who is the persona and what the target market is, all of this is then crammed into a long document with that same chrome veneer of certainty. We build out a product specification, scrutinizing the target market on a subatomic level (after all, we are trying to run a business; if we are going to make money, we had best build something that a customer might buy). However, the sheer volume of verbosity in the modern work environment means that we are constantly subjected to presentations in which someone is talking about how “our market position is building enterprise workflow solutions” (or whatever business buzzwords are trending this week). 

Does any one of us have some customer who wakes up one bright morning, has a cup of coffee, walks into the office, and confidently asserts “Today I want to buy an enterprise workflow solution!”. A customer is a person who buys something to fill a need (and likely hopes it will continue doing so for a decade or two). Thirty seconds from now, when you are on your next web page pitching a product, read through almost any product description and ask yourself whether it is representing things from the perspective of the company or that of a prospective customer; far too often, it’s the former. In our desire to build products drawing on all our customer-centric slogans, how on earth did we forget to put ourselves in their position, and talk to them about something that matters to them, instead of to us? 

I once went so far as to ban the phrase “workflow solutions” from any document at the company I was at. Did it work? Of course not. Those exact words were used in an email sent to all staff before the day was out. This just shows how deeply our tendency to focus on our image runs, despite oft-repeated slogans urging us to stand in our customers' shoes, empathizing with them and understanding what they want to hear. 

How many companies are there claiming “Our product is the most fully featured” or “We can help you make better productions of all sizes”? A customer who is about to spend their own money on your product does not produce all sizes of shows – they only have one show: their show and they want it to be perfect. A multi-page technical feature list does nothing for them; they just want to know that it does what they need.

Humans make human decisions.

We’d all like to think we make decisions logically, and analytically. While none of us want to be seen as making illogical decisions, the reality is that many other powerful factors are involved, and logic is nowhere near the top of the list. People are not machines, and the same basic instincts drive us all. Which color do you prefer, cyan or aqua? Please explain your choice (given that they are the same color). What about navy blue versus indigo (also identical)? Economic theories tell us that we make decisions about money matters based on cold hard, rational facts. Despite this, somehow we are all surprised when we humans stubbornly persist in acting in human ways.

When building a product, we will doubtless prepare many internal documents describing the business case, listing all the reasons that it will be a great investment for our customers, cheaper than the competition, and represent an amazing total lifetime value. Yet, perversely, this all forms just a small part of how people decide what to buy. The product that “connects” with them, the one that helps them with their problems in a way that resonates with their own life experience is the one they will remember. It speaks to their concerns and convictions, and this is the kernel that will inform their purchases. Of course, they will need to convince themselves (or their boss) why their decision was well thought out and logical; so, sadly, you still need to check all those return-on-investment type boxes – but the real factors driving the decision to buy are almost always the ones that make it meaningful to them. 

Next time you are with your friends for a drink and run out of exciting topics, try this experiment (that, in my experience, shows us something about human nature). Start talking about designing a car, and ask your companions what they think customers will want in the design. The answers invariably include things like great fuel efficiency, reliability, safety features, and cost-effectiveness. Then, as the next round of drinks arrives, ask your slightly happier companions about the car that they bought with their own money. Time and time again, you will discover that few own the cars they asked you to design. Rather, their cars somehow make them feel good and reflect how they want to be seen. This does not mean that fuel efficiency was not a consideration at all, but their decision was primarily driven by how they felt. Fuel efficiency was a secondary consideration, not the determining factor; as long as they could stick a half-hearted tick in that box, the personal connection dominated the mind.

Are we really talking to ourselves?

Thankfully, many companies today do try to be customer-centric, focusing on what the customers want. And many realize that customers are people first, not spreadsheets, and that describing products in “enterprise workflow solution” terms is not how to engage with them. Those are the companies that I like working with and buying from. 

When we go on dates or have a relationship or friendship with others, we try to empathize with them and do things that we hope will make them feel good, satisfying their emotional as well as merely practical ones. These are the kind of people that I try to surround myself with, and I try to be myself.

But is this enough? When I consider buying a car from you, the little voice in my head does not call me your customer. I think of myself as a person, specifically, the one who needs a car to drive my kids to school. Maybe even being customer-centric isn’t quite enough; what we all need is to focus on people. 

The next time you get on stage it will not matter if you trip on the last step. Describe something that matters to you, and your listeners will focus on that above all else. Explain why it matters and how applying what you have to say can fill their real needs, and they will respond with genuine enthusiasm of their own. Speak to people without the chrome layer of a good presentation. If what you actually say matters, they will hear you. And the time you might have used chrome plating things is much better spent working on something you care enough about that you really can’t wait to share it with people.