I was talking to an old friend today and we were talking about the social side of business. Not Twitter or Facebook, but how we interact with each other on a daily basis.
If you meet a series of people more powerful than you in a small meeting, you have only a few options.
1) Get them to like you
2) Get them to not like you
3) Get them not to notice you
If its the first, it is because you are able to say or doing something impressive that agrees with their worldview and is not offensive. If you break one of these three rules, you move to the second option.
If they talk to you, then it is probably either the first or the second. But realize that you may not get to know what the outcome was right away. Because people are polite. And they will be polite if they think you are an idiot, because they are professionals. They will be wary of someone that over reaches, says silly things or is generally in appropriate. So sometimes the best thing you can do is wait for later – when you meet them again and are thoughtful enough to remember the times before.
I thought it would be an interesting book to study Twitter as a case study for etiquette, but no one has yet.
So how does this relate to innovation? Easy. You can offend a little, impress a little, but by and large – you must be what they know and understand. If they don’t understand 80% of what you are about and find a way to align themselves, you are just a novelty.
And we have all been novelties sometimes.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Commentary.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
Etiquette of Innovation
I was talking to an old friend today and we were talking about the social side of business. Not Twitter or Facebook, but how we interact with each other on a daily basis.
If you meet a series of people more powerful than you in a small meeting, you have only a few options.
1) Get them to like you
2) Get them to not like you
3) Get them not to notice you
If its the first, it is because you are able to say or doing something impressive that agrees with their worldview and is not offensive. If you break one of these three rules, you move to the second option.
If they talk to you, then it is probably either the first or the second. But realize that you may not get to know what the outcome was right away. Because people are polite. And they will be polite if they think you are an idiot, because they are professionals. They will be wary of someone that over reaches, says silly things or is generally in appropriate. So sometimes the best thing you can do is wait for later – when you meet them again and are thoughtful enough to remember the times before.
I thought it would be an interesting book to study Twitter as a case study for etiquette, but no one has yet.
So how does this relate to innovation? Easy. You can offend a little, impress a little, but by and large – you must be what they know and understand. If they don’t understand 80% of what you are about and find a way to align themselves, you are just a novelty.
And we have all been novelties sometimes.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.