Soul Business blog 5: Make sense

25 Nov Soul Business blog 5: Make sense

Soul Business is an ethos to inspire and enable people, business and organisations to communicate better by connecting deeper.

Okay, so how do you create messaging that works and makes sense to your audience so you can connect at a hearts and minds level?

This is more than merely getting on message in some kind of spin doctor-y way using simplistic sales ideology, which steals the rudiments of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) to crudely pigeon hole potential customers in a narrowly defined way.

For starters, not all messaging is about sales (actually, I believe buy-in is preferential to selling) as most of us need to connect with many audiences for many reasons.

Also, those audiences comprise organisations with differing people within them – and anyway, most of us shift personality depending on the situation. Nervy folks can be fearless in water, bolder types sometimes prefer terra firma. NLP done properly is a science, used by amateurs it can be misleading.

To truly connect we need to understand how messaging works and how to shape and nuance messages effectively to reach different audiences in ways that make sense to them.

Forget business or economic studies, l reckon the best answer lies in cultural studies, an academic discipline that emerged in the post-war era to make sense of the modern world.

In his ground-breaking book Mythologies, French philosopher Roland Barthes defined the creation of meaning as a two stage process known as semiotics:

Encoding – how we shape or package a message

Decoding – how it is deconstructed or we unpack it.

Barthes noted a key part of the process called bricolage – the way we interpret or decipher messages to add our own connotation, meaning, understanding or appropriation.

Cultural studies initially focused on a variety of areas of modern life from political campaigning to advertising, pop artists (why was a row of Campbell’s soup construed as art, for instance?) to youth sub cultures, who readily seemed to appropriate items not primarily designed for them.

Why did mods, for example, adopt Italian scooters, which had been made for Italian family weekend leisure, how did skinheads appropriate city-gent Crombies, or why did working class teddy boys wear posh Edwardian jackets. It ‘makes sense’ to those sub cultures in their context.

So what does this mean for businesses or organisations? Basically, that we need to get good at shaping what we want to say so it makes sense to our audiences. so we can influence them and win buy in – so they ‘get’ us – not just what we do, but who we are, how we do it and why – indeed the character values that drive us.

We also need to develop the ability to listen so we can devise and shape products, services and ways of working that meet needs and make sense – it is a two-way dialogue.

By contrast, negative connotations are dangerous. Let’s say we’re in a crisis situation – people are saying negative things about our business. A familiar response is ‘no comment’.

Say nothing, hope it goes away. Trouble is, the chances are it won’t and ‘no comment’ doesn’t help.

‘No comment’ can easily be construed as guilty, shifty or something to hide. Or can’t be bothered, don’t care, won’t listen. Or irresponsible – this is an organisation that won’t stand up for itself, doesn’t see a need to be accountable or isn’t attuned to managing complaints or criticism. Your reputation plummets rapidly.

The better we get at making sense, the more chance we have of success. Once you understand this – and fully embrace it – you realise that communicating and truly connecting has greater depth and value.

How many times have you shaped a product or service only for someone to say: “I like it… but I want it this way”, or “Can you do it like this…”  It may not be what you envisaged but it is their interpretation of what you can provide which may prove to be of greater value to both parties.

The key thing is you’ve shaped your image in such a way to engender a positive response. If you can nuance your message for target audiences and make sense in tightly focused ways you’re on your way.

Lest we forget – THE most important factor is the need to connect with people.

Chris Green is an award-winning author and broadcaster – and managing partner of Chris Green Media – which inspires organisations to communicate better by connecting deeper.