Another Point of View

Self-employment and often working from home leads into some interesting situations. Today I have already spent time networking with Edwina Currie and then on my doorstep with two Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Politics and religion. Two topics to produce polarised views. But I’m less interested in the poles than the spectrum. However much my views may have deviated from others, they have insight and experience that I don’t. I’ve heard them, they made me think about other points of view.

If I ever wanted to engage with them again, if I wanted to influence them to do something different, I can’t hope to change their minds. But I can take into account their points of view and work with them.

That made me think about this blog piece, which (rightly) attracted a lot of attention in my network. Written by Francesca Campalani, Head of Attraction at Deloitte, it’s talking about Employer Branding and discovering for your audience: “What do they want, how do they make decisions, what is important to them?”

For me, it’s vital to understand the range of views. It’s also vital to have an objective eye. For one, people won’t always be fully honest with their employer or potential employer. They’ll hold back. And both ways, negatively and positively. For another you (yes, you) have too many inherent beliefs, assumptions and prejudices about your organisation. It takes an external observer to cut through those and reveal the full range of truths to you. 

Oh, and you’ll want the other point of view to the above blog. Well, for me, segmentation and taxonomy are important – but only so far, and before they tip over into being too complex to usefully use. As this blog asserts “Targeting is not the holy grail of marketing. It’s helpful to a point but rests on assumptions about human behaviour that are unpredictable and misleading”.

And I agree with both blogs. That’s not double-think. That’s just seeing truth as a spectrum, and working out which points work for you.