Here at Astute.Work, we regularly bookmark articles, apps, books, podcasts and academic research that help our thinking and practice. Here I've curated five from January that piqued my interest because of their implications for the world of business communications.
1) Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers I’m a new convert to Audible and Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers has been a great place to start. Through a series of case studies, Gladwell teaches us about how we read the human behaviours and motives of people we don’t know – and his insight is equally applicable to those we do. The biggest lesson relates to Truth Default Theory. According to the book, our human lie detectors are naturally set to off, even when there are red flags. We don’t want to believe that people are lying to us so we rationalise facts and allow bias to creep into our decision-making. It’s an important lesson for anyone in operational risk management – and particularly interesting when the concept is applied to political campaigning. Could this potentially explain why so many people voted for Trump?
2) Parent Ping Here’s one for the parents out there struggling with home schooling and lockdown. Parent Ping is a daily survey app which helps you learn about how other parents are dealing with life. In exchange for answering two simple questions, you get access to survey results and daily reads which help to improve your relationship with your child(ren) and help them get the most out of education as possible. As well as being one of the best modern surveying tools out there and therefore worth a look for best practice, the app is good for knowing things like how parents are feeling about the home schooling juggle and how supportive employers are being in general.
3) The Cummings Effect A University College London paper published in the Lancet which researched the views of 40,000 people has found that public faith in the Government dropped steeply after Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules last year. As reported in the Guardian, experts now say that rule flouting has become more commonplace because of this erosion of trust. As a professional communicator this comes as no surprise. Building trust requires effective leadership, transparency, shared values and consistency of behaviour, all of which have been completely lacking during the COVID-19 pandemic.
4) Public Sector Procurement Tracker Intelligence has published a guide extolling the benefits of engaging earlier to increase the chances of success with public sector procurement. According to the team at Tracker, building relationships with the organisations you want to win work with can help you influence the objectives and requirements of a contract before the official notice is published and educate the buyer on your products and services, as well as your particular market.
5) Brand Purpose A Brandwatch survey on brand purpose has reported that 52% of consumers think it’s ‘very important’ that a brand proactively makes the world a better place. Virtue signalling is seen as far less important than positive action.
Its findings are borne out by Edelman’s Trust Barometer, which has a whole online section dedicated to what COVID-19 means for business and communicators. This states that “In uncertain environments likes this, trust in institutions – businesses, organisations and governments – becomes even more critical. Strong leadership and decisive action are needed to earn that trust and shape our post-crisis future.”
