Tag: Language

Pierce The Future Through The Present

There is no greater fear than the fear of the unknown. Strategic foresight and future thinking exist to help tame the imaginary line connecting now and then. Competence alone is not enough; character and perspective are also required in equal doses. This means that working with the future needs a lot more than hype cycle analyses and predictions about the future of this and that from self-anointed guru-ninja-hackers without any proper training in foresight. Developing strong characters is fundamental to ensuring an ethos of good ancestry. 

Practising future-back management is critical to enabling breakthrough innovation and leapfrogs when the road ahead seems rather foggy.

Nurturing a sense of perspective becomes the antidote from getting stuck in antiquated ways of working, thinking and behaving. Marketing’s new research and developments can indeed be quite distracting given their high frequency and volume. In trying to make sense of the new and generate brand buzz from it, marketers end up missing out on rather transformational opportunities – those where the future can be more evenly distributed.

This is rather disconcerting since marketers are often some of the most well-rounded and best-informed professionals in their organisations, with a sharp sense of ‘what’s next’. Still, many get caught by the glitz of the novel, instead of putting their energy in the grittiness of the foresight process.

In fact, when it comes to crystalising the definition of the 21st century marketer, Google conducted an experiment that involved interviewing 30 board members from Fortune 1000 companies, having accumulated more than 1300 minutes of audio and over 100,000 words about the role of the CMO (Think with Google 2020), which was then summarised in one long, important paragraph:

“The 21st century CMO is expected to be a marketing miracle worker, an alchemist who combines classic art of branding with the latest advances in data and measurement. All this while you serve as the connective tissue of the C-suite and stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing landscape of digital technology, cultural trends and shifting consumer expectations – things becoming ever more important to the stock price. Customers matter more than ever and, since you’re responsible for them, your role should matter more than ever too. But board members do not seem to have one cohesive definition of the role. 

So, what are you to do?

Internally, steer expectations for your role by defining growth, you have some control over. And recognise that the talent of your team is half the battle to achieving that growth. Hire the best measurement people, because marketing will be held to some metric that is currently beyond reach, and you’ll need them to invent it. There are many ways you can impact revenue – but be prepared to show the ‘I’m indispensable’ maths. And do not forget the most visible CMOs also take big risks. Only three percent of board members interviewed were marketers. Likely, they do not hear you. Listen closely and find the overlap between what the board is interested in and your responsibilities. And, instead of building slides about everything you do, build one slide that puts you in a position to start a conversation around those common interests and goals.”

What is interesting to note is that futures thinking is all over in the paragraph above and yet, nowhere on it. As haiku-esque as a statement, this is the closest to the truth. Strategic foresight and futures thinking are not explicitly mentioned, but implicitly dominate the subtext, with clear emphasis on character, competence and perspective too. Therefore, the opportunity is to nurture the Phewturecast seed, and develop the gravitas required for marketers and their peers to encourage and normalise the allocation of foresight investment. If education is key to opening more doors for foresight, appropriate use of language is the red carpet welcoming the long-awaited guests that can help reshape the future for the better.

For the ambitious marketers out there, this is just the beginning of your futures literacy. Use it and pierce the future through the present. 

BEGINS

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Don’t Leave Home WIT(hout) it!

If I recall right, AMEX Credit Cards used to have this seminal tagline ‘ Don’t Leave Home Without It ‘ coined by advertising great David Ogilvy. But your visa to a perfect quip or comeback after it didn’t matter—a minute, hour, or day after one of your conversations has ended? Yes, you got it. The best master card up your sleeve – WIT.

No need for WIThdrawal symptoms. You’re not doomed to sit by as ‘clever’ companions exchange sharp banter. You can practice being wittier, improving your reaction times and ability to land a jab or joke at just the right moment. Jokes don’t warrant social distancing. That was CoWIT talking.

Unlike perceived, WIT isn’t just for some gifted linguists. Playing with language—elevating mundane communication from mere talk into a creative process—is a form of innovation that sheds new light on old ideas. Plus, vitally, it makes life less boring and more fun for you and others. So, in short, we can all get better at being ‘ clever ‘.

Just as those highly skilled auto drivers on Bombay roads, if you can turn around (just like they do on a 6 cm radius!) words and phrases in the mind and present new juxtapositions, one can change the way we and other people see. Yes, it’s the road less travelled. But worth taking. So, get on WIT(h) it!

The wittiest among us are simply people who make unusual connections between words and ideas. And never verse off for it. Observations- Refreshed. Surprised!

In cognitive terms, the brain of the wit is less inhibited than that of a linguistic dullard. In other words, fairly, well ventilated shall we say? Are you WIT(h) me? Unabashed, uncensored access to associations, conscious and unconscious, is essential to wit. Apologies, people with brain damage don’t qualify!

The caudate nucleus is one area( 2 kms south of Mira Road..just kidding) of the brain implicated in associative learning and control of inhibitions that may explain how wit is generated. Likewise, the frontotemporal region( east of Kandahar..by now you know!) influences personality, language, and emotional development. Knowing precisely how these areas of the brain interact and regulate thinking will lead to better ‘ scientific comprehension of wit ‘. That is if you really are bothered about all of this in the first place.

So, if you are looking at a guide to ‘ advanced banter ‘, don’t wait for a breakthrough in brain science to cultiWEIGHT wit. (W)It’s reasonably simple. Just knowing that wit is a kind of associative process already makes you better equipped to be a verbal gymnast. The variety of the play of wit manifests through—puns( tumhee pun na!!), rhyme, metaphor, slang, rap(chick), to name a few.

The encouraging thing to understand here is that being creative about language can be mastered with practice. It’s not all natural talent. If you make peace with history and take a piece of it, in analyzing how wit arises or why we might rely on it, the oldest and most revered texts in the world, from the Tao Te Ching(nothing to do with what Neena Gupta endorses) to the Bible to the plays of William Shakespeare are replete with language play. When all the world is a rage, wit has a role to play. Perhaps on centre stage?

With linguistic gymnastics, we can reach people who might not otherwise think they’re interested in certain ideas and break down barriers. Hip-hop and rap, for example, exposed generations of music listeners of all classes and races to black culture they didn’t encounter in their own lives. (And Shakira has taught us that hips don’t lie). Wit’s an efficient way to say more with less, as in the case of a metaphor, or to expose unexpected mean ink, alternately meaning.

Wit is the antidote for a culture being dulled by communication overload—it’s a kind of wisdom. In Aristotle’s words, it is a form of “ educated insolence. ” If we were cracking wise, rather than vice versa ie reacting angrily, and being wittier(or Twittier?) on Twitter, we might all have a much better time.The rate of exchange between strangers and acquaintances online has never been so high(BSE/NASDAQ/FTSE etc please take note). But internet chatter is often toxic and commonly resorts to vitriolic retorts( would have preferred witriolic), angry declarations, and unnecessary observations. Wish that closed minds came with closed mouths. Hence, so many of us feel we are at our wit’s end.

You too can be a master of verbal jousting. Take the WITness stand. It is time to unleash the power WIThin!
Be at home WIT(h) it. But, don’t leave home WIT(hout) it.
(WIT’s) END
WIT AL PART ILL
Dubai

Is business ‘ jargon ‘ jarring? Language Tom..Language!

We are guilty of it. And fall prey to it as well. And in our perennial desire to conform, comply, adhere, fit in and all of that, ensure that we use the same lexicon that have become common place.

You don’t need to be talking about a mega merger or acquisition to throw the word ‘ synergy ‘ about loosely, only to be caught by an unsuspecting tribe of colleagues and business partners. Way back in the 1600’s when the word synergy first came to prominence, the meaning it meant to echo was ‘ human will meets divine grace ‘- that was an understandable intersection. Over time(and this is what happens to a lot of the ‘ jargon ‘ where the meaning gets changed or diluted), synergy seems to be a completely different animal. Leaving you wondering if you are in sync at all!

Lets perch tent on another jargon speak: ‘ Touch Base ‘. I am not sure if it is very evident that the coinage emanated from American Baseball, but that is the fact of the matter.In baseball, players must touch each of four bases in order to score a run. The prevailing hypothesis is that the phrase “touch base” is a reference to this sport. Touch base means to make contact with someone. Though the sport is nowhere close to being played outside the Americas, the jargon has transcended boundaries. And if you were to read between the lines, the phrase ‘ touch base ‘ would unravel suspicious interpretations. After all, we are at the height of the #MeToo movement. Now we will touch base on another phrase.

‘ Out of the box ‘. The game where connecting the nine dots using no more than 4 straight lines was the origin of this. And to do that you had to go out of the box, extend the line beyond the grid to make sure the connection happens. You couldn’t achieve it by being inside the box. It’s altogether another matter that the phrase itself has become so common place that routine and the mundane have also been crowned as ‘ out of the box ‘ and people are comfortably getting away with it. Another example of a jargon losing meaning or getting diluted in value over time.

Perhaps the flexibility and the fluidity of the English language inspires such lexicon. And over time(through imperialism and colonisation), English is the most used business language ( bidding au revoir to Latin and French).

And charity begins at home. In our meetings at ISD Global its very common to hear words like ‘ recalibrate ‘ ( yours truly is the guilty party here) and we are no way close to discussing anything about a vernier calliper or the way it measures.

There are other ‘ low hanging fruit ‘(yes that’s another one) in the basket among several others and we can leave it to the power of euphemisms and metaphors to play its part to get to be ‘ on the same page ‘ and then ‘ sing from the same hymn sheet ‘.

The linguist will never languish!

ENDS

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