Three lessons on what's really important

How important is the work you do? A challenging time like this gets people (including myself) thinking about what's really important - and who's really important - in all of what we do.

Here are three quick lessons, each with a case study:

1. How important are you? Just ask a customer.

A team from Google interviewed dozens of people in Times Square the other day, asking a simple question: What's a browser? This was in an effort to understand and improve the customer experience of Google's own browser, called Chrome.

Turns out that over 90% of the people interviewed could not describe what a Web browser is. Most conflated it with a search engine. Here's a video, showing conversations not too different from listening labs.

(P.S. The project was led in part by Ji Lee, who spoke at Gel 2005 about his Bubble Project - watch the video.)

(P.P.S. I also wrote a quick piece called a reminder that not everyone twitters.)

2. Accept your unimportance. It may help.

A couple of weeks ago the podcast of the New York Times Book Review included an interview with Danielle Steel, the popular novelist whose books have sold over half a billion copies. I've never read any of her books, but what she said about her creative process rang true:

When I realize how unimportant I am, the book flows through me. In the same way, in life, if you go around feeling important and how terrific you are, you really miss the boat. I have a strong sense of my unimportance and how small I am and how vulnerable I am, just like everybody else.

I've seen this in my own work - in listening labs, making the customer the focus of the research - instead of playing the knowing researcher or super-smart consultant or some kind of "guru." My role as facilitator is to stay unimportant, so that the focus stays on lab respondents and the client stakeholders observing and discussing behind the glass. The more I get out of the way, the more I enable things to happen.

The full Danielle Steel interview can be downloaded here (see June 5) - and by the way, the Book Review podcast is excellent - a star in my media diet.

3. When people start believing their own hype, run.

The radio show This American Life ran a show called "The Watchmen" on June 5, covering the financial meltdown - and in particular, what happened at the ratings agencies that were supposed to be advising the world against bad investments.

The show - listen here - is a perfect example of what happens when people overestimate their own importance, believe their own hype, and focus on their own aggrandizement: namely, the world falls apart.

(BTW, This American Life host Ira Glass spoke at Gel 2007 - watch the video here.)

Consider the differences between these case studies. One person declares, "I'm an unimportant speck" - and can create a body of work beloved by millions. Another person declares, "I'm the most important person here at the center of the world" - and can mount a decent attempt at destroying the world.

How we approach our work is often what determines its outcome. The more it's about us, the knowers or gurus or smarter-than-thous, the less good the experience we create.

But the less it's about us, and the more we're willing to disappear as we create the experience, the better it gets.

As the Zen proverb says, "When you seek it, you cannot find it." I think that's true, so far as it concerns seeking one's own importance. The way to do something significant and meaningful and authentic is not to try to be important, but to try to create something good for someone else.

• Jun 17, 2009
• IN: Customer Experience
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