ProposalSpeak

Tony Goodson is having a go at ProposalSpeak.

I’m just reading through a proposal, and it’s bullshit! It’s not that it’s badly written or bad contents, it’s just that it’s written in what I now call “ProposalSpeak”. It’s like the difference between a human being, and the person that they become when you poke a camera, or video camera at them, or put them on stage. Suddenly they freeze and become all unnatural and self conscious.

...No one likes writing them, and no-one likes reading them, so can we find another way of doing business please!!

Just as we freeze in front of the camera lens, so we freeze when we have to write something to impress someone else, instead of being ourselves. That's why Weblogs are so important, because we write for ourselves and other people read it. This is flowing, but ask me to write even my own CV, or a letter, and I too clam up. Can't we all agree from now on, to cut to it, and stop using ProposalSpeak?

Couldn't agree more. I think the language of business is frequently divorced from reality. It seems to imagine a world of predictability and Vulcan logic, one in which emotions, if mentioned at all, must be measured "precisely" and stuffed into a 2x2 matrix. As per Lovemarks, in my previous post.

Lovemarks panned

[UPDATE: Here's a list of all my entries on Lovemarks]

I don't love Lovemarks, Kevin Roberts' colourful new mantra for the world of advertising. So I enjoyed Chris Lawer's full-on rant Brand Lovemarks. What provokes Chris' ire is this fawning coverage from (I'm sorry to say) Fast Company:

And now, in a breakthrough for market researchers and love bunnies alike, Roberts and a British company QIQ International Limited, have developed a tool to quantify the emotional power of a brand. QIQ's research technique measures the twin drivers of what Roberts dubs a "lovemark": respect (performance, trust, and reputation) and love (mystery, sensuality, and intimacy). Marketers have long measured performance and trust, but mystery, sensuality, and intimacy are brand attributes few have thought to worry about, let alone quantify...

All these results are then mapped on a love-respect axis. In the lower-left quadrant -- low love, low respect -- are commodities such as sand, salt, and brussels sprouts. Roberts says many telcos risk falling into that unlovable hole. On the flip side of the chart -- high love, low respect -- are fads, fashions, and infatuations: things we love for the moment but soon abandon. Think Beanie Babies and reality TV. Most solid, respectable brands live in the upper-left quadrant, home of high respect and low love: Maxwell House, Dell, Colgate, Holiday Inn. Roberts says even he was surprised at how many products consumers consign to this less-than-desirable class. "Lovemarks might, on first blush, sound sweet," he says, "but the approach is actually ruthless -- Darwinian, even."

I'm with Chris when he says

Quite frankly, this is the most ridiculous thing I have read on Branding for some time.

That marketers think they can plot such deeply human values as love and respect on a 2x2 is so damn arrogant it is untrue. Is this a wind-up?...

And what do they mean by quantifying "mystery, sensuality, and intimacy" as "vital ingredients of your brands lovemark"? Come on, please. Nobody anywhere really understands "love" yet suddenly a bunch of delusional brand marketers do....

What utter arrogance that organisations think they can compare their brand-customer relationship to the bond between a father and son or husband and wife!!!

"What are you doing tonight, Chris?"
"Ah, I am taking my lawnmower out for a few beers. You know we've been getting much closer these days and well, the way she handles my straight lawn lines is well, awesome. We really deserve each other and we might even move into the shed together for the Winter.

Yes, I think delusional is the word. Actually, perhaps masturbatory is the word?

I glimpsed through this book at Waterstone's and laughed out loud when I realised it is chock full of case studies of... Saatchi clients (Roberts is the Saatchi CEO). Perhaps the most preposterous of these was the section eulogising the ads for Tide, which appear to qualify it as a Lovemark.

As is so often the case, in praising his clients Roberts in really only praising himself.

I don't have a 2x2 matrix for Love but I do know it's not the same as narcissism. Does Kevin Roberts?

Meeting Evelyn

Yesterday evening I got to meet Evelyn Rodgriguez, of Crossroads Dispatches fame. We knocked back a couple of good beers in the Duke of Cambridge.

We shared our enthusiams for things like The Power of Now, creativity, running (Evelyn more than me) and Improv (more me than Evelyn). We shared a distrust of complicated, how-to self-help manuals and a preference for simple things like sharing direct personal experience.

We also had a good chat about writing a book. Evelyn wants to write one and if her blog is anything to go by, it should be a good one. I also keep saying I want to write one, but this conversation has made me question that. (That's the great thing about a good conversation, sometimes your ideas change without the other person trying to change you.)

Where I got to was this: What if what I call writer's block is actually a good clue that I don't really want to write a book at all? After all, blogging comes fairly easily to me, so perhaps I should keep doing that.

Versatility and Perfectionism

Lilia at Mathemagenic posts on the task-based view of knowledge work. What intrigued me was this comparison between

...the Swiss Army Knife: lots of carefully designed functions packed into one tool which is not easy to use at the end.

and

an alternative design: the Sardinian Pattada, a simple knife used by shepherds that allows multiplicity of uses...

(I'll put aside by love of Swiss Army knives as objects, and reflect on the fact I rarely, if ever, found much use for one.)

I think it's easy to spend life trying to create the Swiss Army Knife, the idealised "perfect" solution... and coming up with something complicated and cumbersome. Instead, what if we go for the simple Pattada solution... imperfect yet simple, functional and available now?

I rather think software developers need to reflect on this story...

I also smiled at Lilia's closing comment:

I know that this is messy and probably not understandable, but I need to get it out of my head, so sorry :)

I smiled because this post is itself a Pattada, something that is not perfect but has functioned to engage me.

Resilience

Brian Alger writes about resilience, citing the interesting website of Philia which explores the idea of citizenship. This is the extract Brian chose and which caught my eye:

"An understanding of resilience suggests that individuals, families and communities have a basic integrity and a built in capacity to heal, transform, modify, adapt and survive. "

This articulates a view I have come to hold with increasing conviction - and I often find organisations and groups acting as if it is not so.

When I use Improv activities, time and again I experience the remarkable capacities of human groups to collaborate effectively, not because of some painfully agreed process or set of rules, but through what I feel is an innate desire/ability to get along. The same kind of thing is what makes Open Space facilitation work.

It's easy for an organisation to try to capture that rather wonderful quality in a set of rules in the hope of somehow improving on it. One of my favourite clients is fond of saying that they don't really believe in rules, instead wanting to liberate their people to do what comes naturally.

Slightly paradoxically, I also think there is merit in cultivating resilience. I see this especially in relationships where there is often a temptation to abandon the relationship in the face of adversity. Sometimes, we might feel so angry that we want to break the relationship, and it can be challenging - and exciting - to stay in relationship and work the problem rather than bailing out. I don't intend this as a universal rule; I do, however, like the idea of assuming resilience and looking for it in myself.

Thus I get to the second sentence of Brian's highlight:

It opens up a way of thinking that reminds us we are not passive recipients in need of outside support and intervention.

Well, sometimes I know I do need outside support; but I think it's often good to start by looking for my own resources first.

Normal service...?

Touch wood, I am now back to normal on the computing front. I'm now operating on a spanking new PC, and I also treated myself to a tablet PC for travel and fallback (largely on Tony Goodson's enthusiastic reviews)

So far, Windows XP seems a whole lot more robust than ME which I was running before. And the upgrade in techology is certainly speeding up programs like Sharpreader and Fireworks

As for the old machine, I concluded in the end that is was a hard drive failure due to excessive use rather than a virus. Fortunately, I got all my crucial data off it except one Digital Certificate, so things could be worse.

As for buying an Apple... well, maybe next time!

Thinking vs Playing

Rebecca Ryan at Worthwhile has a good post: Thought is not the most productive form of work

Our minds are dangerous places. As one of my gal-pals says, "My mind is like a dark alley; I try not to go in there alone."

We can get caught in thought. If you've ever had an idea or problem lodged in your brain - just circling through the same outcomes, limits, and scenarios, you know EXACTLY what I'm saying. We run mental laps around the same track, making no progress at all.

So I'm here to tell you: Thought is NOT the most productive form of work. PLAY is. PLAY engages all of our senses. It moves muscles other than our cerebrums. PLAY rejuvenates, makes room for risk, and reminds us what it is to feel truly alive.

This month I painted rocks with a five and a seven year old. I threw my partner over my shoulder and into the pool. I participate in a twenty minute pillow fight, and played tag until I was laughing too hard to stand up.

And an amazing thing happened: I returned to work this morning with more energy than I've had in months.

I really agree with her. I see so many people in organisations trapped in thought and stranded in the dry sands of the purely rational. Play opens up a whole lot more bandwidth between people - and few things are as energising as genuine enagement with our fellow human beings.

"This land is my land"

This flash movie on Bush vs Kerry - This Land is My Land - made me smile. (It takes a while to load up) I love the inventiveness of these things, and repeat viewing shows the funny details. My favourite bits of this are the little cameo appearances by Howard Dean and Bill Clinton.

Geitting along

Funny post by Tony Goodson inspired by: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About Here's a snippet:

-Why is that that women get iritated with men who are sitting at their computer?
-Why is ..... Big Brother + Reading Newspaper ≠ Equivalent Time Spent on Computer
- If your hair looks nice long, and Jay loves his rice cereal, why would you have your hair cut short, and buy him some porridge stuff that he hates?
- And why does a baby that's going to sleep in half an hour need to "Get Dressed"? (Mind you, why am I still in my nightclothes at 1-45pm on a Saturday afternoon!!)

Vulnerability

Tom Asacker writes about brands as filigree.

A brand is filigree work as well. I recently purchased a Jackson Browne CD after watching a 60 minutes segment on the songwriter. Then a friend told me that Browne was a woman-beater (he allegedly hit, his then girlfriend, Darryl Hannah). That bit of "information" made me want to toss his CD out of the car window. Then I read that the story wasn't true. All of which left me ambivalent and somewhat emotionally distant from the Jackson Browne brand.

Here's the insight: a brand is nothing more than a bundle of emotions, loosely held together by trust and reputation.

Yes, brands are fragile. It's a shame that so much marketing effort goes into creating pretend strength. For me, deeply satisfying human connection is made possible by the willingness to acknowledge vulnerability. I like Tom's post - in fact I like Tom - because he's willing to share the slightly frenzied quality of his relationship with the Jackson Brown brand. He's willing to show a bit of vulnerability, that makes him so much more interesting than brand gurus that just say, ah yes, well here the three infallible rules for selling CDs.

Culture vs Strategy

More punchy stuff from Mark at fouroboros: here's how basic it really is. Choice titbits:

2. Understand that when guys like Harvard's Schein and the London School of Economics' Maister say "Culture matters more than strategy," they know of where they speak, they mean it, and it it works.

3. Why does it work? If one must succumb to framing business as War, then here's the translation: Because nobody ever threw themselves on a hand-grenade for a spread-sheet.

This echoes my own mantra of relationships before ideas. Many organisations fixate on their explicit strategy, usually encapsulated in formidable documents. The more detailed they make it, the more likely that people won't really digest it and they mistake a tired acquiescence for consent. Generally, the author(s) of the strategy get an illusory sense of control from their document, but that may be all.

I suppose "culture" is a slightly pretentious word for how people get along, but I believe that people's ability to collaborate with humour and energy allows them to create smart strategy on-the-hoof.

I think Margaret Wheatley said something about needing to move from strategic planning to strategic thinking. And I believe better strategic thinking comes when people are adept at thinking collaboratively. And I think they think better when not being constantly whipped into line by a hefty strategy document produced by a clever elite.

A simple example

A while back I heard how the boss of a US hotel chain wanted his IT people to create a system to identify returning guests at check-in. The idea being that the receptionist could say "Welcome back Mr Bloggs" and win points for recognising him. The IT people tut-tutted and came back saying "Yeah, we can do this and it will cost x million dollars". The boss was unimpressed and frustrated by the cost.

A few days later, he was in the lobby of one of his hotels and overheard the receptionist at work. Several times she said "Welcome back" to people. Our hero bowled up to her and demanded to know how she managed this feat of recognition.

"Well, see that bellboy who carries guests bags from the entrance. I have a deal with him. He asks "is this is their first visit?" and if it is, when they all get to the reception, he puts their bags down parallel to the desk. If it's a return visit, he puts them at right angles. Then I know."

The story is told by the boss against himself and as an example of what people can do when you free them to use their own smarts instead of following a manual.

Computer addiction, stress management and showing up

In the Spirit of Improv, I'm working to look on the bright side of being disabled on the computer front. To be honest, sitting in this humid internet cafe it's a bit of a struggle!

But there's nothing like having your computer disabled to highlight how big a role it plays in your life. I realise I spend a lot of my time at the PC - way too much time. I realise the shock and anxiety I felt at its failure was actually disproportionate to the real problem. I've become an addict, shoved into Cold Turkey against my wishes.

Filling the void - emptying the flat

Filling the void over the last few days has been challenging and a definite learning experience.

Without the PC to entertain me, I started to pay more attention to the state of my flat. And this has set in train a quite remarkable surge of throwing things away. I took at least 200 books to the charity shop yesterday. Books I knew I was never going to read again. Quite a few that I'd actually not read in the first place! (and far too many of these were overlong business books). I also have three big sacks full of old clothes I realise I'd not worn for years and never will. Also bound for the charity shop.

And now I'm in this sort of mood, I'm frankly horrified at all the other old junk that I have cluttered my life with. All sorts of decrepit bit of PC gear and goodness knows what else. A series of expeditions to Islington Council's skip are planned for Sunday morning.

And now for the psychological bit

I talk about managing stress when I'm running courses, so this has been a good chance to remind myself of some basics that work for me: be willing to feel the fear rather than struggle against it; and socialise the anxiety - just having a friend listen to a good moan did me a power of good.

What I was also reminded of was that some people's first response to other's distress is to make suggestions (witness all those "buy an Apple" comments earlier this week.) Suggestions are ok, but often what's more useful is a simple acknowledgement of the feelings.

For me, this all forms part of my General Theory of Showing Up. Which includes the idea that acknowledgement of feelings (both my acknowledgement to myself and the acknowledgement of others) is a powerful way of showing up, and moving away from panic.

Made me laugh

Jennifer Rice by way of Seth Godin pointed me to Media attention brings a bevy of baldies to Lodi restaurant. A restaurant gets oodles of publicity with a discount for bald people.

In today's global news network, people from thousands of miles away could hear about the bald discount even before Lodians knew it existed.

Steve Greer, a 57-year-old Lodi bald man had never heard of the Wednesday special until his brother from Marysville, Wash., caught the story.

"His brother called him up and said, 'What's this I heard about bald guys?'" said Rose Deak, Greer's dining companion for the evening.

A sea of naked heads inhabited the dining room, where patrons were proud to capitalize on their baldness.

"Finally, some small thing the bald man can cling to," said Christian Robertson, of Lodi.

Well, it's a good case of Seth's Free Prize Inside philosophy! I delight in these sort of stories because they could never have been conceived by traditional, highly rational, marketing "processes".

Computer aggro

Well, I managed to persuade my crochety old PC to spark back to life sufficiently to back up recent data, but it's still a very sick machine.

So I treated myself to a spanking new one, only for it to die on me within a day of purchase. The initial response of technical support was to invite me to spend 2 hours completely reloading the system and drivers. No thanks, I don't expect to have to do that to a new machine. Getting them to agree to immediately replacing it seems to be a bit of a struggle. As you can imagine, I find this aggravating.

You know what, I really don't enjoy being a dissatisfied customer.

Maybe the comments to my earlier post are right. Is the universe telling me to get an Apple?

PC down, panic up...

Well, if I thought I was blocked yesterday, things got worse. My PC seems to have got hit by a virus, or something, and is in a state of nervous collapse. The desktop has gone from a sea of pretty icons to a lot of ominous missing links. I can only get into two or three programs, email is down and things have clearly gone badly wrong. I'm writing this from an internet cafe.

I find it quite hard to stay calm in these circumstances. I think I have a bit of a default setting of panic and get into catastrophic fantasies about losing all my data. Ah well, it's been a good chance to practice acceptance. More and more I find the best way to deal with fear is to accept it. Indeed, I will often try to welcome it. I focus on the feeling itself, and try not to get into the thinking about it. So last night in bed I had to keep feeling the fear.

Also, I do have to point out to myself that I spend a good bit of time persuading people of the virtues of Improv, of building on what IS. So I realised I needed to practice what I preach. As the saying goes, we all teach what we most need to learn!

It seems to work. This Sunday morning I've been online uncovering all sorts of promising resources to get this problem fixed.

And I'm long overdue for a nice new computer anyway. (In fact, hours before the PC went wobbly I'd been window shopping for a shiny replacement. I wonder if PCs, like people, have an instinct for impending redunancy and start getting upset?)

Blocked!

I've been meaning for some time to put together a short e-book. Working title: First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Brand Consultants.

I want to say that brands simply don't happen the way brand consultants tell us. Bascially for the reasons implied in the post below: their explicit post-match analsyis of how brands come into being generally fails to capture what really happens, and then provides unreliable rules for success that may well fail in other contexts. It's made worse, of course, by their own need to be associated only with success, which further corrupts their narrative.

Trouble is, I have massive writer's block. I've made a few false starts and end up feeling frustrated: perhaps I need to be talking to people more, and writing less?

Beware the explicit

Interesting post by David Wilcox - Why Manifestos Don't Work. David quotes David Snowden's aphorism

"We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down."

Large amounts of our implicit knowledge never make into the books and manuals which many organisations depend on to manage their lives. I have become antipathetic to long business books that seem to carry an implicit belief that the explicit is all we need to know. (See also my post The Tyranny of the Explicit)

The irony is that people often keep quiet about things they do know, especially about supposedly "negative" emotions like fear, anger and boredom. Instead they make noise about stuff they don't know but which sounds suitably rational. Which makes for safe but boring meetings. I see Mark at fouroboros has been in good ranting form on this:

Yep. We lie about our motives and mistakes and wrap them in piety and patriotism. Or in Powerpont� and bullshit ROI, TCO or rosy M&A forecasts or boardroom koolaid rallies. Hmmm. Wait a minute. Near 1/2 of the executive conversations I've participated in consist of nitty gritty, and the remainder is brainstorming sweet bows to wrap screw-ups or sniggering self-interest in. It's kind of surreal, really like grandmothers earnestly knitting little woolly hats to pretty up those icky spare toilet rolls waiting their turn in the bathroom.

Engaging is not about being loved

Thoughts inspired by riding the 73 bus yesterday.

We had a quite bolshie conductor. She loudly instructed passengers not to put bags in the aisles "That's an emergency escape route!". She told them to sit down when there were seats (not asked, told). She instructed people to watch out if they were getting on the bus in slow moving traffic instead of at a stop. (Note for non-Brits - some London buses have an open platform at the back). She loudly yelled to a friend that she was longing to get away on holiday.

The more she bossed us about, the more I got to enjoy the journey. Why? Because par for the course for bus conductors is for them to do their jobs in a trance. I didn't need to feel sorry for her, and at least she showed up.

Did she live up to the ideal of customer-service training? No, of course not. But then neither do most bus conductors. And in our spoilt world of Bland Brands, a bit of attitude comes as rather refreshing...

A brand is a place

Hugh at GapingVoid is in cracking form with The Hughtrain Manifesto. Worth reading the whole thing but here are two bits I focussed on.

A brand is a place, not a thing: Media is not 'entertainment' or 'information'. Media is an interface. Interface implies action. For example, I leave Buzzmachine [my favorite website] more switched on than when I entered. So for me, there's an actual kinetic quality about visiting there.

So many brand "experts" blather on about brands as if they are solid objects, mostly because this supports the fantasy that they and their clients can control them (and in so doing control us, the poor schmucks who buy them). This way of thinking kills. The dead and rotting bodies of many dismal organisations lie embalmed in the laminated platitudes of old-style admen and brand consultants.

I like brands where there is some spark of life about my interactions with them. I like Pret a Manger because when I shop there I don't have to feel either depressed by the service or sorry for the people who work there. There is some kind of friction between them and me, some sense of aliveness that is often lacking in a world where employee engagement is so low.

I like the idea that a brand is a place because it conveys the idea the that the brand is a host for transactions/conversations it might influence but not control.

The hardest part of a CEO's job is sharing his enthusiasm with his colleagues, especially when a lot of them are making one-fiftieth of what he is. Selling the company to the general public is a piece of cake compared to selling it to the actual people who work for it.

This seems pretty spot on, watching the unedifying display at Marks & Spencer, where two multi-millionaires have battled over control of the lives of its many employees. The current boss turns up for the AGM in a £1000 Savile Row suit, and only his underpants actually come from M&S. What hope has such a man, I wonder, of inspiring and engaging the probably slightly demoralised staff of M&S? Time will tell.

Meetings, meetings, meetings

Tim at The Nub has a good post on meetings.

Is visionary good?

John Moore at Brand Autopsy asks Is Being Visionary A Good Thing?

Being visionary is a double-edged sword. Sometimes you can be so visionary that others can't relate, understand, or even care.

Being visionary can easily take us out of relationship to our world. You could say that addicts are visionaries, locked into the highs and increasingly unable to deal with the real world. John gives some more practical examples of the dangers of being too visionary.

I loved that scene in the first Harry Potter, where Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised. The mirror shows the watcher only their fondest desires. Harry is warned that men have wasted away, staring in this mirror... Quite a few businesses have too...

Sorting truth from fiction...

Seth's hit form again with his recent post, Blended. Here are some snippets:

All the cues we use to figure out who’s real and who’s not appear to be fading away.

Years ago, there were “real” books and self-published books. The real books were worth buying and reading, the self-published were from vanity presses. Today, of course, some of the best stuff is self-published, whether as a book or a blog.

...Wearing a fine suit that fits you right was a great cue to others that you were successful and powerful and about to make something happen. Today, it’s just as likely that your potential partner is going to show up in a turtleneck and jeans.

...So, how do we tell the good from the bad? In a connected world where people don’t have letterhead, don’t wear suits (don’t even own suits) work out of tiny rented office suites (or their living room) have a simple website and buy only Adwords, have an answering machine not a PBX, don’t have a receptionist or a sculpture out front… in that world, how do we tell?

...Welcome to the blended times. The moment when the big and small, the impermanent and the permanent, the accepted and the ‘scammy’ meet. For a while, it’s going to be awfully confusing.

It's great to hear this, as I sometimes wonder if I'm a lonely voice doubting so many marketing messages that hark back to the times when big was beautiful. (Like the current ads for Barclays Bank here in the UK, where they've hired big-name movie stars to tell us, in a very long winded and pretentious style, that Barclays is "Fluent in Finance", supported simply by a statistic to confirm only that Barclays is really, really big.)

Of course, it would be easy to present confusion as a bad thing, but confusion is often a sign of some useful learning going on. We're learning - I hope - to make decisions more on the basis of our own judgements instead of relying on anonymous authority. It's a trend that's been running for a long time. I believe the way through is greater self-knowledge. It's not so much about deciding who to trust out there, it's more about figuring out how to trust ourselves.

What's in a face?

So it's official. I look like...

At least I do according to Star Estimator
(Thanks to MeZack for this exercise in vanity.)

What's in a name?

I've been working on a project to get people better at using guests' names in the hotel trade. As usual, my grasshopper mind keeps thinking name-related thoughts. I was thinking, how can I get a group of people to practice learning new names with each other - given that the team I'd be working with already knew each other's names?

Then I remembered this way of generating a new name for yourself - so this team would have some new names to practice with.

This is audience participation time: I invite you to do this for yourself to invent a new name.

Think of a favourite movie star of yours, one whose performances you really like. Done that? Great.

Now think of a favourite pet from childhood... yours, or a friend's, or perhaps an animal from a movie.

Good. Now take the movie star's surname and then add the pet name and you have your instant new identity.

In the shower this morning I became "McKellan Honey". Try this yourself - or better still with some friends and colleagues - and see if you don't end up smiling.

And then ask yourself, as I did (better still, ask each other if you're doing this as a team)

How would I behave differently if I really were McKellen Honey (insert your new name here) ?

How would I like to be treated if I were called McKellen Honey (obviously, insert your own new name here)?

What would McKellen Honey be better at than I am?

Feel free to imagine your life with this new identity. My guess (and hope) is that you might be pleasantly surprised at some new possibility that occurs to you. Certainly, what I've found is that I felt a fresh enthusiasm for the day ahead, and a renewed sense that "nothing is written".

And, of course, I've got a great way to tackle that training assignment.

Care vs Service

Rob Paterson posts on a recent flight and comments that caring is not the same as service. It's a useful distinction.

What we all experienced was that the real service issue is not doing things - there are no meals on WestJet. It is how you are and how you related to each other and then with the customer. At WestJet we are all called "Guests" . Words mean something. A Guest is someone you legitimately care for. A passenger or a customer is someone you are paid to do things for.

Service often gets confused with servility and carries lots of connotations about status. We find ourselves trapped in unsatisfying status games and false roles where it all seems to be about power rather than satisfaction.

A colleague did some great research among First Class passengers on an airline; they found the conventional Sir/Madam formality oppressive; instead they wanted something more human and friendly. When I've been upgraded on flights I often found the atmosphere a bit depressing, with many business people seeming to play a game of "I've done this so often, I'm not impressed". As a result, I feel sorry for the flight attendants. Not much human warmth there.

Rob's story seems to be about a more genuine kind of relationship which is not governed by rules and regulations. I have worked with service businesses before and they sometimes have a default setting of making lots of rules about service whilst offering little inspiration to their people. A culture of rules can easily interfere with a basic human ability to create warmth and authenticity in relationships.