DailyPost 651
IMPRESSED!
Have you ever tried to impress someone; have people tried to impress you. The gap between what you actually are and what you would like people to believe is the formula which individuals, enterprises and governments are desperately trying to unravel the world over. With individual knowledge not able to catch up with the changes around, more are more land in the gullible crucible. From advertising, board room theatrics to political campaigning, the effort is to impress the stakeholder, who has the power to decide. It might be a customer or voter or the company board.
Boards have been prone to taking decisions which CEO or some other senior functionary is able to sway. The exercise is done to leave the board thoroughly impressed. The success at impressing helps to get a favorable decision. It can even turn out to be decision which gets unfixed in the days to come. The obsession with impressing in our official engagements in any sector, diverts you from the most serious engagements of the day. Risk taking is evaded.
Can cut and dry things impress? Are we ready for the long haul, allowing people to be naturally impressed or otherwise depending on your delivery? Are you fine with people getting impressed or not and still continue with the same vigor, having no negative difference on the results. In reality camouflaging has become the name of the game. For every context there is different idea, theory and a matrix. Performing better than predecessors & peers, cumulative result doesn’t add up.
Practiced over decades this culture of impressing has come to stay. If the boss gets impressed, official existence is fine. How much of it is because of real / objective performance has never been put to scrutiny. At the mass scale too these efforts are made to sway customers / citizens / voters, without getting into the objectivity of it. This mindset is their to stay; creates termite ridden enterprises & individuals, unable to stand on their feet.
MAKING PEOPLE IMPRESSED IS NON-PRODUCTIVE IN THE LONG RUN.
Sanjay Sahay