Calling an Audible

One of the things that I love about getting up early is the silence. I love the sound of no appliances running, no cars driving by, no reveling collegiates, no television programming, and no in-box dings. I love that they only thing to hear is the twitter of birds outside as they wake up too. On Saturdays I am sometimes the first customer to walk into Super Target at 8:00 AM. What is usually a bustling center of 21st century box commerce, is just waking up as well. The consumers burdened with price anxiety, perceived product shortages, aisle rage, and premature insatiable hunger, which leads to a mad foraging of samples, aren't present to taint my grocery shopping experience. As I walk into the fluorescent, but design friendly warehouse of all imaginable goods, I listen to the quiet elevator music and love that I am the only customer there to enhance the branded soundscape. 

This quarter (the final one) of my MBA education, I have a class called Qualitative Market Research. The professor teaches the tenets of marketing ethnography - - of deep dive observation and analysis about the intimate relationships between consumer and product. Part of the process of learning more and removing preconceptions and biases, is conducting interviews with consumers in the environments in which they use the product. This interview process is difficult, because the goal is to say as little as possible, and silently probe the consumer to take the floor and elaborate on all their consumer oddities. As interviewer, our job is merely to listen, which is hard for me because my tendency is to want to fill dead, awkward air time. 

Becoming a passive member of a conversation, a listener, rather than a talker, is difficult for someone who has always thrived on conversation creation. I have friends that I try to learn from who are amazing listeners. They take a deep interest in my mindless chatter for hours, politely laugh (and I'm not that funny) at my jokes, and nod and probe me to continue with my stream of consciousness. I also have friends that are just as guilty as I am of not listening. Our phone conversations tend to follow the pattern of I say a lot, then we she gets to talk I think of how I will respond, generally interrupt, and then talk some more. I get off the phone proud of the consoling advice that I just delivered, but don't remember what issue it related to. 

Like observing and reading, listening carefully is a large part of learning. In my marketing research class, a close ear will afford you the opportunity to gain access to amazing details of consumer habits and new ways of using or thinking about products. This in turn enables a market researcher to discover latent needs that can be manifested in the evolution of the studied product. Listening is essential in our innate quest to learn more about ourselves and define our character. How can we be sure of our mantras and position statements if we don't know what our collaborators or competitors tell us? How can we be sure of our opinions when we have not listened to all sides of the story? It is difficult to listen to all the information thrown our way everyday, because every person and thing has a unique experience set and outlook. It is time consuming and exhausting to attempt to listen to others' stories. However, if we fail to do this, we ultimately are led down a dangerous road of judgment, bias and discrimination. My advice is to listen more, and to talk less. 

Last weekend I read The Perfect Thing a study of the development, roll-out, consumption, and excitement of the iPod. Stephen Levy dismisses the claim that the white ear buds delivering personalized soundtracks to our busy lives cause more anti-social behavior. He believes that we were always anti-social to a certain extent. He instead praises the iPod's ability to color our life experiences. We now have a means to transport music with us to enhance our moods and surroundings, to rock-out or zone-out 24/7. Though I appreciate this enabling device, it doesn't just inhibit our social interaction, it inhibits our ability to listen to the beautiful silence that sometimes inhabits the world. Still pauses are rich in learning opportunities. I practiced meditation a couple times this year, which is an act that entices the mind to listen to the silence. Again, it is difficult, but with practice I noticed that the myriad of thoughts rapidly passing through my mind, slowed down. I was able to put them on hold and store them appropriately. Each time I left the meditation room, I felt that I had a little more room in my mind to learn and explore. 

Silence is both a time of repose and reflection. It is restorative, but it is also challenging. My advice today is change up your pattern of preaching, draining out the noise with your customized playlist, and running from one loud event to the next. Instead, devote a little bit of time to stillness - - a time when you can hear others, yourself, and perhaps something even greater better. For it is sometimes the smallest, quietest voice that has the most interesting thing to say. 

Lo