When I was a little kid, I remember often noticing grown-ups having conversations with very serious expressions on their faces. They were usually huddled around a table or standing outside a meeting place, discussing about the discussion that just took place.
I always wondered what it was that they were talking about. I wondered if they were changing the world one conversation at a time. I always wondered about how the conclusions that they have reached in hushed voices would impact my future? As a kid I never found this answer, but as a grown-up I did!
The answer is … NOTHING!
Their discussions did nothing. They did not change the history of the world or cure poverty or find the medicine to the next big disease. The impact of their discussions ranged from – what grocery store would mommy buy her rice from to – who I was allowed to hang out with after school (based on which aunty my mommy was fighting with).
As I grew up, group discussions became a fashionable thing, and “let’s take this discussion offline” dictated who I was having my next coffee with. Some bosses advised me to look serious at work. You weren’t allowed to laugh too much, talk too much, because, come on – you are at work and how can work be fun? At one particular work place I felt like the only way to look more serious would be to pretend I was dead (dead people somehow have a very serious look about them!)
I often see people around rectangular tables having round table conferences. They are usually staring at a screen with text on it or at the face of the person talking with an unparalleled intensity; in both cases the conclusion is quite the same – most people in the room do not have the first clue about what is being discussed.
Big words, business terminology and gigantic numbers somehow make us feel more important, more intelligent, and more informative. Somewhere in between collecting data, creating profiles, looking at campaigns and reviewing performances we forget to measure – how many lives we actually touch? Did we actually make a significant difference in anyone’s life? Did someone go to school because of us or did the hungry get fed because of the big business decision we made or because the important deal we closed?
I have been asking myself this question for years – I work in communications, I pride myself for working in communications, yet at the end of the day when I sit down and try to write down what it was that I did through a press release or a media announcement or a blog post that actually changed someone’s life forever, I don’t have much to say.
I think we all ought to ask ourselves this question. I think we all ought to drive ourselves to answer this question.
Zahra Husain likes to live and think in ways she is not supposed to and she blogs at http://www.zahrasays.com