Exactly one year ago, I used a quote from Jonathan Ive, Chief Designer for Apple. His comment was that “It is easy to be different but very difficult to be better.” I like the word “better.” So many of our customers (us included) are working very diligently to become better at delivering more innovative and customer-centric products and services. So I selected this month’s quote because I wanted to focus on the word “better” – and, frankly, taking heed of Mr. Kelsey Grammer’s comment will produce better results in your company – every time.
In my view, Grammer, who starred on Cheers and Frasier for 20 years (from 1984 through 2004) is talking about that age-old problem of people constantly rushing to have opinions versus asking questions. “I think this….” “I think that….” “I feel this…” I feel that……” It seems that so many people cannot wait to offer up their “two cents” on just about every topic going – no matter if they have any knowledge on the subject at hand or not. They seemingly just can’t help themselves.
Multiple studies, including those carried out by Dr.’s M. Hall and K. Raimi, and published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, have shown that those folks with numerous opinions predictably have the largest gap between their perceived versus actual knowledge. Additional research has shown that such individuals typically have impairment in their capacity to learn and suffer from core anxieties stemming from any number of sources. I will leave it to the reader to decide how promotable people are who seemingly have non-stop opinions.
It is, perhaps, ironic that A. Kelsey Grammer, who was born exactly 65 years ago this month, played the role of a psychiatrist for all those years!
