Malcolm Gladwell's Blink has lit up The New York Times and Amazon.com bestseller lists for months. The impressive follow-up to The Tipping Point focuses on those first few seconds when we make "snap" decisions about people and circumstances.
Blink is rooted in what Gladwell says is a simple fact: that "decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately."
This wasn't a surprise to me. As an entrepreneur for the past 22 years, I've increasingly relied on "gut feel" to make hiring decisions, read delicate client situations and separate winners from strugglers in new business development.
But while its basic tenet wasn't surprising, Blink nevertheless was an 80-degree, cumulus blue sky New England day after weeks of Seattle-like dreariness – because it provided a sense of restoring relief. What relieved me was the emancipation of knowing the "gut feel thing" isn't a touchy-feely never-to-be-spoken mystical occurrence. We all experience this. And it's incredibly accurate.
The most fascinating element of Blink wasn't proving the validity – and prevalence – of "rapid cognition." It was the many stories illustrating how we all ignore our instincts. Time and again, we stare the obvious in the face and decide to see another pattern. Gladwell says this isn't surprising given heavily ingrained truisms like "Haste makes waste." "Look before you leap." "Stop and think." "Don't judge a book by its cover."
Some of the bad hiring decisions I've made in my 30 year career were linked to my curious need to ignore the gut-obvious. I reasoned to myself, "Well, yes, the candidate was smug, not very personable and unable to explain ideas in depth, but damn it, just look at that portfolio of media placements! He simply must have had a bad day!"
So we hire the person and – what a shock – he has no personality, drives his co-workers insane and isn't very effective at client relations. And I didn't see that coming? Like the J. Paul Getty Museum, I ignored the obvious and convinced myself the kouros was real.
Instinctive decision-making plays into the behavioral side of our business, i.e. the sociological, psychological and communication theory behind public relations. Effective PR isn't one-way communication (publicity), it's a two-way dialogue focused on building a trusted relationship that is continually earned. Great public relations is always rooted in knowing how people interact with their world, form opinions, make decisions and become (or don't become) brand loyal.
While there are plenty of beefy behavioral tomes to help us understand how to read people and predict their behavior (see Reading People by Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, Ph.D and The Art of Speed Reading People by Paul D. Tieger and Barbara Barron-Tieger for starters), Blink assures me that it's okay – and even smart - to trust my instincts.
As communications professionals, Blink also begs a final and very obvious question: should we spend more time proactively strategizing how first impressions can be shaped into positive, trusting, persuasive experiences for our companies and clients?
-Andy Beaupre
