1136: Why Most Business Communication Fails

For the first 40 minutes of Wall•E, we watch a menial robot – a trash compactor – trundle through an abandoned world.

There is no almost dialogue, and yet we are filled with emotion.

The robot is industrious, creative and desperately lonely.

He gazes up towards the heavens, dreaming of ... what?

Connection?

Companionship?

Love?

Andrew Stanton, the film's creator and director, called this dialogue-free opening the purest form of storytelling.

When I first saw the film, it reminded me of a Doctor Who comic I read when I was 7 or 8. I don't recall the details, but it ended with a robot being abandoned on an empty world, BEGGING not to be left behind.

I remember because I cried, undone by its vast endless loneliness.

Here's the point.

In both these stories, the robots were human.

If they weren't, in some sense, we wouldn't care.

We COULDN'T care, because we wouldn't SEE OURSELVES in them.

And yet, so much business communication – the posts, the press releases, the so-called news – are about organisations, not people.

And we don't give a damn because we can't relate.

Yesterday, I talked about the power of deeply knowing our audience.

Why?

Because until we do, we can't create stories that speak to them, or deliver on Stanton's first and most important story commandment.

"Make me care."

Nick

Notes:

In the 1970s, I could buy an issue of Dr Who Weekly for 12p, AND I was a member of U.N.I.T. Happy days.
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