I thoroughly enjoyed this TED talk, by Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie. In this talk she tells the story of how she found her voice. Chimamanda uses the story to describe the power of the media to influence our thinking and its ability to limit or perspectives to a 'single story'. She explains how the stereotypical idea of Africa, in the minds of her roommate and college professor impacted her when she went to the USA to study. She relates their shock when she told them about her story of Africa and her country Nigeria exposing them to "another story" of what Africa is like.
I urge you to watch this video first and then just read the rest of the blog after, it will make lots more sense to you.
I believe we should be thankful that we are in an age now where it is possible to easily access multiple stories of a single place or people. The Web 2.0 world now allows us to connect with each other around the globe and get an insight into the worlds of others.
Services like Skype now allow us the luxury of having extended conversations with people from around the world to hear what their reality is like first hand. Communication worldwide is now alot more accessible to us all, creating options for us so we are not forced to digest a singular story or perspective feed to us by the main stream media.
The Single Story And Business
I believe this idea extends also into business world. We now have more options to better listen to and engage our customers share stories. We have all this social media and several ways of publishing stories of the business and of our customers. We can also support the discussion on our website and have public conversations the customer on our products and services and even provide customer service in a public form. We can sell them more than one story of us.
Some customers only ever hear about one tremendously bad experience one customer had. And as we know that customer will continuously sell them that singular story and we have little change of being able to deal with that issue, until now.
Are you betting your life on a single story? Or are you going to make an effort to ensure your have multiple stories told of your business and listen to multiple stories of your customers?
Avoid the danger of the single story!
Corey Graham 2.0
Very good. Thank you,