With Vasilis Lampropoulos | Social Media Manager (Europe)
The first PODCAST #Biz_Culture with Kristina Dryža was inspiring, informative and at the same time presented us a new perspective how we can observe what is happening right now in business or our daily lives. However, the main task of business is to make profit and minimize or eliminate everything that requires a lot of resources for very little return on investment. In this case, as most of business people are applying 80/20 rule in their work and businesses, let’s view our next PODCAST #Biz_Culture guest Vasili’s perspective in a “ready-to-use” business mindset.
THE REALITY CHECK AND THE PROBLEM-SOLVING “PILL” FOR BUSINESSES
In the world of lock-down with the “hope” that somebody will come and save us is rather hard. We do tell for real – no one will come and save us! Stop playing a victim! Get your power back, as Kristina would say.
Ask yourself: do I still believe that government/creative and intelligent professionals/ or science will come up with some kind of great solution to support businesses or our economy in general? We understand if you believe in this idea. We, as humans, cannot accept that we will never go back to normal businesses processes – just brings us pain and anger directed to the external environments and destined us for constant suffering. It is a natural reaction, as our “lizard brain” wants that comfort place for us. Our survival is put under a question. We understand that and feel for you. However, does this “feeling for you” really helps you or just makes you angrier? It is time to get real.
Those business people, who are already facing the reality think: “OK, this is a challenge and I need to find a solution for this problem. How can I do that?” This mindset of business people set them to look for advices/examples/market research data or relay on their experience/market patterns to predict the future. In a way, look for control panel to get back their power of business and their life. This provides them with the answers, which can back up their decision-making during the next step. Fair enough. This is a rational choice. There is no doubt for that.
However, when we try to look for a problem-solving “pill” to fight the market transition pain we all experiencing during economically hard year for all of us – we do ask you though: when your businesses are going to die from that real disease you actually suffering?
Many business strategies are built on simple linear business model, which allows them to generate constant income and have clientele loyalty. Young start-ups are still thought to sell a “pill” for client’s problems and in this way taking a bite of marketplace. Then we call ourselves doctors/consultants/experts/mentors/solution providers. Simplicity of the business purpose is this. Business is set to generate the profit and humankind need those processes. However, when some of our supply chain got cut by external environment or economic situation like today, we are challenged to learn a human-centric design thinking, co-create, use open innovation platforms and create new schemas for our logistics by learning cooperate differently. In a way, our own created curing “pills” techniques for clients turn on us and played on constant loop by presenting tools for business to apply with new improvements every year.
Though, businesses forget one logical pattern we all play the part in as social beings – we are the ones, who actually create concepts meanings in our mind to use in collective manner. We are the ones, who set the marketplace as it is now, tomorrow and in the future. So it all depends on us what that market place will be in the future. Businesses do not need to ask marketplace “what is next” – because you are the ones, who are building it with the way you deliver your products or services. You are the ones, who set the core ethics on how to do business. Do you want to control a part of the marketplace? Stop asking what market wants and set the standards on the key focuses they need to focus on. As Kristina would say – start creating your own story narrative in business.
VASILI’S PERSPECTIVE ON DIGITAL WORLD AS MARKETPLACE REFLECTION
We continue our conversation about the meanings of concepts in business with Vasilis. He is a communications’ professional who works on social media projects from 3 different perspectives: the state, business and the public. Another PODCAST #Biz_Culture guest, Vasilis works with the meanings of concepts we use online professionally, academically and as a simple observer. As a business person, manages the narratives of businesses and institutions in digital platforms. To better explore his work we asked him: what key concepts and meanings of the online world are important for us to better understand these days?
His answer was:
“The internet used to be a place where people could reinvent themselves. I remember many discussions where someone would talk about that sexy girl they were talking to all night only to get teased/told: “it was in fact some old shirtless guy in a basement” Yet there was something liberating in being able to re-invent yourself as a hot girl, or anything else for that matter. A place where your physical aspect did not define your virtual one; you were free to be whoever you said you were.
These days, and especially with lock-downs and social distancing, our physical and virtual selves have coincided even more. Knowing that we are who we are in both worlds, we give more importance to things we did not use to and we are far less tolerant to anything that sounds foreign to our truths. Moreover as we have lost the beauty of closeness, everything is one big poker face; we do not know what the other person means or what they want to say. This makes us drift even further apart, while political correctness does not allow the human to ere.
Moreover the speed in which content is consumed does not ensure it is digested or appreciated.
Most social media platforms were created for people to have fun. Facebook was the evolution of a student gimmick, Instagram a platform to just share mediocre pics that looked nicer with filters on, Snap-chat a good opportunity to have fun with friends and so on. But, as we transferred all our reality on to them and as they were exposed to the complexity of human nature, they lost the thing that made them: fun.
Some concepts to think about:
- Can social media and the online world handle the burden of human complexity?
- What makes us stay on a specific platform and not move even when we know it represents all we despise?
- How much time did we devote to an article, or a nice image?”
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THOSE, WHO RUN THE BUSINESS?
Business people often say – OK, but give me examples, graphs and back up this information. So, it is like asking for patterns of collectives in order to themselves to adjust to a “copy paste” mode. In a sense people search for concepts, embodied by shared knowledge in them and look for the match. If there is no match – there is no understanding. OK, then how do we learn these concepts and identify them as our own – by what meaning it matches to us. Here also comes the narratives/stories as Kristina says by which we are living and telling to ourselves. Where do the ideas come from for those stories? Society, businesses or other collective knowledge.
However, in the face of crises as we all experiencing right now – we need a new focus, new data, which prove that there is another way. The first, who will offer those who will take this time a different path and a bit far away from what is normal. This is how innovations also appears. Right?
Business people are quite similar to anthropologists. They both observe environment and try to understand human behavior patterns in order to understand people and solve their collective problems later (crises/social economic issues – businesses as people or organizational problems just in more tangible way). One big difference between them is in the core value of these processes and communication itself. Business drive is to make profit, which anthropologist really need to solve the problem. The meaning making is put in question here as well. You can make money without a lot of “meaning-making”, but you cannot solve problem without actually understanding the core of it (in other words, what the problem means to the people).
The problem is one – our focus and what the meaning does problem solving has for us? Do we solve those problems, just because it makes profit, or is there actually a hidden core as Kristina says “what is secret in you or your business”? If you do not see any issue with that – that is fine (for now. Unlit you reach your part of darkness), but those who in the stage where the transition is happening and they keep looking for answers outside, please stop! The direction of your focus right now is the most valuable tool you have to know what to do next! Choose your focus right.
Where to look for it? In an ever-changing world both online and offline, Vasilis suggests is to start to look into concepts like community and belonging, identity, understanding, respect.
THE 4 KEY CONCEPTS OF VASILIS:
1- COMMUNITY AND BELONGING – “Every being needs to feel they belong somewhere, that they are part of something that understands them or that they understand. Social media was originally planned to work like this, however it exposed us also to the intricacies and complexity of human nature. The web not only links computers but different individuals with different ideas and different approaches. Although this would be a good opportunity to probe into the unknown and educate ourselves like visiting an unknown tribe, this acts as a deterrent; It challenges our sense of belonging: how can we grasp that a group that opposes our very core of beliefs exists simultaneously as ours? We are already seeing the world retreating back to more closed communities and communication (groups more successful than pages or profiles on Facebook, Whats App and chat social media peaking up and companies trying to re-integrate those to their “matrix-like” worlds). No wonder; we have difficulties understanding the earth beneath us and now someone asks us to grasp the universe. Communities are essential in this aspect. They ground us and provide us with comfort. But they should, ideally, allow us to fly off and explore knowing we can safely land if we get tired rather than having our wings burn off against the sun.”
2- IDENTITY – “is who we are. It goes beyond gender, race or traits: it is something humans -each one if us – defines. We also get to redefine that throughout our life and experiences. As explained above, digital used to provide us with the opportunity to change our identity at will. It still does, however we decide to transport our physical identity online. We do this to facilitate our transactions and communications. But practicality does not mean you should not explore. Re-exploring who we are by inventing new virtual selves could be a way to re-define our identity and reach better understanding.”
3- UNDERSTANDING – “Because we are missing the finesse and all the elements of close communication, some parts in discussions online should not be taken literally. Managing social media for quite a few years now, I have taken a listeners position. Listening in social media also means you need to listen to words and thoughts that you don’t agree with. Words that may be hurtful, abusive, words that sometimes show people fail to understand or want/need to vent their frustration. The easiest reaction on social media seems to be anger. So understanding and the ability to just skip the things we don’t like or maybe don’t understand is essential.”
4- RESPECT– “Knowing what each platform does, what do I do when I carve my 15 minutes of fame, having the right to be forgiven but ask for forgiveness and understanding that I belong to something smaller which is part of something bigger is essential if we want to come to making the best of what digital has to offer. Respect not only means how I treat the other people but also that I respect myself to not go down the path of a pointless conversation with someone that does not understand me if I can’t keep my temper. If respect sounds too much like quoting Aretha Franklin, you can call this live and let love.”
WHAT ARE WE GOING TO TALK WITH VASILIS THIS TIME ON PODCAST #BIZ_CULTURE?
As you probably have noticed this podcast and articles on perspective of the guest is more like business philosophy than actually business language talk. All of this has a purpose, we assure you on this. Our purpose is to shake that “money-driven” perspective and find different approach to the meaning of concepts in business we constantly use without actually understanding the core. That’s way we call this blog a “mind challenge” process as you need to use what you know already and have space for a different approach to it.
Communication is the key here, so in this case – Vasilis is going to be our guide for better understanding of how that communication appears and what impact of intention it has on our business/personal/institution brands.
With Vasilis we are going to talk about:
- Virtual identity and our narratives on social media.
- Small chaos of our own and how they turn into big conflicts if we do not learn to listen to others.
- Observe communication throughout 3 different perspectives: the government, businesses, and the marketplace people (the public). Our communication, regulations, and other influences on how we talk/see things as well as our interest on what to stress during communication.
- Issues of transparency and where we need to be very careful with the concepts’ meaning. How do we use it in our communication on the internet? A bit of a prediction picture of what we can expect next.
Of cause, PODCAST is organic discussion, so we tend to leave it to the flow and where it will take us to go along. We promise, though, that this discussion will be engaging and at the same time – mentally challenging with a slight dash of fun! Stay tuned!
#3 PODCAST #Biz_Culture | The Battle Between Order and Chaos by Vasilis Lampropoulos – #Biz_Culture
#VIZ-SEPTION 