Recession Proofing.

Son, 

This is probably the deepest aspect contributing to human relations that I can share with you.  It is one of the keys to understanding yourself and your interaction with others.

The story begins in an inter-cultural relationship where two smart people are living together.  Whilst both have a significant vocabulary in their native language, such that they could express their feelings, and their knowledge; the total vocabulary that the two have in common is maybe 50-100 words from him to her language, and 200-300 from her to his language, which happens to be English.

So, with a maximum of 400 words in common with which to express every aspect of their verbal relationship, it is understandable that neither has a clear understanding of how smart the other person is, and consequently, are prone to think the meaning of the other is as simple as the words in common used to express it.  Finally, with the frustration of ‘not being heard or understood’ similar to that of a two year old, one will call the other ‘stupid’ … and the fitting reply is:

“Hey Stupid, Don’t Call ME Stupid!”

Now - the first example of this phenomenon is simple - it is two people with different languages and little vocabulary in common.  However, it can be applied across so many other relationships - and it becomes more important to harmony, as the stakes of the relationship increase, for example, marriage.   When we see the stereotypical Hollywood marriage of the wealthy educated man, with the stunning wife who did not pursue an academic education, we see another level of this phenomenon - he may have a vocabulary of 7-10,000 words and she may have a vocabulary of 3-4,000 words.  Now, consider the depth potential of this relationship - it is likely more ‘physical’ than ‘intellectual’ as the conversational relationship is limited to the 3-4000 word vocabulary of the wife!  What happens when the physical relationship fades.

Now, lets’ apply this to business communication. Every time you use a word that another person does not understand, the meaning of your sentence or paragraph is not understood.  With an intention to understand you, the other person will replace the word they did not understand, with a word they do understand that may ‘make sense’ - and then they believe this is your intended meaning.  Imagine, with your marketing, using big and complicated words will not result in clear and understood marketing messages.  Again, we are limited to the total number of words that BOTH people understand clearly.

Now … this phenomenon of ‘replacing words’ gets even worse, when in English for example, most words have multiple meanings, and some of them are used quite rarely.  When the listener ‘hears’ a word, and applies the ‘best meaning’ they know for this word, regardless of whether it is from culture, or from lower education … they still miss YOUR meaning of your sentence or paragraph.  And so, it is, that everyone thinks that everyone else is ‘stupid’  - from the higher vocabulary to the lower, and equally from lower to higher.

Choose your life language partners carefully.  The better you can express yourselves to each other, the deeper your understanding of each other is possible.  Keep learning.

When marketing, use words ‘as if to a 10 year old’ so EVERYONE can understand you.

Dad.