THE MEDIA ... AND THE MAN-NERS

It started in New York.

[Of course.  But betcha San Francisco ain’t far behind.]

The media, yes, from coast to coast, has glommed onto a phenomenon known as “manspreading,” where men take up more than their fair share of seats with legs opened in a V-shape.  Public campaigns are now being waged in Manhattan via subway posters and publicity.  The tag?  “Dude, really” with a Courtesy Counts banner.

News reports and editorials make light of the practice, even though many females are outraged – and snapping pix to share on social media.  A Philadelphia spokesperson for a similar campaign denies it’s an endemic practice (though we in the Polar Vortex city claim otherwise). 

What will be fascinating, if metrics are included, is to see the behavior change and the numbers.  Visuals and media coverage notwithstanding, we guarantee that it’ll take more than an ad/PR war to confine the offending males to one seat. 

Ask change experts: 

• Train a gaggle of key spokespeople to hop on and off trains and (nicely) confront the manspreaders. 
• Give subway conductors a few public announcements to voice at every stop (until all 8-something million New Yorkers get the message). 
• Con native celebrities to film a few PSAs … for social media, in taxis, on the Web.
• Tag it to the cause of sustainability – and making sure everyone has a fair ride.

Is rider etiquette all that important?  Change starts small …

INFO-WHAT?

Software that turns data into charts and graphs is, similarly, transforming the art of presentation, exponentially, day after day.

Classified as business analytics, these tools are now produced by every major and minor e-player, from Microsoft and SAP to Tableau and Tibco, in a market that’s growing faster than the business of design experts.

Which is the issue, as we see it. 

Sure, we have zip argument with the need to pump up nonverbal communication.  After all, stats alone bear out the way we process data:  50 percent of the brain’s real estate either directly or indirectly touches vision.  Eighty percent of us remember what we see and do, versus 10 percent, what we hear, and 20 percent, what we read.

And we’ve been preceded by some pretty smart vis-info practitioners.  USA Today popularized information visuals in its front-page snapshots.  So did modern map-makers.  Edward Tufte, called the daVinci of data by The New York Times, gave us a series of tomes that define exactly how we should use design to communicate information.

We don’t do that. 

Instead, every possible number or word, when grouped, is subject to picture-ification.  Not much time is spent on considering content, comprehension, and communication, in our minds the three critical Cs of what we do.  [Not to mention the changing of behaviors!]

Florence Nightingale, more than a century and a half ago, persuaded Queen Victoria to improve the conditions of military hospitals through a graphic.  What would we say and do today?

NO MORE SKIRTING THE ISSUE

For a while now, we’ve deliberately avoided the topic … even though we’re an MWBE company.

But when piles of recent clippings talk about communications differences between men and women, when our own body of work acknowledges the gaps, and when more academes are seriously studying gender conversations, we figured it’s time.

And despite the naysaying about John Gray’s decades-old philosophy stating that Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus, there’s much proof that he’s right.

Women talk. 

Men shy away from openness (especially in stressful times). 

Rosalind Wiseman, in her Masterminds and Wingmen, interviewed dozens and hundreds of teenaged boys, with the conclusion that as boys enter manhood, they do begin to talk less.  Even if they’re as emotionally invested in relationships as girls.

That retreat mentality should be obvious to anyone who’s worked in the business world, even when there’s no reason to dive into a cave.  Straightforward prose and (some) dialogue infuse meetings and reports when males are in charge.  Many women bosses tend towards the chatty, the ‘let’s talk’ narratives, preferring to expose all aspects of a particular issue and all its possible solutions. 

No, this delineation isn’t100 percent true.  But we see it often enough to question if there needs to be some sort of segmented communications by gender as well as by demographics.  Or, perhaps, messages that are composed and directed to specific audiences, each with the same content but different presentations.

Are we on opposing planets?  Please RSVP …

THINK. THANK. THUNK.

Almost every client and colleague, no matter the size of the company or type of department, agrees on their biggest talent issue:  The lack of critical thinking among young professionals.

Statistics, of course, back them up:  When Harris Interactive last year polled employers and about-to-enter-the-workforce employees about the state of preparedness of grads, the disconnect was drastic.  Nearly 70 percent of millennials said they were ready to work, while fewer than half of employers concurred.

The next obvious question (and its add-ons):  How do you teach critical thinking – and how can you identify and measure it?

No easy answers:  Recruiters rely on take-home exercises and behavioral interviewing to assess a candidate’s capabilities.  So, too, managers might opt for a series of conversations about process and open-mindedness, two attributes so important to making good decisions.  Or simply by learning on the job, with practicums and examples pulled from everyday challenges.

Another option from our across-the-ocean counterparts:  U.K. students can select “resolution of dilemmas” and “critical reasoning” courses.

All well and good.  Yet it still leaves many of us needing to train staff on thoughtful and reasoned considerations, the art of good decision making. 

What’s your solution?  Hand out books?  Walk through workshops?  Assign case histories?  Or announce, as did U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, that “you know it when you see it.”