So When Did We Quit Listening?

My college journalism professor once told our class, “Half of all the problems we face stem from poor communications?”

After graduating and after 14 years’ experience with a global manufacturer and a large ad agency, I ratcheted up Prof. Maguire’s percentage to 75; after 35 more years’ heading
an ad/pr/research agency serving 100-plus companies and institutions, I nudged it to 99 percent. No enterprise or institution can succeed without a solid communications strategy.

We live, work and play in a new world. Everything is rush-rush, instant gratification, multi-tasking and computer-speak that dominate our lives 24/7. We recall the thesis of the hit stage-play, “Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.”

My prof said further, “Communications must be honest, complete, consistent and two-way.”

He relished explaining two-way—the need to give and take, share and truly listen. Historians agree that the communications explosion of the Fifties surpassed all of the communications recorded in the six centuries after Gutenberg invented moveable type, and was punctuated by the quantum leap of media and marketing forces, especially “new consumerism” and that upstart new medium—television.

Communications in the final four decades of the 20th century constituted a super explosion, but most was one-way—lots of powerful, high-pitched pitching and sound bites that left no time for and no interest in listening.

Enter the 800-pound gorilla—the Internet and its trappings. It has for all time sealed the fate of the listening art. Stroll through any business or office or visit a family at home, and you won’t find discourse or listening; the young and the old are hunched over tv and computer screens with eyes glazed in a 2007 version of the Cone of Silence featured
in the “Get Smart” tv series.

I embrace high-tech. I’m a .com devotee and a tv news/ sports/PBS junkie. Still, we all should ponder the need for a proper balance in the communications mix.

Is anybody listening? And if not, is it a major concern? What should one do?

Perhaps the societal pendulum, as it has done throughout history, will swing back to a more halcyon mode? Business, education and media deep-thinkers may get the message and help turn things around? Maybe we all will quietly turn down and even turn off the gadgets.

Then read, talk and write again. Yes, and listen.