I’ve spent a good portion of my working life in the
media, both as a creator and seller of stories on the PR end or writing them
from the publication side. In those years, I’ve realized that as far as media
is concerned, there’s one uncomfortable truth – personalities sell. This truth
is regardless of the topic and thanks to social media, we’re becoming even more
personality obsessed. There was a time when “celebrity” was restricted to the
world of entertainment. These days everyone is a celebrity.
Let’s face the basic fact – it’s far easier and
therefore fun to talk about personalities. The Trump era in American and by
extension World politics was the prime example. Everything was focused on the
personality in the White House. Say what you like about the man but he had a
way of getting people to talk about him, whether it was good or bad. Everyone
in the media by extension everywhere else talked about him. Political discourse
inevitably went around his orange tan or whether you thought his bluster was
actually based on anything. Nobody actually seemed to care to discuss the
policies he was proposing.
We, as a species, are bitchy. As mentioned, I spent
half my working life in and around media. So, yes, I’m guilty of gossiping and
even writing about people (I’m not important enough for Ng Yat Chung to care
about what I’ve written about him). Funnily enough, being a bitch isn’t limited
to the media. In Singapore, professional circles are so small that
personalities end up getting discussed at all sorts of “professional”
gatherings. This bitchiness is so prevalent that I’d actually worry if people
were not saying things about me behind my back – it would be a sign that I was
totally irrelevant.
Whilst its second nature to “civilized people” to “bitch”
about each other, there’s a slight problem with this. The easy topic is
actually the most distracting. It’s so easy to talk about people that the
people you are “bitching” about become the main thing that you think about.
Then, when all you think about is the people you are bitching about, you lose
interest in doing anything else in between the hum drum of ordinary life.
There has, as far as I know, never been a study on the
correlation between bitchiness and the collapse of civilizations. However,
there would be case for it. The Millenia of Chinese Imperial Courts filled with
eunuchs, for example was probably so bitchy with everyone in court bitching about
each other than nobody realized that society had stagnated or that the “White
Devils” asking to trade actually had far more advanced technologies that could
damage everyone else.
So, if we can’t talk about each other, what else can
we talk about? Well, I did something vaguely intelligent last week and made an
appointment to catch up with my former battalion Rece officer this week.
Ours was a very unusual friendship. We meet in the
armskote room at 23SA. I was the Orderly Sargent (COS) on duty trying to get
the arms cleared. He was the battalion Duty Officer (DO). He had gone through
the US Military Academy at West Point and graduated seventh in his class. I, by
contrast, should have failed my specialist course, had they been allowed to
fail me. The caliber of personalities was very clear and I got a dressing down.
Never raised his voice but the battery (Company equivalent in an Artillery
Unit) duty officer, who had cleared the arms previously, was summoned and everyone
in battery line was exceedingly sympathetic the next day.
We didn’t really keep in touch. He had his career in
the army and I went onto ORD, go to university and start my freelancing
journey. However, he left the army and got in touch with me. Our friendship
started to develop in the post-phase of his career because, while we didn’t
meet often, our meetings were and remain sessions for discussing issues that
matter to us and bouncing ideas as what we can do. Our coffee session at the
Tower Club was no exception:
In the years since the military, I’ve understood that it
wasn’t just the rank that made him my superior. It was the level of
conversation that he brought to me that made him my superior. People and
personalities were never the main focus of our discussions. What makes the
discussions I have with him different to the people I deal with in the course
of my professional life is that personalities are never the main topic. Our main
topic is ideas.
So, yes, talking about personalities can be a lot of
fun. If anything, it becomes the focus on life when you work in an organization
that becomes the centre of your life. Offices, be they bureaucratic or corporate
are hives of discussions on personality. Hence, they are grossly unproductive.
However, once you get people away from their little
holes, you get them to think of things beyond the personalities. You get them
to think and talk about ideas that excite them. As my favourite data analytics
entrepreneur states – Innovation doesn’t happen in big companies. The big companies
have to buy small ones to get innovation. Silicon Valley works because people
get together to talk about and get excited by ideas. In a bureaucracy, people
get turned on by talking about other people whom they can either build up or trash
according to their convenience – hence such organizations do not grow. Clearly
it is best to look for the people who want to talk about ideas that excite them
rather than the personalities.
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