For the past ten years, I have devoured every book produced by The Gallup Organization and have been helping our team understand and leverage their powerful research and principles.  So it was with great excitement that I opened the latest Gallup Management Journal to see their top story - “Does Your Technology Engage Your Customers?“.

[I encourage you to click the link, since they usually archive these stories pretty quickly.]

After posting my reply, I thought I’d share it with you here:

We are passionate evangelists for the Gallup Organization’s principles and very pleased to see you explore the opportunities to drive greater engagement through the right understanding and use of technology.

Without a doubt, we have moved out of the Industrial Age through the Information Age and into the Interconnected Age.  This new era, defined by the fundamental shift in how people can connect and engage with others, is redefining all aspects of our lives.  Our growing awareness of how we as individuals connect to the rest of the world is forcing us to reexamine the simple and complex parts of life.

To quote our company’s philosophy - “As long as we’ve occupied this little speck of universal dust called Earth, human beings have been trying to connect with one another.  First it was through grunts and gestures, then words and pictures, and now, networks and pixels.  While technology advances our abilities and our capacities, our human needs remain the same—to understand the world that surrounds us, and build meaningful relationships to share our findings with others.”

I think of Tom Rath’s book “Vital Friends” and the powerful idea that the greatest opportunity we have for growth is in the connection between ourselves and others.  Within each connection, we create a mosaic of experiences.  Those experiences shape the impressions that drive the emotional response that leads us to form our perception of the other.  For companies, we call that “the brand”.  Every point of interaction - in person, print, radio, TV, digital, etc. - shapes that mosaic.

Nothing can replace the robust impressions of face-to-face interactions.  But, how can you fill the spaces in between these interactions with other impressions far more robust than static brochures?  With the right strategy that incorporates the right mix of powerful storytelling and tools (sharp design interfaces, blogs, videos, animations, social networks, etc.), an organization can fill the space with meaningful interactions that drive greater engagement - for internal and external constituencies.  Better yet, these interactions can happen at the time and place of your audiences’ choosing.

Keep pursuing this concept and you can help the rest of the Gallup Organization community interweave your powerful principles in ways you would have only imagined ten years ago.

So what are your thoughts - is it the technology or the people driving engagement?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:36 pm and is filed under change, relationship, storytelling, web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.