These kissing cousins are always getting confused. Can you tell the difference and put them to work the right way?

Deploy vs. Employ

Anybody can develop stronger empathy muscles. You just need the right exercise routine.

A Novel Idea for Building Emapthy

As a fellow homo sapien, you’ll understand that truly knowing someone else is a tricky proposition. Some of this is down to the slippery and fickle quality we call consciousness. I know I’m conscious. You know you’re conscious. But how do I know you’re conscious? The best way to “prove” it is my belief in my own consciousness. If I as a human am conscious, then you as a human must also be conscious. That, of course, is really just an assumption. For me to know your consciousness, you must first have awareness of it, process it, understand it and find a way to express it. You have to try to make yourself knowable to me, for me to have a chance of knowing you. Lucky for us, there are brilliant novelists living amongst us, compelled to make the consciousness of distinct others knowable at scale. This is why all marketers should read novels. There is perhaps no better way to exercise your empathy muscles than to delve deep into the world of another’s consciousness. I’ve been immersed in fiction for decades, and I can tell you firsthand, this is precisely its function. Some authors are especially brilliant at rendering others’ consciousness in an invitingly knowable way.

An Exercise in Empathy: Learn from Louise

Brilliant novelists invite you into another person’s head so completely that the line between you and the character blurs until you are them. At least that’s how it is for me. After reading about the science of reading, I now understand that achieving this level of identifying with a character takes plenty of practice and adds up to exercising your empathy muscles. Therefore, I recommend reading novels as a way of getting in the habit of empathizing with others who may or may not be anything like you at all. Consider it prep work for inhabiting your customers’ shoes.

To get an idea of what it feels like to imagine your customers as fully realized, deeply flawed and breathtakingly lovable people, read novels by some of the most accomplished masters of this task. Among my favorites are Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver and Abraham Verghese. In her novel The Mighty Red, Erdrich paints vivid portraits of at least 12 distinct characters in devastating detail and beauty. The result for the reader is a multi-dimensional understanding of each person, which leads to an awakening of what feels close to love for me. Love as in the acceptance of them on a holistic level, inclusive of their individual flaws, a deep knowing that their imperfections and mess-ups are what make them human, and thus what make them beautiful and deserving. This is the level of intimacy brands and companies need to achieve in imagining their key customers.

Once you know someone intimately, and accept them as they are, for who they are, your relationship cannot be merely transactional. The way you communicate with that person (customer) will become more relational and naturally align to a longer purchase cycle where what is needed now is not the product or service you want to sell, but rather helpful information, long-term partnership and a true, two-way relationship.

In this excerpt from The Mighty Red, Erdrich paints the rich, interior life of a fringe character, Charley, with vibrantly loving detail.

Charley

Few people knew how much he liked to fish. While his friends were chasing girls and drinking beer around Ottertail or Detroit lakes, he was always fishing. He would fish for anything. He liked the long wait, the art of reeling in a fish, letting it go or not, and starting over. He even liked the tedium of ice fishing. People thought he would go to L.A. or New York, but he had no interest.

Charley headed out to Montana and took a series of jobs. First he apprenticed to some wilderness people, helped guide hiking and fishing trips. After a few years, he took courses in wilderness rescue. Over time he realized that what had happened to his friends was just what happened in the course of things when you were drunk and unlucky. Eric had told Charley how fast Travis had disappeared and now he knew why. The shock of cold water had forced Travis to take a deep breath, drowning him immediately, before he could get his boots off. At least it had happened fast, before Travis had a chance to be afraid.

Charley had rescued sober people with splintered bones from the bottoms of cliffs, plucked drunk people from rapids, found some alive and some dead after days of suffering. He thought he knew how to act around bears but had gotten charged and was not as calm as he imagined he’d be in that situation. He’d gotten lost himself because he hadn’t admitted until too late that he was lost, and couldn’t backtrack, and by then he should have known better. That was how everyone got lost. He felt like a fool, but the woman who rescued him said, ‘You’re too good-looking to die,’ and married him.

… Most of the time he thought about Travis…

Charley had a cruel father. Once, Charley’s father had grabbed him behind the neck like a cat and lifted him off the ground, then slammed him down. Travis had seen it and challenged his dad to a fight.

… Charley was fearless because he had no hope and Travis was fearless because he’d never been hurt. They figured out a way to kill Charley’s father.

… Because of what they had done, and the lie they told, Charley believed that the river took his friend. He believed that he had sacrificed his father to those waters, but Travis paid the price. Of course, the river should have taken Charley, and after Travis died, Charley had suffered greatly. He went to the river often during the worst of it, and talked to Travis, saying he was sorry over and over, also thanking him because he’d had six years of living free without his father. And because he’d seen his mother’s face when they told her, and he knew that her eyes darting rapidly from side to side, her trembling jaw, her lips working strangely, were not signs of temporary insanity as people had said, but attempts to hide relief and joy. But he wished he could talk to Travis, because he’d not had the clarity of mind to thank him with all the words he had now.

Only Eric knew that Charley kept a school photo of Travis and one of Jordan in his wallet. Eric knew because he kept photos of them too, only his were from fourth grade and Charley’s were from fifth. After those grades, guys didn’t trade photos, in fact, kids probably didn’t even do that at all anymore. Charley had kept Travis’s photo in a waterproof hiking wallet with his money and identification. And he was glad when he was lost because this way he could look at Travis as he talked to him. Travis was part Ojibwe, like Kismet, and he’d always laughed when teased about his special powers.

‘For good, not evil,’ he always said. ‘But not that good.’

Reading this passage is like getting to know an actual person, maybe more deeply than you know many of the real people in your life right at this moment. Part of this is due to the granular details Erdrich shares. For instance, not only that Charley loves fishing, but the why behind his passion. “He liked the long wait,” she writes, in part. What an incredible detail that says more about Charley as a person than the young man as a fisherman. She also highlights the dissonance between how people viewed him from the outside and how he views himself. Elsewhere in the novel, Charley is described as almost dashingly handsome, like a model. Even the scar slashed across his face after the accident adds to his striking looks. “People thought he would go to L.A. or New York, but he had no interest.” In a single, short sentence, Erdrich shows us that how he looks matters not to Charley, even though others see only the handsome face. There’s such vulnerability in the way he describes the time he spent lost in the woods, how humbling it was and how much of the days were spent thinking about his lost dead friends from so long ago. This is also the only part in the book where you find out what really happened to Charley’s dad. Revealing this deep secret so tenderly, with such compassion, makes you feel not only that you know Charley, but also love him. “But he wished he could talk to Travis, because he’d not had the clarity of mind to thank him with all the words he had now,” Erdrich writes of the regret Charley feels. In this passage, we see Charley then and now, a wiser, more mature version of that fearful child who made a grave choice that won his mother’s life back and freed Charley from a sure youth of torment.

Your Customers Are All Charleys

Whatever we do as marketers, we cannot lose sight of the indisputable fact that our customers are fully realized human beings, just as rich and layered and plagued by heartache and longing as Charley. Reading novels by masters of human realization is one practical exercise for exercising and building strength in your empathy muscles. You may be able to naturally call up empathy for people who are like you, or for those like people you know, but it’s essential to summon this deep knowing for all of your customers. In this way, novels are extremely helpful, as they invite you into unfamiliar worlds with a depth and intimacy rarely available in the real world, surrounded as we mostly are by others just like us.

Love the Ones You’re With

One last note here is to keep in mind that all of these principles apply equally if not more urgently to existing customers as to prospectives. Never underestimate the power of customers who’ve already chosen you, like your product or brand, and trust you.

Read more of my thoughts on The Mighty Red.

My main takeaway from attending a decade’s worth of focus groups: “Well, that was interesting.”

Between the Covers

Here’s a look at the books I’ve been bringing to bed lately—and the titles stacking up on the bedside table for future reading, too.

Last Book I Read

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

by Ray Kurzweil

It’s endlessly surprising to continually realize how shockingly little I know about how my own brain actually works. Ray Kurzweil demystifies the functions of that 3-pound cellular powerhouse in a way that’s illuminating and fascinating. One story I believed for a long time is that the brain is mysterious and ultimately unknowable. But truth is stranger than fiction, and the inner workings of our gray matter snap more into focus with each passing year. Turns out, one reason it’s more essential than ever to make an effort at understanding the inner workings of our intellect and emotions is because artificial intelligence is being built based on our understanding of the brain’s mechanics. In particular, I appreciated how Kurzweil explained and analyzed the mechanics of memory. A bright kernel that stays with me is that writing down what you recall is a way to reinforce the memory and extend its stickiness. Another aspect of how our brains function has made me realize that emotions are a feature, not a bug. We’re too often told to push inconvenient feelings aside and move ahead with the task at hand. But there’s deep wisdom carried along by the tide of emotion—signals that should be heeded, not ignored.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect to encounter poetry inside this book, but Kurzweil tucks in poems, literature and quotes from great thinkers and philosophers at the start of each chapter. This Emily Dickinson poem is one of my favorite of his inclusions.

Read more of my thoughts on various “brain reads.”

A gorgeous poem about the power of the brain.

Reading Now

Boy, Snow, Bird

by Helen Oyeyemi

This surprising novel was not at all what I expected, which made it all the more of a delight to read. It was a library-wandering pick with a curiously winding snake on the cover interspersed with rats and lush blooms. It turned out to be part family drama, part mystery and part feminist critique with just a dash of magical realism all wrapped in historical fiction. To tell you much more would risk ruining the surprise that unfolds in three sections, narrated in turns by a mother and her pre-teen daughter. Oyeyemi brilliantly develops her characters, rendering their quirks and compulsions in loving detail. I particularly loved the letters exchanged between two sisters in the second section.

In addition to her character development, Oyeyemi has a knack for vivid descriptions that make me feel I understand just the feeling, experience or even visual in her writing. Here’s how the main character, Boy, describes her mother’s face as a young woman, glimpsed in a series of photographs:

“She had the look of someone who sings inside themselves, silently and continually; at least I hope that’s what people mean when they say someone has a twinkle in their eye.”

If you read this one, let me know. It warrants discussion once the twists and turns have been revealed.