Intention, the source of . . . . . Everything !
I’ve been thinking about intention for a couple of days now. So, I may as well post.
I think great work of any lasting value comes through intention. In fact, I believe clear intention may be a prerequisite to greatness. I read somewhere, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else”. The place we end up may be a good place, but we will probably not be able to reproduce our results consistently.
Through intention we can transfer the “human-ness” of our effort to another person and increase the likelihood and strength of the potential emotion. Simply because two people purposefully and intentionally interchanging in a common interest is emotional. Intentional service.
Some touch-points are managed by technology, collateral materials and other innimate methods, but even then, our intention can be made to show through.
Without intention we run the risk of having our companies feel machine-like and impersonal, even when we do a good job. Without intention we loose the opportunity to create and be part of a culture that is sustainable, reproducible and proud.
My intention is to serve my customer as I would like to be serviced myself.
Because it feels right and brings positive emotion to all involved.
Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal
2 comments
very interesting entry… did some work on intent-drive customer service some time back, and this brings back memories.
i think you made a particular interesting observation when you say that even though some interactions are automated, computer-drive, or happen via collateral we can still show intention through them. great insight! i wish more people were to share it.
just because the interface may seem awkward, or the medium cannot show emotion does not mean we cannot show intention. the tone in which some communications are written (albeit perfectly legal and compliant) makes it almost impossible to understand what they are talking about. contrast egg in the uk and financial institutions in the us for example. if you ever get communications from either one of them you would not believe they are in the same business! it is just the intent of the communication if obviously different -egg wants your business and they want you to understand what you are getting into. the ones in the us want to protect themselves from potential lawsuits…
anyways, i could go on forever – but this is good enough
great work!
Steban,
thanks for your comment. Yes, intention supercedes technology. A greeting card has little technology, but we are able to express intention quite well, so we should be able to do it technology as well.
The issue usually is that the intention in not at the heart of the action.
We need to be true to our intention, then our customers will hear us.
Thanks again for your continued insights.
R