Treating People as Commodity?

"The end product of the Industrial Revolution was the end of the connection of kinship and trust -- now, people are commodities." 

I don't have the link to the podcast this came from, does it pack a punch, though.

Can you imagine all this talk about democratization, of ability to express yourself with social media tools and in social networks being a gigantic illusion?

Here's why. The quote made me think about some examples from direct and indirect experiences.

Desperately seeking links

The public relations pitch that demonstrates the person making it didn't read your blog. In a couple of situations, a simple search of the blog, would have resulted in finding a post already written about the very topic they were pitching.

That is not the most embarassing moment, though.

How about when you respond to a vague email offering and "expert" for opinion that you're not a journalist seeking commentary (yeah, we must have an over supply of those as I get about 5-7 per day), and they respond with this kind of note?

I'm sorry, we thought you were an influencer in the marketing sector who might like a connection to one of the nation's top marketing research firms. Obviously we were way off the mark.

Would you enjoy being on the receiving end of such a note? How would you like to be the executive who is being pitched and is unaware of what is going on while his name and that of his firm are being taken hostage in the process?

There are plenty of stories more egregious than these. Just run a search, and bring your hard hat.

Casting a wide net in a small pond

This is a classic among so many job hunteres I've talked with over the years. The recruiter who asks for all kinds of information and questions and then either over or under sells you, or not at all. And you never hear back.

In fact, in the best scenarios there's never a follow up except to add you to their email list that announces they got a candidate -- a fabulous one -- placed; one that is not you, of course.

In the worst case, you hear from all the others they are talking with about that very same position and who are referring you as the best candidate. Isn't eveyone connected to each other by less than five degrees?

Word gets around fast. Yes, people learn about the details even in competitive bids for talent, offer amounts, etc. Assume everyone hears about the numbers and percentages sooner rather than later. Honesty is often just one search or call away.

Bidding for influence

I've been staying out of the more recent discussions on "online influence", because I believe that eventually things have a way of working out for the best. Smart businesses do see through gimmicks, especially those that come back to haunt them.

An expression I use in quotes as it is a placeholder for a much more complex set of considerations. I barely scratched the surface in my series on influence.

There are two recent posts worth reading about Klout: scoring social: the rise and fall of Klout and five questions klout can't answer. Both allude to scoring users and profiles automatically, and the score indicating popularity, which would mean the game being played in an entirely different one.

I opted out of Klout recently. I had added my @ConversationAge Twitter profile (and no other network) to see how it was working, and I never added my @valeriamaltoni Twitter account, which nonetheless had been opted in the system, so I had to sign on Klout with it in order to opt out. A simple @ reply should suffice.

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The moving line of trust/privacy and it effect on promises is already having an effect on the promises of businesses that agree to use these third party platforms and their brands.

These businesses and brands will need to understand the assets they're creating as well as those they did not intend to create.

The quote at the beginning of this post, and the scenarios above prompt me to conclude the week with the question: Are we treating people as commodities?

If so, is it any wonder that there is no trust?

 

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Comments

[Fit4thabo.blogspot.com]

Valeria, in my opinion, the short answer to your question is YES!

It is sad that there is this mentality that you can box people and quantify their ability based on certain metrics. We are much more complicated than Google's best algorithm as individuals.

I see it so often when helping people with recruitment as I always have to explain to them that people are not an off the shelf product that I can just drop on one of their workstations. You have to find the balance between a function you want performed versus the type of person that will best be suited to deliver on that function. Too often, hiring managers get lost in wanting to be able to tick boxes in every aspect required on the job spec. Similarly people looking for this "ideal job" work from the same limiting beliefs.

I certainly don't believe you will be effective and have lasting relationships if you do not recognise the need to see the individual strengths people bring to the party.

[Jan]

I a sense I believe it is an illusion. Now you can have thousands in your circles, tens of thousands following you and millions of friends and still be all alone...

Obviously people aren't commodities, but people aren't online either so how can you tell. You see the text, you read the words, you may even look at the pictures, but can you really connect?

It is not hard to reduce everything and everyone to simply being ends to means when you can't get any closer to them than the computer screen.

Mostly it has no consequences either. When someone steps on your toes they aren't around to see or hear how you react. Odds are that they are of to better things before you even know what happened.

Behaving in this virtual world of ours as it if was real is thus more of a rarity than it should be. Those who do succeed in doing so will however be the ones who end up profiting the most I think.

[Brian Driggs]

It seems we're bombarded with more and more information (from more and more people) every day. In the absence of strong filters, this pushes analysis paralysis, which drives us to commodity.

I particularly like Jan's suggestion of parallelism between our digital and analog selves. There is tremendous potential for those who do (IRL) what they say they will do (online).

We are connected to far more people than we could ever hope to treat with the same level of attention we would expect for ourselves, but our individual visions and aspirations serve as the filters allowing us to tailor our promises to others.

True success means more than just helping others achieve success - it means helping others achieve success through helping still others achieve success. What is the power of promising to help others make and keep their promises?

[Liam]

I find it amazing that companies do actually send notes like that. It smells of both arrogance and frustration, and id certainly going to backfire on them big time. What do they expect? Oh well, I guess it takes all sorts......

[Valeria Maltoni]

industrial age thinking in the information age - many reasons why that is happening and why it's not sustainable in a world that keeps changing at the pace it does.

[Valeria Maltoni]

there are always consequences, even to the unaware. They accrue over time, too.

[Valeria Maltoni]

when nobody sees what you do, that's when you end up getting closer to genuine self. There is all this pressure to have the photo opp online, to display vs. be, etc. that ends up distorting the sense of proportion... a long conversation

[Valeria Maltoni]

which is why it's helpful to know what the agency doing your PR sounds like when you're not in the room, so to speak.

[Rich Becker]

Valeria,

Thank you for including my post as an example. But more importantly, I am fascinated by the changes taking place in our industry as evidenced by that response you received. The entire field of avatars, clicks, retweets, and scores continues to dehumanize people, delivering the exact opposite results that most companies are seeking. I wonder when some people might understand that technologies might make up the online environment, but they are still driven by people.

Best,
Rich