Being and Caring

Marting Heidegger is one of the most influential 20th century thinkers you never heard of.

Why?

Couple of reasons.  First, his thinking is extraordinarily complex.  His magnum opus, Being and Time, contains page after page of paragraphs that are impenetrable for hours on end.  No kidding.  I know.  I spent years in the 70s reading and re-reading them.  They're hard.  Trust me.

Second, he was uncomfortably cozy with the Nazis.  Or so it is alleged.  For the purposes of this post, I'm not going to engage that question since I cannot find any connection between it and the issues at hand in this piece.

But, regardless of these problems, his thinking is brilliant. 

He begins Being and Time by declaring that moderns have forgotten the meaning of "Being."  Being?  Sounds pretty straightforward.  Today, here's what we think:

                                            Being =  Is

Ah, but this guy didn't fall for that straightforward stuff.  He dug into this question, dug in deep, all the way back to the pre-Socratic Greeks.  And the result?  Several hundred pages of exploring the meaning of "Being."

Want the Beginners version?  Here goes:

                                  The meaning of being is Care.

Whoa.  OK.  Well, thanks, Marty.  (WTF?!?#)

Alright, here's a little more about what he means.  When we "care" for something, we invest ourselves in it.  Invest in ways we don't even realize, reflectively. 

We literally see things we care about.  We hear them.  In fact, we care about them before we know we care about them.  They present themselves to us in ways that things we don't care about do not. 

So, you might say, my whole existence, all of my being, is the sum of what I "care about"; what I invest my being into.

(Geez, sometimes this guy is interesting or even funny.  What the hell is he talking about??)

OK, here goes.  Seth's post about customer service as "care" was the trigger for this remembrance.  As he indicates (and as Heidegger would confirm), when someone genuinely cares for something, that care is evident in the way in which that person interacts with his/her world.  We can compare this way of being with the actions of someone who is only pretending to care.  Can we tell the difference?  Over time?  C'mon.  (The name of the damned book is Being and Time, right?)

So, what's the secret to creating great customer experiences?  Caring people.  People who care for those with whom they interact (maybe even, joyously) and for what those interactions mean (both to themselves, and to the people with whom they interact). 

Contrary to what you may be thinking, this kind of caring is not difficult to attain.  Why?  Because people desire genuine connections with others (another of those Heideggerian insights) and these genuine connections arise from authentic interactions (more of that Heidegger stuff). 

So, in effect, customer care becomes self care.  I care for others so that I may have the kinds of experiences I seek for myself, experiences of genuine connection with others around things of interest to both of us.

The task for leaders?  Creating an environment that values and focuses on  natural inclinations.  Simple, but not easy.

This much is clear: great organizations know how to do this.

Do you?

Comments

[Johnnie Moore]

Whoa, Tom, this is serious brain food. And I love being able to stop by your restaurant and pick off the menu.

In customer care, usually there is no care for the customer care people. Without that, forget customer care.

[Tom Guarriello]

My pleasure, Johnnie! The kitchen's always open.

And, you're quite right: the customer care people are looked down upon by just about everybody else in their organizations. I know this because my daughter spends her days training new customer care reps. Doesn't get much respect, for sure.