Audience and Impact

 

When making decisions, any normal person would account for those impacted by the decision.  Even if that impact is a negative one.  When weighing the the pros and cons of a particular course of action you may realize that someone may be negatively affected by your decision.  However, you decide that the pros outweigh the cons and you do your best to mitigate the harmful impact on that person or group of people.  You may decide that the negative impact is actually a pro and proceed happily.  Definitely not a attitude I support, nor one I would encourage.  How do we deal with those around us when we make decisions?  Other than those around us that are directly impacted by the decision should we even care?

The first step would be to categorize the people that revolve around our decisions.  At first I theorized 3 distinct groups.  They were the impacted, the participants and the audience.  In writing this weeks post I discovered a fourth group. I will discuss this fourth group later.  There may be some overlap between these groups.  If an individual spans two or more groups I would place them in the higher ranked group.   Ranking these groups in order of importance is quite obvious.  In order from least important to most important would be:

3.) Audience

2.) Participants

1.) Impacted

Starting with the audience (the top or bottom of the list).  Although I will submit that you need to spend minimal resources dealing with this group I would not discount it totally.  This group is usually defined as the people waiting for you to fail.  Its the group discussing your idiotic decision to buy a certain vehicle when they could easily get one for half the price.  The group that disparages your brand of tools when everyone knows their brand is superior.  Or the southern version, "We all need to pray for Mike because, blah blah blah".  In a corporate or professional world this group can have indirect influence on us.  How we dress, how we approach our day to day lives and the decisions we make are viewed by those around us.  Once viewed they then make judgements about us and our fitness in belonging to the organization.  Once retired I find that this group shrinks considerably.  It is probably due to the fact that as a retiree I have less direct day to day contact with people.  So other than a possible source of motivation this group really does not affect my decision making at all.

Participants are possibly the trickiest cohort.  These would be people that you need to complete a task.  For example these may be contractors you need after deciding to do home renovations.  It could be a financial advisor helping you build your retirement nest egg.  It is best to make sure that these people do not cross over into the other categories.  I would not want a financial advisor to be impacted by my financial decisions or a contractor so disinterested in the work that he is in the audience category.  There is a sound basis for the saying " A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client".  It is best to treat participants as the professionals that they are.  You decide to have a splendid evening at a nice restaurant, treat the hostess and waiter with kindness.  Respect and honor them as professionals in their field.  Ask for advice on what meal, the choice of wine.  Listen to and carefully consider the suggestions a contractor makes.  Chances are that they know better than you do, regardless of how many Youtube videos you have watched.  Above all tip well!!

Those impacted would tend to be those closest to us, usually family and close friends.  It is understandable that would would only want the best results for this group.  However it is possible that a decision on our part could negatively affect members of this group.  The main issue hear is to not "go it alone".  Those directly impacted by your decision are part of the decision process.  The main issue would be to get buy in from these people.  That buy in could take many forms and not just total support.  It could be acceptance on those negatively affected that it is the best overall decision in spite of their harm.  It could be simply an agree to disagree with an consensus to address the outcome.  These are the people closest to you and should never be taken for granted.

I came across another group and I feel silly for not thinking of them.  I was doing an image search for "audience" to use at the top of this post.  This led me to the following site Audience or community.  Community is one of the most important factors in our society today.  the post I came across describes many of the differences of audience and community.  For my purposes community are those around us who want nothing but the best for us.  They are the people that would drop what they are doing to help you.  You would drop what you are doing to help them.  Too often we over look this group when making decisions and the plans that go with them.  It may be our independent spirit or pride that would lead us to overlook this group.  Probably why I did not include them in my original notes for this post.  Our community is our greatest source of physical and emotional support available to us.  It should never be taken for granted.