Do You Suffer From Reality Distortion Field Syndrome?
Distorting reality with hype and bull can backfire on your business. For fun and profit, just be yourself.
I ran into a term recently that sums up a common business condition so well, I'm going to use it every chance I get.
Reality Distortion Field was coined by someone at Apple Computers (and taken from an old Star Trek episode) to describe the effect Steve Jobs's charisma had on developers, and continues to have on Apple fans today.
Several companies who have had Jobs speak to their troops have complained that he mesmerizes them into believing they are in an entirely different realm than the one in which they really exist day to day.
Since then it's been extended in industry to other managers and leaders who try to convince employees to become passionately committed to projects, sometimes in the face of a reality that is much different or of clear evidence that there is little there to become passionate about.
It is also used to describe the kind of hype for products that we're seeing increasingly today. (back to Apple again)
I used to call this phenomenon of people convincing themselves of something that wasn't completely true as "drinking your own bathwater," but some people found that a bit too colourful. Since Reality Distortion Field Syndrome sounds more technical, MBA-ish, and way cooler, it's probably more acceptable.
Anyway, finding the term made me wonder how many companies in BC are being affected by this syndrome? I'm guessing many.
Believing your own bull is not a new phenomenon – Howe street stock promoters have been doing it for years.
But it seems to have reached new heights as technology speeds up everything and delivers oceans of opinion, complaints, and ever-increasing hype.
Is this a bad thing? I think so, because it's a false view of the world.
Trying to convince your people that you're mega-corp when you're really mini corp can hurt your company because they know better. Do it often enough and they'll start ignoring everything you say. Worse, they may become so cynical they'll actively start trying to prove you wrong.
Trying to show off to the world that you're bigger or better than you are can elicit the "legend in his own mind" response in the minds of prospects, clients, or customers.
Producing great steaming piles of hype around your product -- such as trumpeting that it's "breakthrough" and "innovative" when all you've done is tweaked it a tiny bit and repackaged it – will turn off more than it turns on.
Now I'm not saying you should go the opposite way and be too humble (and by corollary, unctious). That's equally as bad in terms of undermining yourself and your business.
Both are distortions of reality, and there's too much of it around.
Today, people want to do business with people, not with carefully controlled, inhuman and overly distorted constructs that have no basis in underlying truth.
What's wrong with just being yourself?
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