More on People and Perceptions

Just recently had an opportunity to view this complexity up close. I have been serving on a committee where I work that has been concentrating on rebranding the organization. There are five of us on this committee from various programs within our not-for-profit organization. Our main project recently has been coming up with a logo that speaks what we are to the community, has recognition power, and will draw people to our organization. On this committee, as you probably have summarized from the previous paragraph, are many different perspectives. While I wish I could say that we all looked at our job on the committee from the perspective of trying to find a way to rebrand for the benefit of the organization and community, I cannot. It seems that some have duped themselves into choosing a logo by their feelings instead of by what is best, or by just agreeing with whatever the CEO said. The logo that we have chosen is of a cartoon like tree with a house in it (can you tell I don't like it very much?) with our organizations name to the right of it. I do feel fortunate, however, that the CEO agreed with me, but the majority ruled us out. What is interesting to me about how this worked is that, when we were discussing the logo options, it appeared that when I expressed the manner of my disagreement with the group, one took it as something that we needed to work on, other took it personally, others agreed, and another was just silent on the subject. All very different reactions for one phrase coming from one person.

People and Perceptions

I've been thinking about how complicated our lives are just by the fact that there are people in them, but we never seem to think of ourselves as complicating anyone else's lives. They all complicate ours. If you've ever noticed, we have a very complex social system made up of many different people with many different perceptions about many different topics. This makes it difficult for any one of us to say that the other is incorrect, especially when we all are most likely not getting all of the story. More on this later...