What Is Happening Here?
A Reflection on Process and Content
Just recently I worked a day from home. I had lots of stuff on my schedule for the day, hence I started early and got moving, laptop online and coffee fresh. As the morning was passing at high pace with conference calls, reporting reviews and unexpected queries from customers and colleagues by phone and e-mail, I found a gap in my calendar to quickly go to the supermarket to buy some stuff needed for dinner. With just a window of 30 minutes, I knew I could make it.
Almost always shopping in the same supermarket made that I found the groceries practically without looking at the shelfs. Quickly I put the stuff I needed in my cart and moved efficiently. At this time of the day, at the end of a summer morning, the supermarket was not crowded at all and I had made my way to the cashier already.
As ever so often, I succeeded to pick the wrong cashier line. Don’t we all? While looking at the elderly lady carefully picking the coins and bills from her purse to pay the exact amount due in cash, I stood a bit impatiently in line. After her, two more customers to go before me and time ticking until my next conference call in just about 12 minutes.
As the lady in front was still sorting out the right coins to pick, my thoughts wandered off as I looked at the other customers’ groceries on the belt. It’s interesting to see what people buy in the supermarket, and how taste and needs obviously widely differ, as I figured from the stuff laid out in front of me. As my mind found this strange way to relax me, watching other peoples’ groceries during this fully packed working day from home, I listened to the supermarket music and noticed how peaceful it was in here. I noticed the patient and friendly smile of the cashier to the ‘lady with coins’. And then it happened.
As my mind had drifted off from my work obligations, silently waiting in the cashier line, this older gentleman came in. He walked directly towards the cashier staff in my line, and I still remember myself talking in silence to myself: “take the end of the line, mister, it’s not your turn”. As I watched him approach the cashier, I noticed him turn his face slowly and closely to hers, to make sure that she could hear him. He was clearly already at a progressed age, his back somewhat bent, and he talked very softly and carefully. “Miss”, he said to the cashier service so politely as the elderly tend to practice so beautifully, “may I ask you something?”. He paused, and looked at her. The look in his eyes made me listen, I was totally focused on him. He continued by saying “Earlier today, I was here and bought groceries. I know I have paid, but I have forgotten to take my groceries home. Did you happen to find them?”. He looked around him at the floor, watching to find his missing shopping bag and then looking back at the cashier staff with this uncertainty and helplessness written all over his face. It hit me right there. Right in that waiting line, a stranger hit my emotions. As he continued speaking about this situation that happened to him earlier, asking the next cashier employee the same question as the first one did not recognise him, nor knowing where his missing groceries could be, he looked so humble. And so helpless. It was a tear-jerking scene, without any doubt. Totally captured by his expression, his words, his helplessness, I know for sure that many people in the supermarket felt exactly the same as I did at that moment.
And there I was, halfway a productive stressful working day from home, standing with wet eyes looking at an unknown elderly with Alzheimer’s disease. I loved the way the supermarket manager took care of him, and helped him find out what happened earlier that morning. The smile on the gentleman’s face when I walked out made me smile as well.
It made me wonder, how important it is to look at what is happening here? In business, for example in a meeting or in a sales pitch, how much do we tend to focus on the content, and less on the process? What is really happening? Do we take time and invest heartfelt effort to understand, to watch and analyse, to ask whether what we believe we think is happening, is really happening? In effective communication, leadership or sales management, we differentiate process from content. And we understand the power of them adding up. How important it is to step back from content sometimes, to reflect on what we actually see. And what we actually feel.
In case you wonder. Yes, I had a productive second half of my working day. Definitely not caused by my efficient way of working and fast-paced schedule. Instead, by being surprised by something that intense, yet small, which I would not have noticed without having been in the process of standing in line, watching that older gentleman, and being touched by the content of his story.
This is what made my working day from home a surprisingly reflected one. Thank you, mister!
