THE BLIND BOY STORY

Effective Communication

Every night, before a game, Sachin Tendulkar used to dream his innings. He  sees himself walking out to the pitch, taking guard, facing the ball and scoring runs. He sees the strokes he makes, hears the sound of the ball striking the bat, watches the ball speeding to the boundary.

He sees this vision time and again, so that when the time comes and he actually walks out to the middle, he has already done this multiple times, knows what will happen and is supremely confident.

This is the key to his success and the key to business success anywhere: the ability to form a clear, compelling vision of the future, so see the goal as already achieved. It is the view from the top of the mountain, where the path to success is clearly laid out, the route to overcoming obstacles free of any doubt.

If we are to achieve exponential success, if we are to drive the organisation we represent to new levels, each of us needs to see our own future with the same clarity and confidence so that we can step out of our comfort zones and create an enterprise that we can be proud to be a part of.

Here is a wonderful story by a renowned faculty of a business school. A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?" *

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”

What he had written was: "Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it."

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing? Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective? 

This is what we need to do as communication advisers - compose our clients' messages in such a way that the publications feel compelled to print them and the public want to read them.

Our vision and our expertise will enable our 

success - let us make the future happen!