The power of apathy

Brexit happened because apathetic Millennials couldn’t be bothered voting for us to stay in Europe.

If Trump wins, it will be because apathetic Democrats think Hillary has it stitched up.

Referendums and elections are frequently decided by the people who don’t show up.

The success of a business is frequently decided by the team members who remain apathetic to every initiative.

I’ve been delivering a lot of team sessions recently on the subject of Human Interest Marketing – explained in this blog over the last 2 weeks.

Most of the time, the team members are on fire with the idea of collecting patient photos, reviews and stories and, with the appropriate consents, using them as marketing collateral on their web site, across their social media channels, in their blog and their monthly email newsletters.

Some of the time I’m not so successful – illustrated by one dental nurse who commented, not privately enough, to a colleague at the end of a 90-minute CB presentation – “that was all a load of shit”.

She is, of course, entitled to an opinion but the evidence is rather stacked against her.

The apathetic can sabotage one of my presentations as often as they like – the nurse in question will probably spend the rest of her working life criticising, complaining and condemning – perhaps every now and then wondering why the world hasn’t provided her with a living and life.

It pains me though, to see my hard-working owner-managing clients sabotaged by those same people and then see their behaviour tolerated because the pain of replacing them seems greater than the pain of toleration (and that is never the case).

It’s such a pleasure, by contrast, to work with the winners (as I did yesterday and have done many times in the last few months). Teams who are open to new ideas, give a damn and realise that by giving, they ultimately get.

There’s a cliche that I hear every week – “recruit on attitude, train on skill”.

I’d like to extend that to “retain on attitude, train on additional skill”.

I’ll spend all day training people who have the right attitude – it is a sheer pleasure.

You can’t fire apathetic voters.

You can fire apathetic team members – please do.

I’ll happily help you to find, interview, recruit and train better people.