Rediscovering human value in business

Twenty years ago, when I was just deciding what I wanted to do with my professional life and evaluating the possibilities of things that attracted me or seemed promising, I made some decisions based on information, others on intuition, and others on bias and superficiality. Today, with the maturity I've gained, I've asked myself if I did the right thing or if I made a mistake. With that inner insecurity that sometimes awakens and asks, "What would have become of me, if..." I'll never know. I only know that with the path I chose, I began to create my own bubble.

Paving my way

My professional path was strengthened in digital marketing, and essentially my world, for at least 40 hours a week, was digital agencies, media centers, and large consumer brand companies, to put it briefly. It was always normal, and in the social world, it was somewhat strange for me to see that some people couldn't quite understand what I was doing.

Now I understand it perfectly, but it took me a long time. Not everyone is part of that bubble. When it burst and I wanted to get out of it, I realized that not everyone understands the digital world, much less marketing, and even less artificial intelligence.

To illustrate what I mean, my mom refers to the bot on the Colsanitas website as "the Ana María girl" and swears it's a real person there responding to the requests of millions of people. (This makes her happy, and she thinks she's crystal clear about it, even though I explain to her that it isn't true.)

I landed in another reality

All this personal anecdote is to say that the bursting of that bubble made me understand that in the business world there are millions of interlocutors, not just the marketing coordinators or managers of large companies (who in some ways know it all); but there are different interlocutors from small, medium-sized, and large companies who appreciate being guided and recognize the value of every solution that helps them and their companies become better and better. To sell more, to better coordinate their internal areas, to have purposeful strategies, for example. And that, without a doubt, there are other ways to approach people and commercial opportunities.

In the world of work, everyone seeks their own happiness.

Gone are the days of filling out a brief, putting together a presentation, setting a budget, presenting, and lighting the candles for the project to move forward. Today, I understand that the most important initial step is understanding who and with whom I'm going to talk. It's about deciphering the DNA of the company they own or work for, and above all, from their role, what they want to achieve, what they want as a person to be happy, what they want to gain from our potential relationship, and what, as a human being in that industry, would make them shake my hand and say "deal." Behind that person are dreams, questions, insecurities, successes, triumphs, disappointments, and surely several bubbles that, like me, they have created and broken over time.

In my personal relationships, I take the time to get to know the other person and decide whether I want them to be a part of my life or not. Today, in business relationships, I've learned that I should do exactly the same (not all relationships are a good fit). But if I'm interested in making a first contact, I want to be able to convey things like this: I know you, I've taken the time to research what you do, you're a good match, and that's why I'm here, wanting to dig deeper. Tell me everything.

You have to test and be clear about the pain points to develop efficient products.

Of course, this requires time and research. Within Navigamo's portfolio, we develop assistants to alleviate pain and help generate efficiencies in companies, but we also develop them for ourselves; that's the only way we understand how far we can take them. They help us prepare for these commercial approaches, allow us to analyze and understand our potential clients, and delve into industries we may not have been familiar with (and that during normal business hours would take us weeks to research and analyze).

AI can help us buy a little time

Everything in life requires balance. Time for ourselves is important, time to reflect on things like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of this article. There's less and less of it available, especially when we have so many obligations related to our work and personal lives. But I can tell you that today I can explain to my mom (the one in her friend Ana Maria's story) that while she's finishing up lunch on a Tuesday afternoon, in less than three minutes I dictate a couple of instructions to my assistant to summarize the emails in my inbox, help me with a couple of drafts for an email, and research a company and a CEO I'll be sitting down with tomorrow to chat. When my mom arrives at the table, I've put my cell phone away. She asks me who I was talking to, I explain I was talking to my assistant, she looks at me in ecstasy, not fully understanding how all this could be happening... and says: "How great, now I have your full attention." Nothing more to say, these AI tools are giving us time and memorable moments.

Final Thought: Human Value in Business

I don't know what would have happened if I had made different decisions 20 years ago. What I do know is that when I decided to break that bubble, I opened myself up to the world and understood that there is much to discover by taking advantage of everything the universe and new technologies put in our hands. Of course, our humanity and sensitivity are the fundamental ingredients for everything.

If you want to reevaluate the human value in business and how you spend your time, contact me.