In the age of artificial intelligence, the main concern seems to be: what will happen to jobs? It also worries whether these new creations will be able to destroy humanity. However, after playing intensively with technology, I am convinced that the greatest affectation will be the loss of the habit of writing. This phenomenon began with the advent of the digital world. Today it is more common to see a person take notes on a mobile than to use a pen to record learning from a meeting. This implies many things; one of the most transcendental is, certainly, the ability to express written ideas. However, I would argue that the main loss is the ability to establish in writing the course of an idea, the objective of a company or, first of all, the reason for a life.
The research is conclusive. Dr. Gail Matthews, a professor of psychology at the Dominican University of California, conducted a study on goal setting with 267 participants. She found that a person is 42 percent more likely to achieve her goals simply by writing them down. Writing a goal is a major exercise; however, few are disciplined in creating long-term plans. My fear is that ChatGPT or any of its clones will cause fewer and fewer people to be able to write a course for their person or company. Authors such as Jordan Peterson affirm that a person’s ability to write down their goals largely determines their mental health and perception of the context. I would argue the same for companies. The lack of written objectives is one of the main failures of modern companies.
According to Mark Murphy, vividly describing goals in writing is strongly associated with goal success, and people who describe or imagine their goals very clearly are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to achieve them successfully than people who don’t. they do. This differential is serious business and could be the source of a major discussion. In Mexico, according to INEGI figures, the decrease in illiteracy in the last 30 years has been a great achievement for education in general. It is encouraging to see how illiteracy rates among the population aged 15 and over have decreased significantly, especially among women. Official figures show that less than 10 percent of the population is illiterate; However, we are a country that suffers in manifesting its true success.
In marketing, this problem couldn’t be clearer. Companies do not have a clear strategy to set goals. After giving hundreds of conferences to companies, I can assure you that the main motivation is to promote sales goals, which are technically objective, but tactical at best. They lack a strategic sense. For example, surely AT&T has a goal of placing lines; surely they are succeeding. However, if someone has a phone from that company, he knows that it is impossible to have a call of more than 5 minutes without having communication problems. For AT&T, the goal is to sell, not put the customer at the center. Another example is given in the airlines: what is the objective of Aeroméxico? Getting passengers to fly without any discussion with the staff? If that were true, they would go back to the time when advancing a flight was automatic and the gate staff could make decisions about it. If the airline’s goal is to have the passenger happy during the flight, they would expand the space between rows or provide better food, as Copa Airlines does. It’s sad, but Aeroméxico’s clear objective is to survive and get ahead after the pandemic. The latter is evident in the systematic decrease in its quality and the increase in prices on its tickets. I have nothing against Aeroméxico, but clearly its objective is not to put the passenger at the center. I would argue that in the case of AT&T and Aeroméxico, they are companies that promote quantifiable and numerical objectives that are far from being strategic. I would call this phenomenon the conversion of KPIs into strategic objectives.
We cannot lose the habit of writing. On this hangs our ability to project the future and clarify priorities to everyone in the organization. We must ask what we want to change in the life of the consumer when buying our product. It is certainly a difficult question, but one worth asking and, better yet, answering in writing. Let’s not forget that human beings are social by nature and express it through their ability to communicate.
Let’s not underestimate the importance of the habit of writing and its ability to project the future and clarify the priorities of an organization. We must continue to encourage writing in our lives and businesses to successfully achieve our goals and improve our ability to communicate and express ourselves.