It happened once with that guy at that thing. You weren’t interested in talking, but then he asked an innocuous question you couldn’t ignore without being rude. You struck up a conversation and now, four years later, you meet for coffee every time you’re in the same city together.
It happened to me a couple months ago, through connections from a previous employer. An email invitation to grab coffee, which led to an after work glass of wine, which led to an actual round of interviews (or three), which led to me taking a position as the Vice President of Sales Enablement at Mattersight, even though I was completely happy with the job I had.
There was a “click.” You know, that unmistakable feeling you get when you really connect with someone — when the chemistry is there, the conversation flows and you feel like you’re talking to a lifelong friend, even though you’ve just met.
The most amazing thing about this situation isn’t that I feel like I’ve clicked with the team here at Mattersight. It’s the fit with the products. I’ve never felt a click with a product set before.
My passion for personalities goes back to college days. I majored in psychology because it was the one subject during my entire freshman year that didn’t inspire yawns and skipping class to go traying in the hollow (lunch trays, snow, hills… you get the idea). The resulting foundational understanding human behavior, motivation, and the uniqueness and commonness of each of our personalities has fueled and informed everything I’ve done since.
What Mattersight is doing is all about that click. We’re creating products that increase the likelihood that customers will experience that terrific feeling when they reach out to a call center. Based on the alchemy you can create with 10 million algorithms, Mattersight has figured out how to tap into the magical chemistry that can happen when like-minded people communicate with each other. Information just flows – both ways – and the results are happier customers and more efficient and effective call centers. Win-win.
You can imagine (I hope) my excitement to learn that some really smart people had figured out how to tap into the power of personality by leveraging the technologies we’ve all come to count on every day. The best part: it’s not creepy, Orwellian voodoo. Simple pairing of phone numbers with personality style profiles in a huge database means that you and I get to talk with someone who actually stands a chance of understanding us and the specific way we communicate.
Next time that guy at that thing — or the person on the other end of the line — asks you a question, listen for the click.
There just might be something amazing in it for you both.