Empathy is a crucial first step when we do marketing and innovation. However, we cannot possibly understand what it is to be 100% in someone else’s shoes. We can empathise in some areas but not even close in others.
It becomes even more difficult when we try to create or define our empathy with a group of people we believe is like us, and it’s out there. We start by assuming that we share some beliefs. There’s someone out there who has some things in common with us, and if there is one, there are more, most likely.
So that’s how we start, that initial assumption of shared beliefs and desires. Then we interact with them to learn more. We share our ideas and listen to their ideas. We both learn and change. We start to lead somewhere, a place where we both want to go.
On the other hand, if we try to force our ideas on others because we think they should be like us, we will not succeed. Even if we fail to understand that our common areas of belief are very limited, we might not be able to make the progress we hope for.
That common area is our foundation, the starting point that will allow us to connect and grow together. True empathy is accepting both that small foundation and the fact that the rest of our beliefs and desires are different, and we are at peace with it.
Therefore, empathy is not a one-time isolated exercise. It is a process. A never-ending process of learning, growing, adapting, or failing to adapt, and then learning more.
That’s how we evolve our ideas, our products and services, and our businesses. We don’t do marketing and innovation to people, we do it with them.