Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

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motohagiography

What's weird to me is the value business puts on being physically present places.

It's great to have the opportunity and serendipity of being somewhere, but you can get that flying commercial, even moreso flying coach. That it's the person sitting in the place that makes a decision go in a particular direction, and not just reasoning it though and using communications tech seems odd. If you need something, you need it. I don't see what's so complicated.

What is that magic juice?

On the other hand, I'm also watching a deal get scuttled right now because of the lack of personal introduction and relationship between the negotiating parties (it's online, and you can just see the value physically evaporating for lack of trust and reciprocity).

But what's the difference? Is it just charisma?

Business negotiations and deals rely a lot on rapport and personal interactions. You just cannot get that by scheduling a one hour conf. call.

You also get a much better feel and extract more information by being on site.

In a lot of instances the difference is the respect your physical presence brings because of that time and effort travel takes

Bareback horse ride from LA to a meeting in NY just for those extra respect points?

The difference is that we're evolved for physical interaction. Using all of your senses and social cues and the surrounding environment to interact with someone makes a big difference.

It's how you can read the tone of the room, see tiny changes in expression, hear the differences in intonation, shake someone's hand and feel their demeanor, measure the level of background chatter, check if people are really paying attention, etc. All of this helps us have more honest and confident communications which underlies deal making and business.

Unless we get to matrix-level VR, this is something that can't be replicated by any kind of tech and will always require travel to get that full experience.

Let’s say you are making a deal worth $100m. Could communicating better improve the value of the deal by 1%? Then it’s not a stretch to spend $100k to get the best communication possible.

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