Willkommene leser des ‘Des Leitartikels!’ That is my humble (and no doubt incorrect) attempt at welcoming you to the latest version of ‘The Editorial’ in German to reflect the huge response we received to last month’s editorial concerning Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. For those of you wondering how things turned out it went exactly as expected with no effort from BMW to return my calls. I am now keeping a close eye on the calendar to time how long it does actually take for anyone to try and fix the problem.

For those of you wondering if this is an isolated incident allow me to present Exhibit A – a very funny and remarkably similar story from one of our loyal readers. Fear not BMW… it only comes from one of Australia’s most high profile and respected CEO’s – nothing to concern yourselves with.

BMW – at your service part 2
(a letter to the editor

Brett,

Amazing coincidence with the BMW!! I have an M5, BMW’s supposed flagship vehicle with a socially responsible, environmentally friendly V-10 motor that pulls 507 brake horsepower…. when it works!

On 3 separate occasions the engine warning light comes on and the power rapidly disappears leaving no brakes or power steering. After each breakdown, I limped the car back to the office carpark and it was subsequently towed away, to the taunts of staff suggesting I might want to make the repayments rather than having the car repossessed. At the "service shop", I was asked on two occasions if I was using cheap fuel as basically there was nothing wrong with the car. So now I’m making it all up. The sheer fact I nearly hit the side concrete wall on the Anzac Bridge was nothing more than me wanting to draw attention to myself I suppose? The passengers in the car certainly weren’t impressed.

So on the third breakdown, after another towing and more damage to my personal brand with the staff, I was told that I was not getting the car back until they knew what was wrong with it…. no talk or suggestion of a refund, but I did get a "loaner". Well a week or so passes and not a word. So curiosity got the better of me and I called them; well actually I needed to get the golf clubs out of the boot. So I walk into this non-badged BMW repair shop to see the M5 wired up on every computer imaginable with the head mechanic greeting me with the line "wow, what a great car, eh?" No need to go into detail on my reply – suffice to say we did not agree.

A few days later I get a call from the service manager saying there had been some developments. The mechanic was driving my car home the night before (WHAT THE?) and the engine failed 5 times. My response was along the lines of at least we now know it’s not contaminated fuel and that I am not a habitual liar.

So to cut a long story short, it was faulty sensors in the fuel pump. No parts in Australia so we booked a first class seat for the new fuel pump to fly from Munich to Sydney and matter closed; so far.

As to the stories surrounding my wife’s 330C BMW convertible and my daughters 120 BMW hatch…. well lets save those for another day!!

Hope you’re well.

Tappers and Listeners

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: "tappers" or "listeners." Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as "Happy Birthday to You" and "The Star-Spangled Banner." Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table). The listener’s job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped.

The listener’s job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. Listeners guessed only 2.5 percent of the songs: 3 out of 120.

But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?

When you tap out a song you are hearing the song in your head. Go ahead and try it for yourself – tap out "Oops I did it again” by Britney Spears. It’s impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head (make the bad noises stop, make them stop)! Meanwhile, the listeners can’t hear that tune (lucky sods) – all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.

In the experiment, tappers were amazed at how hard the listeners seemed to have to work in order to pick up the tune. They thought the song was obvious and the listeners were complete morons.

But it is hard to be a tapper. The problem is that tappers know what the song is – they have been given knowledge. That knowledge makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to be without it. When they’re tapping, they can’t imagine what it’s like for everyone else to hear disconnected taps rather than a song. This is the problem. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like to not know it. This in turn makes it difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.

The tapper/listener experiment is re-enacted every day across the world. The tappers and listeners are CEOs and frontline employees, teachers and students, politicians and voters, marketers and customers, writers and readers. All of these groups rely on ongoing communication, but, like the tappers and listeners, they suffer from enormous information imbalances. When a CEO discusses "unlocking shareholder value," there is a tune playing in her head that the employees can’t hear.

If we want to connect with people and have our ‘songs’ heard then we need to learn how to recreate the tunes in their heads rather than simply assume they are hearing the same melody.