Everybody reacts to certain sounds in ways that range from cringing to anaphylactic shock. It may be chalk squeaking on a blackboard, fingernails scraping a screen, or even two pieces of corduroy rubbing together.

For me it’s the fingernail/screen combination. If I’m ever captured by an enemy bent on learning all of my secrets (both of ’em!), all they’ll have to do is brandish the screen in front of me. I’ll cave in an instant.

Sometimes whole sentences can cause just as intense a reaction. Many InfoWorld readers react to various examples of ManagementSpeak like those that begin this column. (Me too.)

Another source of acoustic chafing: People who tell you what you’re thinking and feeling (“Don’t get defensive,” is the perfect example, requiring extraordinary self-restraint and conversational dexterity in response). Deal with what I say and do, pal. I’m in a better position to describe my thoughts and feelings than you are.

There’s a new kid on the block that puts the others to shame. It goes like this: “The technology is the easy part.”

I hear people say this all the time these days. These people have never written a line of code in their lives, of course, and that may explain why they’re so comfortable saying it while calling programmers “bit-heads” and “nerds.” For them, technology is the easy part. They get to toss out high-level, fuzzily stated requirements. Then they sneer at programmers who bug them with questions, using the popular put-down: “Clearly you’re not comfortable dealing with ambiguity.”

There’s not much point explaining that it’s C++, not you, that’s uncomfortable dealing with ambiguity. These characters are so busy being self-important that they don’t have the time to deal with a mere technologist, who after all gets to deal with the easy part of the problem.

With a little less arrogance and a bit more patience, these important businesspeople would learn that they do indeed have a very difficult job, which they often shirk. That’s the process of clearly and unambiguously defining what the business needs. Usually, this means creating a detailed picture of a business process that doesn’t exist, along with every resource that process will need to be put into practice.

That’s hard. It requires, time, thought, and patience, so it usually goes undone.

Yes, when business planners do their jobs well they make the job of the technologist easier. Not easy, but easier. Somebody has to take the big picture and refine it into the kind of detail a data designer can translate into a schema and a programmer can translate into code. Too often, the people who end up having to do the refinement are the programmers and data designers, who collar the business planner in the hallway to ask annoying questions.

I’ve known IS programmer/analysts who have been assigned to a new business unit to “create the technology” and instead have designed every key business process along with defining the technology, up to and including the invoice design.

(Which, by the way, points to a solution. Place a programmer in a business area, actually doing the work. That puts the programmer in a great position to envision, and immediately build, efficient, technology-centered work processes. Try making this an endorsed system-design methodology.)

The devil is in the details, of course, and the ultimate level of detail is the actual code. It takes talented programmers to write good code that gets the job done. I guess it’s because the devil is in the details that so many businesspeople simultaneously denigrate and demonize the technologists who translate their “important concepts” to reality.

When I was growing up in the Chicago suburbs, the Cubs shaped (warped?) my character every summer.

The team, needless to say, was awful, but we had our great players: Sweet swingin’ Billy Williams, pizza-sellin’ Ron Santo, and, more than anyone else, Ernie Banks, who was the perfect athlete hero for young kids. He was a great player (“Just think how good he’d be if he got to bat against Cub pitchers!” we’d exclaim to each other), he loved playing the game, and he was perennially optimistic and cheerful.

Whenever Jack Brickhouse interviewed Ernie Banks before a game, Ernie would say, “It’s another great day for baseball at beautiful Wrigley Field!” And at the end of every season, Ernie would say, “Next year will be a great season for the Cubs!”

Ernie was a wonderful ball player. I don’t think he’d have made a great executive, though. If I’ve seen one character trait that, more than any other, differentiates truly great executives from the rest of the population, it’s their refusal to let emotions blind them to reality.

Here’s a reality many of us are unwilling to face, but that every successful communicator knows: Your message must be aimed primarily at your audience’s emotions, and only slightly to the intellect. Otherwise, your audience will lose interest and won’t absorb your message.

Sales professionals live and die on this insight. Pretending the world is otherwise, or being unwilling to play the game to win, simply means you don’t belong in sales. (If you’re wondering, I’m not capable of it, and I got my coccyx out of the sales profession just a few months after entering it for that exact reason.) If you deny the validity of this insight into your own decision-making, you’re vulnerable to every sales shyster who learns how to yank your chain.

OK, brace yourself. Here’s an earlier version of the same advice, along with its authoritative source:

“Propaganda’s effect must be aimed primarily at nonintellectual elements of the mind and only, to a limited extent, at the rational intellect. We must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public.” – Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

No, this doesn’t mean the sales representatives you deal with are Nazis, Nazi sympathizers, or Nazi dupes. It means they’re willing to embrace the realities of their profession, including tactics their competitors will use against them – even if Hitler explained those tactics in Mein Kampf.

How do you deal with uncomfortable realities? Hitler’s actions were horrifying. His effectiveness, though, was unquestionable, and that means you can’t just write off his insights into human behavior as psychotic ravings.

My friend Curtis Sahakian has written a white paper on this subject, titled “Business Application of Propaganda” (The Corporate Partnering Institute, Skokie, IL). It’s practically an inventory of human frailty. By reading it you’ll learn (among other facts) that people:

  • Change their beliefs more easily than their behavior;
  • Filter out messages that conflict with their beliefs;
  • Are strongly influenced by name-calling and innuendo;
  • Have a strong predisposition to perceive patterns in random events; and
  • Will do more out of fear, or to avoid pain, than for any other source of motivation.

Am I advocating unethical behavior by telling you these facts? Are you being unethical by learning them? If you learn the rules of propaganda and use them to your advantage, is that unethical, or are the ethics determined by the consequences of your actions?

I can answer only the first two questions with certainty: No, I’m not advocating unethical behavior by presenting these facts, and no, you aren’t displaying poor ethics by learning them.

Naïveté doesn’t make you ethical. It just makes you an easy victim.