Every Thursday evening for nearly 10 years, my family tuned into the Seinfeld show – a show, according to its co-creator, Larry David, was all about nothing.    From my family’s perspective, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.   In fact, it’s a lot like today, where everyone has the tools to say how they feel about everything in their personal  (eg. See www.thelastlecture.com ) and professional lives -  not unlike how Jerry, Elaine, Cramer and George did when they entered our living rooms every Thursday evening to make us laugh, cry and reflect on nothing and everything.    For example, the Thursday night treats included:

1.    Detailed conversations about everyday life:  Remember that episode about the Soup Nazi – I know you do.  How funny was that, where the guy who makes the soup tells the cast of Seinfeld what they are going to eat regardless of their desire.  It sounds a lot like many of the companies that still serve my family who continue to think that they are going to be successful by selling us what they make regardless of whether it is what we want.  Maybe their leaders didn’t see the Soup Nazi show or don’t think of themselves as Car Nazi’s (One of the Big Three Car Manufacturers in the US) , Travel Nazi’s (Your National Airline), or Health Care Nazi’s (Your local HMO), but they aren’t far behind.    The only difference is the Soup Nazi was just a manager of a fictional business, whereas in these other cases, they are real businesses with real leaders.

2.    A close look at relationships among people trying to get ahead:   Clearly George, more than anyone else on the show, struggled to find his place in the world.   Regardless of the fact that there were very few things he did well (including killing his fiancée by mistake), his friends supported him.   During each week, we were privileged to see how Elaine, Jerry, George and Cramer struggled in their personal and professional lives to get ahead.  But what we all found interesting and endearing was that they reminded us and our friends, in some small way, of our own struggles in our daily activities – albeit somewhat exaggerated.  The only difference was that they were living lives of transparency where everyone could be witness to their highs and low, ebbs and flows.    Luckily, we are more fortunate not to have our own personal shows or weekly viewers, even if YouTube and Flickr is changing that reality.

3.    People saying what all of us think but dare to say aloud.  Lastly, the show chronicled the lives and conversations of people saying things to each other and to businesses (remember that drying cleaning episode for example) that all of us have wanted to say to business leaders and and major companies, but bit our tongue for political, financial and personal reasons.  Now with rapid rise and adoption of social media, all of us are saying things that we dared not say before.  More importantly, businesses are now hearing for the first time, what all of us have had on our mind for a long time .   The good news is that the businesses that are willing to hear our missifs will be more successful as a result (even if the messages are not all that positive in the beginning).