Authenticity – "I am Tim, how can I help?"

David, the LiveWorld CFO, told me a story recently of calling tech support for a company. The tech support specialist introduced himself as “Tim” and politely asked how he could help. Of course, Tim had a very noticeable Indian accent so during a part of the conversation while they were waiting for the machine to reboot David asked, “so… your name is not really Tim is it?”. As suspected Tim’s actual name was a very respectable multi-syllabic Indian name but the company told him to pick a more common U.S. name for when he answered calls from the U.S. When he answered calls from England he was “Collin”.

Seriously, are we fooling anyone? I wonder if the call would go any worse even if the support answered with “my name is Nandakumar but you can call me Tim”.

As we come out of a presidential election season the topic of authenticity is near and dear to me. The classic joke is “how can you tell when a politician is lying… his lips are moving”. In many ways the election became referendum against an unpopular president, a war and a financial meltdown. But I also wonder if authenticity played a part. Sometimes when I listen to a candidate I am not even convinced that he or she believes what they are saying. My young college age kids are particularly cynical to what they see and hear. They heard in Obama someone who they could believe. In part, because they believed he at least believed what he was saying.

Authenticity is unfortunately and unnecessarily rare both in politics and corporate messages. Who do you believe?