With is The Sixth W
This TSW manifesto is not a new idea – it is a response to a deep change in uses, visions and approaches that steer the relationship between supply and demand.
It is simply the reassertion of a proper approach to oppose the corruption of good practices. Or to put it another way, it is an idea as old as mankind itself: doing things for humans, with humans.
But maybe because it is so ancient or so radical, the content of this manifesto and its simple constituent sentences are as innovative as they are revolutionary. We could even say it is a genuine restorative act that brings men and women back to the centre, re-establishing their place in creative and decision-making processes.
TSW is the acronym for The Sixth W and WITH is the sixth W..
“With” stands for doing things with people. Involving them, building relationships with them, listening to them. The sixth W completes the group of “five Ws” that form the basic principles of English-language journalism that are commonly used for formulating thoughts, planning processes and solving problems. The sixth W is part of our approach, which aims to embrace a person’s experiences, needs and desires, to take care of them and help them towards fruition.
For us, WITH means care, relationship and listening.
Caring about something, or in this case showing care for someone, and especially the feelings and experiences of individuals, means worrying, attending, giving attention to and taking an interest in people. It means treating their expectations and desires with accuracy, precision, and respect. It means making people a priority.
Creating a relationship with people arises directly from the meaning we give to caring for them and involves finding a connection or a link between behaviour that is observed and explicit – and that which usually remains implicit. This certainly requires not only the involvement of various methodologies and contexts, but also a respectful and protective approach to people’s feelings and experiences that emerge during an encounter.
Empathetic listening is a form of relationship that develops between people and is something we want to restore. It is the most valuable aspect of relationships, and is nowadays perhaps less common. Listening means accepting the essential value of relationships, helping to fulfil the emerging desires and needs of people and maybe even their dreams, expectations and implorations.
So, listening, accepting and acknowledging lead on to the enabling of fulfilment and are in fact a necessary prerequisite for it. But in what way? For any of us, being heard is not only important, but quintessential to any relationship – in our case, the relationship with brands, interfaces, services, objects, apps, stores, experiences, and so on.